FanHouse Doctorproctor

Last year I attended the infamous "Wrestle FanFest" in San Francisco and somehow found a way to enjoy a warehouse full of crippled old men (and Nick Bockwinkel) peddling poorly stitched Mexican wrestling masks and printed out 8 x 10s of their glory days for ten dollars a pop. Even having done that, I could not stomach something called the "Marlins FanFest," even if I got to meet the players. If I wanted to hang out with a bunch of dirt poor 19 year-olds I'd go to community college.

But, well, Alex Rodriguez can't do steroids EVERY day, so here is a Dugout about the Marlins FanFest.

It's been a roller coaster ride this season for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and their real-life equivalents in the Dugout Chatroom have felt it. They were accused of being yokels from the past, they acquired and perverted one of the most popular players in the game, and they discussed at length Andre Ethier's "tINCFoUTaCU".

Tonight is the last Dugout of the Dodgers' 2008 campaign. It's like those episodes of Buffy that didn't really involve a monster and were just there to move along the season-long arc. Not dorky enough for you? It's like the Cowboy Bebop episodes without Vicious.

I guess it was dorky enough before. Tonight's Dugout is after the jump.

Only a day after the pivotal Dugout of the season, the passage of time and the inevitability of happenstance thrusts the trade of Manny Ramirez on us. And not just a trade: a trade full of organization-bashing and apathy after a season devoted to disproving the character we'd developed. Our Manny has always been a bit slow, but he's also always been the kind of guy who means well and tries hard, even when he's goofing around. He's misunderstood. He's just "being Manny."

Well, "being Manny" has a different definition now.

As the Farnsworth story comes full circle, the MannyTheTorpedoes story comes to an end. Next week: Dontrelle Willis wins the Pulitzer Prize and Bill Pecota reveals that he prefers football. Tonight's Dugout, the end of an era, is after the jump.

Earlier this week, New York Yankees senior VP Hank "George" Steinbrenner came down like a decrepit stadium on the role of pitchers in interleague play, saying that it was an antiquated rule that caused one of his best pitchers to miss time with the team. The "blogging-o-sphere" immediately got their panties in a bunch over the comments, but you know what? Hank Steinbrenner is exactly right. Are we supposed to let tradition halt evolution? Should we still be playing games in the dark? Should we just play old tapes of Red Barber over new games and hope the play-by-play matches up?

Of course we shouldn't. Hank, the boys at The Dugout are here for you. Today's Dugout (which can be read by clicking the "read the dugout" thing that follows this paragraph) blows the roof off of the hypocritical, so-called web-logging-o-sphere. Grow up, National League. You baby.