It’s official … he’s back in Cleveland! No, not this guy.

Sports

Yankees-Athletics: Live-Blogging The Luncheon For The Friends Of Eric Plunk - Jon and Nick of The Dugout (if they ever actually want to write them) spend six hours and change live-blogging a baseball game. In a related story, Eric Plunk is probably the worst and ugliest motherf**ker of all time. [SBN]

Technique Video Of the Day: 10th Planet Leg Lock - Joanne Spracklen is somebody I feel like you should know about, and given how easy it is for MMA girls who don’t look like Ghouls to get leading lady action movie roles, you might as well jump on her bandwagon now. [Cage Potato]

NBA Lockout Report: Derrick Williams Dunks On People - Brandon’s personal NBA Lockout Report: he is probably never going to get up to Dallas and see a Mavericks game live, is he? [TSS]

It’s Draft Season And Women Be Bringin’ You Down: The KSK Sex/Fantasy Football Mailbag - Worth clicking for Nathan Explosion in the header, even more worth clicking for the huge Saved By The Bell gif. I should start the With Leather Saved By The Bell/Fantasy Baseball Mailbag. [KSK]

Not Sports

Jim Carrey’s Love Letter to Emma Stone, as Read by His Ass - I don’t really blame him for (fake) pouring his heart out on the Internet, but Real Talk, Bryce Dallas Howard was a way hotter Gwen Stacy. I know you don’t agree with me already, but I will die defending this. [Film Drunk]

The Hilarious (and Dead On) Caricatures of Cartoonist Pete Emslie - What would your favorite celebrity look like if they showed up on the Flintstones? Find out here! Ah man, I wish that’s what this was. Natalie Port-rock! [UPROXX]

The Wire Inspired Motivational Posters Are Inspiring, Motivational - Needs more “”You gonna help, huh? You gonna look out for me? You gonna look out for me, Sgt. Carver?” but still outstanding. Stringer Bell was the best. [UPROXX]

Hustler Says They’re Close to Releasing Rihanna Sex Tape - Hopefully it’s with Jon Hamm and features a cameo from Shy Ronnie. [FARK]

15 Year-Old Girl Gets a Bionic Hand - Pretty cool, but call me when she can shoot it at ledges and use it to swing in and attack Nazis. For a more concise reference, “I hope she named it Fisto!” [Warming Glow]

The Best of 1960′s Spider-Man, Part 2 - I sincerely advise anyone who clicks this to go on Netflix and actually watch the old Spider-Man cartoon, as it is super hilarious and trippy. It has the laziest backgrounds this side of Caillou, and near the end just turns into colors and noises. [Gamma Squad]

10 Things You Didn’t Know About New York City and Hurricanes - I don’t know anything about New York City OR Hurricanes, so this was extremely informative. I did see The Hurricane wrestle in New York City once, does that count? [Buzzfeed]

Tom Cruise’s Ladies, Past and Present: Oh, the Horror! - If Tom Cruise is indeed heterosexual, I would prefer his celebrity female take to Derek Jeter’s. I’d miss Scarlett Johansson, and Katie Holmes didn’t show up until she was already aging out of Joey Potter, but Sofia Vergara and pre-MILF Mimi Rogers MORE than make up for it. [Moviefone]

Foul balls — people who want them, and the fatter, meaner people who end up taking them — have become an important topic of discussion at With Leather. The latest talking point comes to us from the Tampa Bay Rays/Oakland Athletics game at Tropicana Field on Saturday night, and features a “best of” selection of foul ball atrocities: grown men fighting, ejections, children left desperately yearning and a security guard making tough calls like he’s an actual law enforcement agent.

The Rays TV broadcast team of Dewayne Staats, Brian Anderson, and Todd Kalas tell the story, by way of Sports Grid:

I think that’s the best solution I’ve ever seen to grown men battling each other in a trash can. Just leave the ball in the trash and don’t let anybody get it. It gets better when you watch the video and see the people sitting around telling their best AW MAN HERE’S WHAT I SHOULDA SAID TO HIM versions of the story while the Rays just flounder (fish reference) and get shut out. I was hoping some a-hole would try to outsmart the security guy by picking up the entire trash can and walking away with it.

Lesson learned, again: Foul balls are not important enough for you to be acting like this.

On July 5, in the 10th inning of a 2-2 game against the Oakland Athletics, Franklin Gutierrez and Brendan Ryan scored to give the Seattle Mariners a 4-2 victory and a .500 record. Normally that kind of story wouldn’t be worth telling, but it was also the last time that Seattle has won a game. Since that night in Oakland, the Mariners have lost 17 games in a row. The American League record is 21 (1988 Baltimore Orioles) and the Major League Baseball record is 23 (1961 Philadelphia Phillies). After last night’s 4-1 one-hit loss to C.C. Sabathia and the New York Yankees, it’s looking like a record could be on the cold, rainy Emerald City horizon.

