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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For those of you who are new to The Dugout, each year we spend March writing “The Dugout: Spring Training.”  We cover 30 teams in 30 days, and fans of the Pirates or the Astros get their one strip a year before we start calling Alex Rodriguez gay and Manny Ramirez stupid for seven months.  With a March 15 end date set for FanHouse, I started 2011′s Spring Training in the middle of February, thinking it would give me time to get to everyone before I was outsourced.  Out of nowhere, the Sporting News decided they wanted FanHouse to be incomprehensible and awful RIGHT AWAY, and March 15 became March 1.

Now that The Dugout is back in full swing on With Leather, we can pick back up where we left off.  Today’s Spring Training is about the Twins, and it has nothing to do with Jim Thome being a member of the team and me wanting people to like these right away, swear to God.

So read, enjoy, and drop a comment.  I love The Dugout fan community more than I love baseball itself (which is not a lot, apparently), so make your voices heard.  Dugout got, after the break.

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Muscle squirrel will critique your bench press form

I’ve never really thought of baseball as a wussy sport, but it’s really difficult not to when I see things like this. Last night, a squirrel stopped the Yankees-Twins game in progress at Target when it ran around the field. Twins third baseman Brendan Harris flinching like that is pretty pathetic. The guy can look down a 90 mile per hour fastball, but jumps when he sees a squirrel? Awful.

The game was eventually suspended due to rain after the 5th inning, which doesn’t help baseball’s case for being a manly game. While the NFL schedules a Super Bowl to potentially be played in the snow, baseball players can’t play in the rain. It makes sense, because their perfect brims may get all bent out of shape, and their button downs might shrink in the wash.

More squirrel antics after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins beat the Tigers in that thrilling 12-inning playoff game to decide the AL Central yesterday, but not without controversy. En route to his team’s 6-5 loss in the Metrodome, Tigers batter Brandon Inge took a pitch in the top of the 12th with the bases loaded that brushed up against his jersey, which legally counts toward a hit-by-pitch. Inge headed for first base, but was called back to the batter’s box by home plate umpire Randy Marsh. As one might guess, Mr. Inge was not pleased.

“I want a hit as much as the next guy, but when it’s that important, it hit my shirt,” Inge said of the first pitch he took from [Twins reliever Bobby] Keppel, thrown with the bases loaded and one out in the 12th inning. “I’m not going to lie.”[...]

“It hit my shirt, period,” Inge said. “I don’t lie about things like that. I’m not going to try to weasel my way on base.”

Tigers manager Jim Leyland immediately ran out of the dugout to challenge the call. Read the rest of this entry »

Brett Favre and the Vikings play Green Bay in Minnesota tonight on Monday Night Football, and if you thought ESPN would be fellating Favre in the leading up to the game, just wait until Jon Gruden steps up to the mic. If he gets through the entire game without audible slurping, I’ll be amazed.

Additionally, the Minnesota Twins are playing off for the AL Central Division title against the Detroit Tigers. Somehow, I’m not even sure this game will be devoid of Brett Favre references.

“We’re going to have a packed house,” said Michael Cuddyer. “Maybe we’ll have a whiteout. Chicago last year had a blackout — maybe we’ll have a whiteout in the Dome.”

With all the white hankies flying around inside the Metrodome on Sunday, it certainly looked like a whiteout at times, and the expectation is for another packed crowd to help cheer on the Twins on Tuesday.

The winner of the Twins-Tigers contest will be headed to New York to face the Yankees in the first round of the AL Division Series.

I thought Minnesota was already whited-out. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a black guy in Minnesota that didn’t have a uniform number on his back? And yet, it still wasn’t white enough for Kevin Garnett, who left the Minnesota Timberwolves to play in Boston. Doesn’t get much whiter than that.

It all comes down to today. With the Detroit Tigers showing no offensive punch in a brutal 5-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox and the Twins beating American League Cy Young favorite Zack Greinke and the Kansas City Royals 5-4 earlier in the day, the Twins moved into a first-place tie with the Tigers in the worst division in baseball, the American League Central. If the Twins win today, they are at least assured a least a tiebreaker game for all the marbles against the Tigers on Tuesday to determine who will face the New York Yankees in the postseason. And if Detroit loses, well, people in Detroit will be even more depressed than usual.

This is the third time in four seasons that the Twins have an opportunity to win their division on the last day of the season. Last year, Minnesota forced a one-game playoff with the White Sox, only to ultimately lose that game 1-0.

In the end, the pressure is all on the Tigers – the Twins can play it pretty loosey-goosey, considering no team since division play began in 1969 has won their division after being three games back with four games to play. As far as they are concerned, the Twins probably feel they are playing with house money at this point. Given that today’s game will be the last regular season game to be played ever at the Metrodome and they are expecting over 50,000 at the Dump, everything appears to be working in Minnesota’s favor, who have won 15 of 19. The Tigers, meanwhile, are 4-6 in their last 10 games and have lost three straight.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland has all but accepted that Minnesota will win today. He understands what is at stake and hopes his players are aware of the fact they are on the verge of an historic epic fail, although he is somewhat encouraged that staff ace Justin Verlander will be starting today.

“They’re not going to get beat,” he said. “(Verlander) has been a horse. Hopefully we can win that one tomorrow and start the kid [Rick Porcello] up in Minnesota.”

You always feel pretty good with Justin going,” Leyland said, “but you’re still going to have to score some runs.”

Leyland said he told the players after Saturday night’s game, “You have to play your hearts out tomorrow.” via.

All I know is it is incredibly difficult to swing a bat with your hands clenched firmly around your own throat. Don’t the Tigers realize that the entire population of the downtrodden town of Detroit is depending on the team to lift them out of the city’s economic and social morass? Come on, guys!