Jim Thome is batting about .001 this season for the Twins, but he’s closing in on 600 home runs, and the one thing Thome has never been lacking is raw, monstrous cornfed power. If you didn’t see him crank #596, it was the longest and most awesome looking/sounding homer in Target Field history, going farther than the previous champ: a different Jim Thome home run. I’ll let the animated gif (with a hat tip to my good friend and associate Jon Bois) do the recapping.

Be sure to watch that gif for about twenty minutes before reading today’s Dugout. It makes the strip better, and honestly the longer you watch it the funnier it gets. After about eight minutes you expect Thome and Delmon Young to turn and look at you through your computer screen.

Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

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Three really cool things about this year’s AL Central:

1. It is Tribe Time Now™
2. The Minnesota Twins are hilariously pathetic and in last place.
3. Every good Twins player is hurt, so Jim Thome gets to be their big star.

The worst thing about the AL Central this year is how every week there is a post on every sports blog titled “Are the Cleveland Indians for real?” Are they real? Can the Indians be physically real? Do they exist? What is the nature of our existence? What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets! Yes, the Indians are real, and you should probably stop writing about it. Right now they’re 14 games over .500, and while that could go in any direction (as there is a lot of season to go), you don’t do that by being a flukey anomaly.

Anyway, here’s some more about the Twins sucking!

Sports

Terrible Twins mean it’s Thome Time - Here is some more about the Twins sucking, and how wonderful Jim Thome is. I already knew those things, Yahoo Sports. Maybe next time the Twins will build a stadium that isn’t just Progressive Field plus freezing! [Big League Stew]

13-Year Old Sinks Awesome Bicycle Kick - I thought this was going to be a Mortal Kombat-style MMA thing featuring weenagers, but it’s soccer. It’s still awesome, though, and I wish my goofy body could’ve pulled off something this effective at any point during my life. I remember 13-year old soccer as a sad mix of being winded and getting my legs kicked. [BroBible]

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Baseball Hall of Famer and Minnesota Twins legend Harmon Killebrew said on Friday that he’s ending his battle with esophageal cancer, and plans live out the final days of his life in hospice care. It’s not a story with a lot of funny to make it pop online (and I’m sorry about the title), but if you’ve got any reverence whatsoever for professional sports you’ll understand the importance of Killebrew, if only in how much he means to the people who saw him play.

“It is with profound sadness that I share with you that my continued battle with esophageal cancer is coming to an end,” Killebrew said in a statement released by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“With the continued love and support of my wife, Nita, I have exhausted all options with respect to controlling this awful disease. My illness has progressed beyond my doctors’ expectation of cure.”

That is just a punch in the stomach. If we can find some sort of context in the stats he collected, his 573 career home runs are the 11th most in baseball. He played 21 of his 22 years in the Bigs in the Minnesota/Washington Senators organization, and brought in over 1,500 RBI. The Twins retired his uniform number in 1975 and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984. He’s not going away, no matter where he goes.

“I look forward to spending my final days in comfort and peace with Nita by my side.”

Good luck, Mr. Killebrew.

[Reuters]

At the risk of ruining a perfectly cromulent Dugout, I wanted to share the latest commercial from Explore Minnesota, a group hoping to embiggen the state’s tourism. This is a fine follow-up to the Jim Thome Paul Bunyan commercial, even if it gives me fewer images of Kent Hrbek desperately trying to outrace a steam engine. Stay tuned until the end, where Twins catcher Joe Mauer breaks out some Chris Colfer-quality warbling. Would auto-tune be considered a performance enhancer? He’s not a great singer, but at least he isn’t trying to rhyme “California” with “Minnesota” like the rock climbing lady.

This is all in good fun, but I’m sad that only two kinds of commercials get to exist anymore. You’re either the Old Spice commercials (I’m looking at you, Edge Shave Gel), the Free Credit Report dot com commercials, or (like this one) a mixture of the two. I guess the makeup commercials where they make black ladies look like white ladies to sell shimmering eye-care count as a third kind.

Informal poll: How many of you want to go to Minnesota now that you’ve learned they have food, cities and lots of water?

The Minnesota Twins always have great commercials, but they’ve outdone themselves by adhering to one simple rule: dressing Jim Thome up as things = comedy. To advertise their series with the Tampa Bay Rays, the Twins dressed Thome as Paul Bunyan to express how much Jim is getting into the “Minnesota thing.” This is one of those times, like when Barry Bonds dressed up like Paula Abdul, that a Dugout pretty much has to be a transcript of what actually happened. Because come on, how do you make that funnier?

The video of said commercial is included after the jump, and make sure you watch it before reading today’s Dugout. Or watch and read at the same time, as they’re more or less the same thing. Tomorrow: Manny Ramirez starts traveling around the country planting seeds.

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HEY GUYS

Before Thursday, the only way baseball players got injured is by conditioning improperly and requiring Tommy John surgery, conditioning properly and requiring Tommy John surgery, kicking or punching inanimate objects in anger, or trying to iron a shirt while wearing it. You never actually break your leg playing baseball, unless you’re the Twins’ Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who did so during yesterday’s game.

As it often tends to do, the real baseball world tends to bend over backwards to accommodate serendipitous Dugout storylines. This is one of those times. In today’s Dugout, we are afforded the opportunity to check in with an old friend.

P.S. this is the first Dugout I’ve written in over a year. Happy to be back. If you’re inclined to hear me say more words about sports, you can find me at SB Nation, where I’m an associate editor, and Twitter, where I’m a jackass.

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