FanHouse Moyerbodygirl

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.

J.C. Romero can't seem to catch a break. He spends a Manny-esque 50 games banned from baseball for violating the substance abuse policy even though he was following the rules, and nobody really knew what was going on, so they just suspended him anyway. Then he gets accused of physically assaulting a man for making disparaging remarks about said suspension after a Phillies/Rays game on Thursday. The fan, "Robert Eaton," claims that he was tossed around after asking Romero to get him some juice. That's always happening to me, too. My Mom is so mean!

Romero never got the man the juice, and now he's probably going to pay for it by getting suspended again. That's called an assumption, folks, we here at The Internet™ are great at those. One thing we're not good at is accurate reporting, so I will stop here and inform you that the transcript from that night's events has been logged and reported here for posterity. Form your own opinions. Personally, I think J.C. Romero should've gotten the Alabama Jam.

Said transcript is after the jump.

In non-injury, non-exploitation, non-sleeping-with-Kate-Hudson related baseball news, the oldest living ballplayer, 103-year old Emilio Navarro, threw out the the ceremonial first pitch before the Oakland Athletics-San Diego Padres game on Saturday night as guest of the Padres for their annual salute to the Negro Leagues. That sounds a lot better than what the Cleveland Indians did last year, when they had "Negro Leagues Poster Night!" and it was like a 9 x 11 printout of a baseball sitting on dirt with the words NEGRO LEAGUES on it.

Oh, and before you say anything, I know Emilio got to go to high school (and was offered a spot playing in college, because he was/is awesome), I just titled tonight's Dugout like I did to continue our exploratory essays on how the easiest way to get into the bigs these days is to be the oldest or the youngest something.

Tonight's Dugout is after the jump.

Great, now we're getting to that point in the offseason where every news update is about how the Yankees are "interested in" the big free agents and how some guy from some network interviewed them and they totally said they'd love to play for the Yankees, and on and on and blah blah blah. We've been doing this comic long enough to know the two great truths about the Yankees, and they are presented to you in chatroom form below.

Have the Yankees considered getting new uniforms? It works for everybody else. Maybe they can get a mascot. Make him a vague, shaggy grey thing named "OPS the Dog!"

Tonight's giant-sized Dugout is after the jump.

It's possible that tonight, for the first time in the history of major American sports, a championship will be won on a day in which a complete game isn't played in its entirety. We'll tune in to the game, knowing that we may very well see only three innings, but feeling as though we're going to see the same nine innings we see every other day. It'll end before we're emotionally ready, and then, no more baseball for months. Only incomplete passes, invisible fouls, and car doors frozen shut. Whee..

What if the Phillies do win? A nightmare scenario is presented in this afternoon's Dugout, after the jump.

The Phillies and the Rays are headed to the World Series. It couldn't be more exciting if it was the Yankees vs. the Red Sox! After boring divisional series and a snorefest of an ALCS, the Rays are brandishing their Rayhawks and cowbells and are ready to ring-loudly and have hair at the visiting Philadelphia fans. What do the Phillies have?

The catchphrase of a lifetime.

So you do not think of me as a full retard, please read this before continuing (if you can make any sense of it, we need to focus our blog around the King's English). Tonight's Dugout, the last pre-Show Dugout of the season, is after the jump.

Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux know each other very well. The Cubs drafted them both in 1984, 31st and 135th respectively. They were rookies together, played together in Chicago, and have been pitching with or against or amongst each other, win or lose, for the last 24 years.

Last night, the Phillies beat the Padres 1-0. Maddux and Moyer were as they'd been in their primes again, shutting down batters one after another, with only Pat Burrell's late game homerun to spoil the fun. It was a lot like the movie "Space Cowboys," where you realize that the best cowboys are the oldest and Greg Maddux ends up sitting mournfully on the moon.

We've been doing The Dugout since the early 80s so we know these men. We know what they can accomplish. We know the fire that burned in their hearts then and still flickers aflame today. We even know how they managed to have AOL Instant Messenger™ in 1986.

Today's Dugout, about the prices we pay in our youth for the cost of tomorrow's twilight, is after the jump.