One of The Dugout’s favorite recurring characters over the last seven years (holy crap) has been art dealer and owner of the Florida Miami Marlins Jeffrey Loria. He’s created championship teams on minimum wage, he looks like the lovechild of John Lithgow and The Great Pumpkin and he wears sunglasses with colored lenses because that’s the kind of thing cool millionaires do. He’s also sort of a son of a bitch, and the kind of guy who can be completely racist without ever really being racist at all.

Anyway, at some point between then and now, the Miami Marlins turned into a financial contender. They’ve got new uniforms, a new stadium, a new name … they’ve signed big name free agents and positioned themselves as a legitimate, unsurprising contender in the National League. Previous rationalization led me to just assume Loria had gotten a concussion and his friends were too afraid to bring it up, but it turns out I’ve got a better explanation.

Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

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After a brief hiatus caused by me doing this goddamn comic strip seven years in a row without stopping and needing a break inactivity in the world of baseball, The Dugout is back and ready to tackle the tough issues, such as Manny Ramirez going swimming with a bunch of old people in a T.O.-esque attempt to show he’s still athletic and able to play professional sports.

As we build to the greatest day of the year (pitchers and catchers report~), we’ll go back and touch on some of the stories we may’ve missed, like Jim Thome getting traded to Philadelphia, Kyle Farnsworth miraculously not being traded anywhere and Brian Wilson putting on spandex that looks like a tuxedo so people will write about him when he does his dishes. We’ll also become increasingly obsessed with Albert Pujols, despite his entire story being “I’m great at baseball so whatever, I’ll go play it for a billion dollars somewhere”. We may also write about Dan Quisenberry, even if you don’t give a righteous f**k who that is.

Anyway, welcome back to the weirdest, most well-established, most sorta-racist fictional world in pro sports reporting. Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

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The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. More importantly, I found out that Jim Thome autographs the Halloween candy he hands out.

That’s a Jim Thome signed Kit Kat, shared with Dugout co-founder Jon Bois by @bretwallin, and it’s right behind “that time he dressed as Paul Bunyan” on the list of things Jim Thome has done in real life to pull him closest to our fictional depiction of him here. The only way it could get better is if he accidentally kills something by petting it too hard.

Halloween was two days ago, sure, but this is the reason it should happen every day. Today’s Dugout follows.

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The hilarious pull-quote featured to the right is from an ESPN article detailing Jim Thome’s address to the City Club of Cleveland, wherein he announces that despite the market not being flush for 41-year old designated hitters he’d still like to play in 2012. “In a year or two, this team can do some very special things,” Thome said. “They have put the groundwork in, done things the right way.”

He continued to praise the team, the city and the organization, but really the most important thing he said was about playing by himself in the backyard. In the spirit of sharing only the important things a man says, today’s Dugout presupposes — What if that actually happened?

Today’s Dugout is after the jump. Cleveland, if you’re reading this … keep this guy around for a while, would you?

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The Texas Rangers lost last night’s Game 1 of the 2011 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2. It was another in a well-played string of games from Tony La Russa, who got an enormous faux-hawk and decided he’d rather not ever lose at baseball again. Game 2 goes down tonight, and then we head to Arlington for Dirk Nowitzki, Zooey Deschanel and everything else you think of when you hear “Texas”.

The real story of the game, at least in my household, was how long I could listen to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver speak before saying f**k it to baseball entirely and playing Arkham City. About three innings. The following Dugout is a verbatim recreation of those three innings.

Enjoy, if that’s possible.

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Taco Bell has decided to follow up last year’s 2010 MLB postseason Mariano Rivera “closer” spots with San Francisco Giants reliever and self-proclaimed funniest man to ever live Brian Wilson. The results are about what you’d expect. Personal opinion of Wilson’s humor aside, you’d think they’d want someone who was actually in the playoffs for these commercials, wouldn’t you? How awesome would it be for a guy to be all “whew, can’t finish this XXL Chalupa” and Kyle Farnsworth comes running it, knocks it out of his hands and beats the sh*t out of him?

Today’s Dugout features the extended version of the commercial unsuitable for television broadcast because it contains harsh language, incorrect references to classic literature and an ingredient list for what’s actually in an XXL Chalupa. Reader discretion is advised.

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