Baseball season is officially upon us, and that means only one thing — the return of The Dugout, the Internet’s longest running and most critically acclaimed webcomic about baseball players with pun screen names pretending to curse at each other over AIM. Yes, this is still a thing.

And to celebrate Major League Baseball splitting Opening Day up into like 40 smaller, less important games over the span of a month and at least one ceremony meant to humiliate Muhammad Ali, the normal Spring Training event we like to do has been replaced by Opening Days, a Dugout maxi-series that will span all 25 teams and let you find out what your favorite players are up to in 2012.

There are still only 25 teams, right? Well, 25 important ones. Or was that 5 important ones?

Anyway, whether it takes me a month or I’m still writing Opening Days segments into 2013, here’s episode one: The Tampa Bay Rays.

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This weekend was a busy one for me — attending Wrestlemania XXVIII, meeting Dave “Masked Man” Shoemaker from Grantland, trying to figure out what the sh*t a “Sun Pass” is — but one of the biggest highlights was attending Sunday’s exhibition game between the New York Yankees and the new look Miami Marlins in brand-spanking-new Marlins Park in Miami.

There’s been a lot of talk about the new stadium, mostly about how it cost too much to build and how they wanted a motorized nightmare machine in center. I got there early (on the same day as Wrestlemania, because I love to pay for parking) to take a few pictures and share the experience with you guys, because holy crap, if you think the fish machine is bad you haven’t seen everything else.

Take a look and let me know what you think. Worst case scenario, you’ll get to see a sweet Bobblehead Museum. And “Katherine”. Katherine was awesome.

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I threatened to bug you about this again on Friday, and here we are.

With Leather is teaming up with Fanduel.com to bring you a free fantasy baseball event that could earn you a huge wad of $1,000 in cash simply for picking someone who’d be better at baseball on April 5 than Omar Infante. He’s on my time. So are a bunch of guys who are gonna get hurt on April 4. I’m not great at these.

It’s a one day contest and works like you’d expect … you draft the best team you can under the salary cap and play them against the league. You can track your team’s progress through live scoring, and you get paid out at the end of the day once all games have ended. Then you look at how I’ve performed and see if you’re better than me. Then you go to my website and brag at me until I shut down With Leather completely in anger.

100 entrants are taking home money, so be sure to sign up for this immediately and set up your team. You’ll have fun, it won’t cost you anything, and worst case scenario you’ll win enough to bankroll a small market team.

If you’re already sick of Ozzie Guillen, f***ing strap in, because it’s going to be a long summer. Particularly if Guillen’s Miami Marlins run away with the National League East, as they’re already threatening to do. I mean, the season hasn’t even started yet, but they’ve already released Aaron Rowand. That is a CHAMPIONSHIP caliber move, right there.

Guillen is nothing if not a classy manager. On Thursday, GQ did a Twitter interview with the Marlins manager — which I guess is a thing that GQ does now — and one of the questions was whether Ozzie would consider himself a breast man or Billy Gunn an ass man. Or, as they phrased it, “¿Prefieres tetas o culo?” Guillen’s response? He’s all about the culo, baby!

@OzzieGuillen: Prefiero culo. Gracias a dios mi esposa tiene uno y siempre lo a tenido

If you can’t read en espanol, he says he thanks God that his wife has always had a nice caboose. Because he’s an old-fashioned romantic, that culo-loving sweetie!

Also on Thursday, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly appeared on Howard Stern for squares “The Dan Patrick Show” and the topic of Guillen came up. Mattingly, to his credit, called Guillen “a little sh*t” in a tone that was more good-natured than that quote would have you believe. As far as smack-talk goes, this barely even rates, but knowing Guillen, he will likely take it personally and instigate a brawl at the first Marlins/Dodgers game just so he can throat-punch the Los Angeles skipper.

Wow, I didn’t think I could get any more pumped for baseball season, but then I read that last sentence again.

[h/t for both items to HardballTalk]

We’d seen the artist renderings and we’d heard the rumors – every time Giancarlo “Mike” Stanton and Co. launch a home run into the stands at Marlins Park, a new giant statue would light up and lead the fans in celebration. And now we can actually see for ourselves how this Mardi Gras float prop that time forgot will look in person, thanks to a new video of the statue’s practice run…

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As the Florida Miami Marlins prepare to open their new stadium and begin their new season in their new uniforms with their new shortstop who will hopefully hit a bunch of home runs to light up their new home run fish statue/shrine, it was only fitting that the team would add some new flair and style to the stadium as well. But it was a little alarming when a new Marlins song, “We are the Marlins”, was making the web rounds yesterday under the guise that it would be the new Miami theme song for celebration.

And we were all like, “Oh hell no.”

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