FanHouse Dugout_florida

I agree with Hanley Ramirez: I hate haircuts. They never turn out looking like I want them to. I tell the barber that I want to look like Mark Paul Gosselaar circa the fifth season of Saved by the Bell (the one with Tori, where it looked like he had yellow toothpaste on his head) and I end up looking like Captain Kangaroo. Haircuts are bogus, and I should be able to wear my hair however I like. Why won't Major League Baseball leave me alone?

That's all I wanted to say. There isn't even a Dugout, I just wanted to say something about haircuts. Tonight's Dugout is after the jump.

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.

The consensus opinion of Gary Carter's recently highlighted failure to obtain a major-league managerial job is that he's advertised himself too enthusiastically.

But Gary smells a rat, and I'm with him on this. Baseball has clearly colluded to blackball Gary Carter. Yes, that's right. General managers and owners sit in a smoke-filled room as we speak, unscrupulously grasping at schemes to protect their sport from a really good catcher from the 1980s.

Today's Dugout is after the jump.

Your official The Dugout Guide to This Year in the National League East:

• The Mets will win a lot of games.
• The Phillies will win a lot of games.
• The friggin Florida Marlins will win the division with nothing but Luis Gonzalez and a big snapping trading card binder with pictures of actual professional baseball players in it.

Yesterday's Spring Dugz (sprung dugz) dealt with character growth and the development of personality that comes with time. Today's Spring Dugz (springing dugz) is the exact opposite of that, because until Jeffrey Loria turns into a winged monster and breaks the bonds of his life the Marlins are pretty much boned. But boned in a good way, where they win World Series championships.

After the jump, the long road out of Eden.

Luis Gonzalez is forty years old and will spend his 2008 season with the Florida Marlins, a team whose combined age does not equal forty. I think the oldest player on that team is Billy Marlin, and I think he was supposed to be "born" when he debuted.

There isn't much to say that hasn't already been said on Fanhouse, but I'd like to add "Jeffrey Loria is running his team like a SimCity game he's tired of, so now he's just going to put in a bunch of combustible elements and watch with mild glee as Bowser tramples Florida."

I think he just wanted a guy who'd been a corn maze. You trade the Gonzo, you trade ya bongos, after the jump.

Yep.

I think we've all known for a couple of years that the Marlins were going to get rid of Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, but I wouldn't have guessed that they'd both leave in the same trade. Granted, the D-Train has not looked as sharp over the last couple of years, but he's stayed healthy and he still shows flashes of his earlier brilliance, which suggests to me that he could be built back up to "ace" status with proper coaching. And as Mr. Lackey pointed out, Cabrera fits into the statistical mold of some of the all-time greats. If I were the Marlins' GM, I'd only part with these two for rookies and minor leaguers if one of them were named Babe "Roy Hobbs" Aaron, Esq.

Anyway, today a long-running Dugout gag was realized. That doesn't happen very often. Today's installment is after the jump.