FanHouse BobbyCox

Bobby Cox has managed the Atlanta Braves for 24 years, including the past 19. His contract was previously up at the end of the season, but, Wednesday afternoon, the Braves announced that Cox will return for a 20th consecutive season as their skipper.

This bit of good news didn't come without a black cloud, though, as Cox also announced the 2010 season will be his last in the dugout. Following the season, he will retire from managing. As part of the contract extension, Cox will stay with the Braves as an advisor and consultant in all areas of baseball operations from 2011-2015.

July was some kind of month. We saw, among other things, a perfect game, an All-Star Game, an exodus of players to competitive teams, our monthly ration of steroid drama, and a baseball executive who was fired for throwing down his shirt as though it were a gauntlet and challenging his players to a fight.

So once again, The Dugout calls upon the insights of Bobby Cox and Charlie Manuel to puree the month of July into a series of easily-digestible puns. Read it after the jump.

June was quite a month. On the field, Randy Johnson earned his 300th win, and the Rockies caught fire after promoting Jim Tracy to manager. Off the field, Donald Fehr stepped down as executive director of the Player's Association, the Nationals drafted super-prospect Stephen Strasburg, and it was learned that everyone in the entire universe has been using steroids.

The Dugout personas of Charlie Manuel and Bobby Cox break it all down in this evening's Dugout, after the jump.

ATLANTA -- This isn't quite baseball's Hula Hoop, but it is close. In other words, the suddenly loud and colorful explosion throughout the universe for anything involving the Boston Red Sox is a fad.

It's just lasting longer than usual. So Red Sox fans should enjoy all of this before it is going, going, almost gone, because it is fleeting.

Here's the latest: The dominant color of the Atlanta Braves is blue, so you would expect their fans to dress accordingly. That said, when you studied the packed stands during each of the Braves' past three games inside of what had been a fairly barren Turner Field this season, there was nothing but red.

Red Sox red.

Jeff Bennett is notable for two reasons. First off, he's the unfortunate subject of the most unflattering photograph ever taken (see image right). Second, on Wednesday, he sucker-punched a dugout wall, broke his left fifth metacarpal, and returned to the mound to pitch another full inning.

The fracture didn't seem to adversely affect Bennett's performance. Which begs the question: how many times have you thought, "wow, I sure am glad I have a fifth metacarpal behind the pinky finger of my non-dominant hand! What a wonderful skeletal feature!" I never have. What a worthless bone.

Friday's Dugout is after the jump.

MLB Power Rankings: Where MLB FanHouse's editors, writers and bloggers team up to break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world.

While it's entirely possible the Blue Jays do hit a snag, isn't it about time columnists across the internet stopped doing Can the Blue Jays Really Keep This Up? pieces by now? I've seen at least 10 in the past three weeks. There are almost as many The Rangers Are For Real posts. The discrepancy in the media's faith in those two is likely due to the divisions in which the teams reside, but seven weeks isn't a small sample. At some point, you have to start giving credit where it's due.

To recap: when The Dugout set forth to preview every team in baseball, we skipped over the Phillies and Braves. Some of you were disappointed, and I attempted to get cute by previewing the Montreal Expos in response. That's when one of our esteemed commenters got mad [sic]:

you do a dougout on the damn Expos? Where is the Braves 2009 preview? How about the damn world champion Phillies?

you suck

I would like to profusely apologize, and I hope to make it up to you by presenting a sober, informed look at both the Phillies and Braves. You can read it after the jump.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That Braves manager Bobby Cox did not get ejected at any point during the seventh-inning fiasco his pitchers created on Wednesday. If ever there were a time that the all-time leader in early managerial exits would want to get the boot, this was it. The Braves blew a 10-3 lead to the Phillies in the seventh inning, on the way to a 12-11 loss. Worse, three of the eight runs the Phillies scored came on consecutive bases-loaded walks. Blaine Boyer was responsible for two of them.

"It's the worst inning I've seen," said Boyer. "Talk about your ultimate. I mean, we were [rolling] there for a while, 10-3, and it just blows up like that. I take the brunt of the blame for that one."

With the major league season kicking off in roughly a month, it's not very promising to see one of your team's star players fall injured. So when news broke that Chipper Jones left the United States' World Baseball Classic team due to an oblique injury, Braves fans were likely a bit worried.

According to several parties close to the situation, though, worry not.

This is interesting (and completely random), but Hank Aaron is upset that Bobby Cox likes to take all the credit for drafting Chipper Jones with the first overall pick in 1990. How upset? So much so that he apparently called Terence Moore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution out the blue to set the record straight:

"I was listening to something [last week] on television where Bobby was talking about how, when Chipper came to the team, he took him aside to tell him what we did to get him here, and I was stunned, really," said Aaron, before recalling a conversation he had with Braves officials in 1990 when they owned the No. 1 pick before that June draft. By the time of the draft, Aaron had been promoted to senior vice president.

Said Aaron, with a sigh, "I told Bobby. I told them all, and I told them, 'Y'all better go and get Chipper Jones.' "

At the time, Cox served as GM in addition to manager, and Aaron served as farm director before being promoted to senior vice president. As Aaron tells it, Cox was dead set on taking Todd Van Poppel until Aaron spoke with Van Poppel's father and discovered he'd be difficult to sign.