FanHouse Acliffleetiltingplanet

The playoffs are almost over and the stage is set for the defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies to face the dreadnought New York Yankees ... or the Los Angeles Angels Angels, pending a dead Christopher Lloyd-style miracle.

The bottom line is this: the World Series is like one block to our left, and we're going to have to start buckling down and making some declarative statements. Before we do that, though, today's Dugout features some pre-ALCS decision arguing and some sad realities.

This is all we know for sure: Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Brett Myers is having difficulty returning from hip surgery because of a swollen eyeball. Nobody knows WHY his eyeball is swollen, it just is. His story keeps changing, reports come in and get rearranged, and all we're left with is an incomplete pitching staff and a pretty funny image in my mind of Brett Myers looking like Sloth from The Goonies.

Tonight's Dugout hopes to find the answer, after the jump.

The image to the right is of White Sox slugger Carlos Quentin's leg breaking off at the foot and spraying the clubhouse with his highly-pressurized, inner goos.

The word around orthopedic circles is that Quentin may need to wear special, theraputic shoes to correct leg-to-footal inaccuracies and keep him off the disabled list. You can't hear "guy needs to wear special shoes" and go to any other joke, so do not expect me to make that here. Instead, what follows is an empassioned discussion about gel inserts, and how they make the bottom of your feet feel great but squish the top of your foot into the top of your shoe.

This morning's Dugout is after the jump.

Here is everything you need to know about Minnesota: they have the biggest mall on Earth, it is negative thirty-eight degrees in the middle of July, nobody would ever want to go there, and their baseball team is next up for the AL Central leg of our The Dugout Spring Training Event.

We started it off yesterday with the Detroit Tigers, so give that a read if you haven't yet. And check back tomorrow when we cover the Royals and the White Sox, and it's all really biased because I am an Indians fan, and the closest I will come to "winning" is insulting people anonymously on the Internet.

Today's Dugout is after the jump.

In a shocking turn of events, it was announced on Thursday that Cleveland Indians pitcher Clifton "Cliff" Lee had been voted the AL Cy Young Award winner for 2008. His 22-3 record and 2.54 ERA were good enough to top Roy Halladay, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Francisco Rodriguez, and even fireballer Kyle Farnsworth. It certainly did not hurt that Lee won 22 games for an Indians team that only won 26 all season.

As an Indians fan and a resident of Cleveland (well, Bedford), two things have gotten me excited about this: One, that another Indians pitcher gets honored by the league, and two, that next year I will undoubtedly get a Cliff Lee Cy Young bobblehead to go on my shelf next to Cy Cy Sabathia.

Tonight's Dugout Wahoo Messenger is after the jump. And yes, the story about the little girl in Heritage Park is 100% true.

So the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Yankees are in the news today. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?

Wait a minute. This is an ANGELS Dugout? The hell is an Angels Dugout?

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California By Way of the Western Coast of the United States of America a Country Via Great Britain of Europe are on top of the world, but in the world of sports you've got to have something other than your ridiculously long name to complain about, so here it is: Francisco Rodriguez should probably not be pitching as much as he is. But it's Mike Scioscia's job to coach the team, and coach he must. If there's a late inning save situation, who ELSE do you want in there to pitch? Ah, there's the rub.

Tonight's Dugout is after the jump. And after every other jump this week (just in case).