FanHouse

or, "On the Occasion of Jon Bois' Birthday." Happy birthday, friend, you're still way better at this than me.

Two bits of bad news for Wally Joyner. Firstly, he's been canned as the hitting coach for the San Diego Padres. Secondly, his original Dugout screen name of "WallyJoynerInHolyMatrimony" is slightly too long to be effective, so it's been retired. Thirdly, his good friend DJ A.M. was injured in a plane crash. Here's the footage!

(put YouTube link here)

Tonight's Dugout is for Jon, and features a bunch of things he likes. Try to find them all (Jon doesn't like Castlevania, that one was me)!

Wally Joyner, a member of two Padres teams that reached the playoffs, has stepped down as the club's hitting coach. Joyner gave his resignation letter to General Manager Kevin Towers on Monday.

"It bothers me a lot that I have come to the point where it is clear that I need to move on," Joyner said. "I came to the job hoping to put my experience and ideas to good use in teaching and coaching the Padres' hitters, but it has become obvious to me in the past few months that the organization's approach is different from mine."

To reasonable fans like you or me, rookie hazing is a relatively harmless baseball tradition. It usually happens during one of the last road trips of the season when veteran players force the rookies to dress up in a silly costume they're forced to wear from the ballpark to the airport to the hotel. Take a look at some pictures from year's past -- it's all in good fun, right?

Apparently not. After reading about the Angels continuing the tradition this year, Examiner.com columnist Des Martini has had enough:

Maybe I'm becoming Ned Flanders in my rapidly approaching old age, but this latest ugly baseball hazing makes me ill. What kind of grown men get their kicks by forcing other grown men to stuff their over-sized bodies into tight women's clothing?

If some of the Angels foster homoerotic fantasies, that's their business. And what they do in private is their own business. But for God's sake, please don't make the general public suffer the sight of your fantasies on parade.

I appreciate Martini's feigned outrage, but let's set some things straight. By and large, the "general public" didn't "suffer the sight" of anything -- they read about the amusing story on a beat writer's blog, which is where Martini himself admitted to finding out about it. Have pictures of the Angels' rookies surfaced? If so, I haven't seen them.

You know Batting Stance Guy? Of course you do. He's famous on YouTube for his hysterical (and eerily accurate) impersonations of batting stances of, well, everybody. Most of the time he films in his backyard, but recently he went to a Dodgers/Padres game where he showed off for actual big leaguers -- there he is above doing his best Nomar Garciaparra for Mr. Mia Hamm himself.

For the most part, the players seem to think BSG is hysterical. Wally Joyner had a somewhat muted reaction, but most of the Padres couldn't get enough of him, nor could the Angels at different game last week.

Note to self: Make sure and include the ownership of my future sports team in the future pre-nup for the future Ex-Mrs. Brinson.

Why? Because the future Ex-Mrs. Brinson could be like Becky Moores, that's why. Moores, the wife of San Diego Padres owner John Moores, has let their divorce proceedings get a little bit nasty by making sure her former husband is aware of how much she likes baseball. And attending baseball games.

On July 30, Becky Moores had asked for a court order in which she and John Moores would share the future use of the owner's and commissioner's boxes at Petco Park "until we reach an agreement for the ownership of the team." She proposed either alternating home games, flipping a coin or taking turns bidding on games to attend. Those proposals were rejected then, she said in court documents.

I wholeheartedly "Boooo" Moores' refusal to engage in childish games of chance to determine the fate of his millions of dollars. There are only so many ways to respectably salvage the end of a marriage, and frankly, flipping a coin -- or, preferably, rock-paper-scissors -- seems like a perfect way to decide who gets to own a Major League Baseball team.

Or, in really great news, maybe this will become a huge public spat and Bud Selig will just take the team over in addition to his sleeping commissioner duties.

Trevor Hoffman is the all-time leader in saves, was fortunate enough to pitch in a World Series, and if that's not enough he got to be a member of the inaugural season of the Florida Marlins. So you would think that at age 41, Hoffman would be fairly close to hanging up the spikes, with little more to prove in this game. You would be wrong.

"Well, I think I have more than one [season left]," Hoffman told MLB.com in an exclusive interview while seated in front of his PETCO Park locker several hours before the Padres played the Dodgers on Monday. "My body feels good. My arm feels a heck of a lot better than it has the last few years. The competitive juices are still there. You can't put a number on how long. If I was 30 years old, we wouldn't even be talking about it."

