The new face of parenting.

By way of Prep Rally and numerous local news anchors who seriously cannot believe this shit, a 52-year old Eagan, Minnesota, man was arrested and charged with fifth-degree domestic assault for responding to a a youth basketball tournament loss by grabbing his 13-ish year old son with one arm and repeatedly punching him in the face with the other.

The outburst unfolded in a hallway outside the gym, and FOX 9 News spoke with two witnesses who said they never saw the boy throw a punch.

“It breaks your heart,” said Tara Falteysek, of Eagan. “I can’t imagine how that young boy feels, that dad would do that to him — and in front of friends.”

Witnesses said they were deeply disturbed by what happened, and Lakeville Police chief Tom Vonhof said he’s never seen anything like this in 30 years on the force.

Bat-Dad (I can only assume this guy is a belligerent, Minnesotan Bat-Dad) posted $10,000 bail over the weekend, and if convicted he faces up to 90 days in jail and a $3,000 fine. He also faces the very real danger of living the rest of his life with the kind of brain that makes you think headlocking and punching a middle-schooler in the mouth in front of his friends because his team lost a tournament game with literally zero consequences in regard to the rest of his life is a great idea.

Video of the report is below.

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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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The first thing you hear when you click play on this video is people going HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING. Spanish basketball phenom Ricky Rubio rides down an escalator, and the people are all HE’S WEARING A BLAZER AND A SHIRT AND SHOES, AND HE’S WEARING A HAT AND HUMANS ARE NEAR HIM. Seconds later, people are wooing and hooting, and some guy says LOOK AT THE PAGEANTRY. The pageantry of someone wearing clothes and using an escalator to change floors and walking in an airport.

Such is the new life of Rubio, picked fifth overall in the 2009 NBA draft, as he replaces Kent Hrbek and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the (assumedly shared) consciousness of Minnesota. After walking through an airport (and this is not a joke), Fox Sports is writing about how his personality is a defibrillator to a franchise in need of life. Imagine the Minnesota Timberwolves as the Washington Nationals and Rubio as Stephen Strasburg, only Spanish and biting a basketball. Did anybody describe what Strasburg was wearing when he landed in the D.C. airport? Did he have two functioning arms?

I’m hoping Rubio turns out to be a huge deal, just so one of the biggest stars in the NBA will look and act like Chachi from “Happy Days”.

[video via SBN, h/t to our own Cajun Boy]

Republicans in Minnesota tried to conduct an NCAA tournament-style betting pool on the outcome of a state budget crisis that threatened the future of local government and the jobs and livelihood of over 36,000 workers.

“This is an ‘IN-HOUSE’ document intended for staff only-just for fun. Thanks, and good luck”.

Players would a wager on the likelihood of an increase in Minnesota’s income tax, the expansion of state gambling, and the chances of Gonzaga making it past the second round. Only a dollar to play! A dollar, and absolutely no f**king compassion for the people you’re supposed to be representing.

From CBS Minnesota, which sounds like the oldest, slowest thing ever:

“This is disgusting,” said Eliot Seide, the head of AFSCME, Minnesota’s largest state workers union. “Thanks and good luck? Make a bet on how long our people are going to be out of work? What kind of sick people are these?”

Republicans say the pool was never distributed.

“It’s incredibly inappropriate”, said Michael Brodkorb, Executive Assistant to the Senate GOP Caucus, who said neither he nor any Republican leaders were aware of the pool. “It wasn’t distributed. Copies were discarded and no bets were taken.”

“The popular kids were running the pool,” said Brodkorb, whose last name looks like something spelled backwards. “When I asked them about it later they said I was in third place, but they also said that to my friend, so I think they’re just lying to us and keeping our dollars.” That joke was brought to you by how unpopular I was in high school.

You can take a look at the pool sign-up sheet here. I’m voting “yes” on increase fees (duh), and “no” on Duke.

[H/T Off the Bench]

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?