As a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I’m generally regarded as one of the most intelligent, classy and, in this case, sympathetic fans in sports. Seattle fans are a good, knowledgeable and loyal bunch, but they’re never really regarded in the same conversations as the other heartbroken fan bases in sports, like those of the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Cleveland Anythings. After losing the Supersonics to Oklahoma City and Super Bowl XL to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the fans of Seattle sports really only have the Mariners to hang their hopes on (with all due respect to Charlie Whitehurst and your 2011 Seahawks).

That’s why this losing streak is just so sad. Sad enough that I thought we could take a look back at the games, with the help of some really sad pooches. Oh, and for full appreciation of a Mariners fan’s sorrow, play this song in another window.

Special Breaking Score Update: There’s been a new dog added to reflect today’s Yankees-Mariners outcome.

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A few words about The Dugout before you read today’s strip.

1. If you like The Dugout, be sure to “like” it on Facebook and follow us there. It’s the second easiest way to know when a Dugout has been posted, with the added bonus of meeting individuals like yourself who enjoy reading baseball players cursing at each other. The easiest way is to load the With Leather main page and repeatedly refresh.

2. I know 60% of my job is to beg for them, but your comments (and shares, and likes, and +1s) are deeply appreciated. Don’t be afraid to drop a comment below, even if it’s just “dugout get” or “base ball gay”. I like to hear from you, and am always open to suggestions, screen names, topics and the like.

3. Do not leave “dugout get” or “base ball gay” comments.

Now, about that stupid thing on Coco Crisp’s neck …

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I spent all morning trying to figure out whether or not I should write about this. We aren’t a Faces of Death website and my job description is basically “take anything that happens and make jokes about it on the Internet”. The only other way to take it is in the “my thoughts and prayers are with his family” direction, but if your thoughts and prayers are really with his family you wouldn’t be writing about it, or posting a video of it, or posting a comment about it after searching for and finding it on YouTube. Or would you? I spent all morning trying to figure this out. I spent my entire life trying to figure out how humanity works, and when I thought I had the answer, people changed the question. Mostly with cell phone cameras.

But anyway,

On Thursday, July 7, 2011 during a game between the Texas Rangers and Oakland A’s, Conor Jackson hit a foul ball which ricocheted off the left field wall. Fans yelled for Josh Hamilton to give them a souvenir ball. Josh threw the baseball up and a fan who has not been named fell over the railing to catch the ball. He tumbled and fell head first.

I go to a lot of baseball games, but I’ve never been that guy who brings his glove and shoves people over to catch a foul ball. At the same time, I can’t tell you with any honesty that when the Fun Bunch comes around with a t-shirt gun I’m not standing on my chair, waving my arms yelling OVER HERE, OVER HERE. It’s unsettling to think how easily this could’ve been me, with “me” as sort of an everyman qualifier meaning “if Josh Hamilton tossed me a ball, I would try to catch it no matter where I was standing”. Most of us would. It’s easy to say we wouldn’t.

And the writing starts to get maudlin.

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At long last, here is your full, high-definition theatrical trailer for Moneyball, the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of the book by Michael M. Lewis (not Billy Beane). You’d think more people would know Michael Lewis wrote the book, considering that his name is in huge red letters and bigger than the title and subtitle. In case you need to be caught up, here’s a succinct-ish synopsis from ComingSoon.net.

Based on a true story, Moneyball is a movie for anybody who has ever dreamed of taking on the system. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s and the guy who assembles the team, who has an epiphany: all of baseball’s conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams with Ivy League grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It’s more than baseball, it’s a revolution – one that challenges old school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he’s tearing out the heart and soul of the game.

The cast of “Major League” accomplished this exact same movie without any math or stats by using self-esteem and a communal hatred of women. You can tell this is Hollywood because then-Network Associates Coliseum is PITCH BLACK. When they show that clip of the outfielders missing a ball, I didn’t think “these guys aren’t good at baseball”, I thought “how is Eric Byrnes supposed to catch a pop fly on the deck of the f**king Starship Enterprise?” All it needed was lens flares. That shadowy Social Network filter is just as bad as the urine glaze they use for horror remakes.

Hopefully I can get my Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big adaptation greenlit (shortened Hollywood title: How Baseball). It’s just two hours and forty minutes of Karl Urban as Jose Canseco contemplating steroids in a hallway closet.

[sauce]