Hoffman should realize that there's every chance that if he pitches multiple seasons, that by the time he retires he will be a shell of his former self, and might not be pitching with the Padres, as a closer, or both. And many would say that's no way to go out. But as long as he accepts that possibility, then the man should play baseball for as long as he wants.

If you're a baseball fan who likes surprises, then the 2008 season has been a special treat. The Rays are the most notable team that has exceeded expectations, but the Twins, White Sox and Marlins are also surprise contenders.

Of course, those pleasant surprises have come at the expense of several clubs expected to be much better this season. Whether because of a big free-agent signing last winter, a deep October run last season or the (hint, hint) crushing burden of a massive payroll, the baseball landscape is littered with flops as August comes to a close.

The following is a countdown of the seven most disappointing teams this season.

7. Padres: Mired in last place in the abysmal NL West, it's easy to forget that this team won 89 games last year and was a (phantom?) Matt Holliday slide away from a playoff spot. Even when they were winning division titles, the Padres operated on a thin margin. Injuries and underperformance are at the root of their struggles.

Adrian Gonzalez, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Brian Giles are the only offensive regulars who have played more than 100 games. Ace Jake Peavy spent a month on the disabled list, while No. 2 starter Chris Young has made only 13 starts. Veteran closer Trevor Hoffman has also been extremely shaky.

There's traditionally always talk from the fans about wanting their teams to lose towards the end of the NFL season once mathematically locked out of the playoffs. We all know why, and it's a good reason. I can't say I was excited that the Bears pulled off two meaningless wins late in the season to cost themselves about five draft spots.

The NBA in recent years has seen massive tanking -- especially in the Greg Oden/Kevin Durant sweepstakes -- to the point that league officials started to voice concern.

You never really hear that talk in baseball because of the dynamics of the sport, the draft, and the farm systems. Usually you draft a guy and it takes him at least two -- and most of the time three -- years before he can help you. Even then you can't really be sure the impact he'll have.

Enter Stephen Strasburg, San Diego State phenom hurler who once punched out 23 Utes. That's right, Utes.

You're hearing the tank-talk now, and this is why:

"Put him behind Jake Peavy and Chris Young in Petco Park, you can come back in a hurry," a National League scout said.

No, no ... this isn't a case of a minor leaguer being traded for maple bats. Nope, the hamburger is question is righty pitcher Mark Hamburger. So yes, Eddie Guardado is worth more than ground beef patties. He's certainly worth more than that to the Twins, who have brought him back for the minor leaguer.

Guardado has had a nice bounce back season for Texas after two injury plagued seasons for the Reds, going 3-3 with a 3.65 ERA, a 1.11 WHIP, 23 holds and four saves. Key is that hitters are batting .220 off of Guardado, while the Twins bullpen is in the lower half of baseball with a .262 BAA. Guardado had recently returned to closing for Texas after the injury to C.J. Wilson, but its obvious that at the age of 37, his value is greater as a set-up guy for a contender than as a closer for a .500 team ... especially at this point, where the only lefty the Twins could bring out of the 'pen these days was Craig Breslow (edit: and Dennys Reyes). So to the Twins, Guardado isn't exactly chopped liver (or chopped steak.)

It appears that the Dodgers are awfully serious about contending for the NL West title this year. They've been locked in a tie with the Diamondbacks for several days now and by all indications, the race is going down to the wire this year. In anticipation of that, the Dodgers have gone out and added their second future Hall-of-Famer in as many weeks by acquiring Greg Maddux from the Padres tonight.

It's the second time the Dodgers have picked up Maddux late in the season in three years. For all intents and purposes, the Mad Dog is just an average pitcher here in the twilight of his career. Most of his stats look decent this year (3.99 ERA, 1.22 WHIP), but he's pitching in the best pitcher's park in either league in Petco. Still, league average isn't bad and Maddux is still durable, which makes about as good of a replacement as they'll find on the market for Brad Penny, who the Dodgers put on the DL this week.

There's no word who the Dodgers are giving up for Maddux, but it's probably going to be some kind of fringe prospect. Still, Ned Colletti's burning through his reserve of minor league talent pretty quickly this summer in the interest of getting a mediorce team into the playoffs in a year when the National League is pretty top heavy. Given the price the Dodgers have already paid in minor league talent, is a division title and a loss to the Cubs in the NLDS even a success at this point?