The Dugout: It Came To Me In A Dream

One of The Dugout’s favorite recurring characters over the last seven years (holy crap) has been art dealer and owner of the Florida Miami Marlins Jeffrey Loria. He’s created championship teams on minimum wage, he looks like the lovechild of John Lithgow and The Great Pumpkin and he wears sunglasses with colored lenses because that’s the kind of thing cool millionaires do. He’s also sort of a son of a bitch, and the kind of guy who can be completely racist without ever really being racist at all.

Anyway, at some point between then and now, the Miami Marlins turned into a financial contender. They’ve got new uniforms, a new stadium, a new name … they’ve signed big name free agents and positioned themselves as a legitimate, unsurprising contender in the National League. Previous rationalization led me to just assume Loria had gotten a concussion and his friends were too afraid to bring it up, but it turns out I’ve got a better explanation.

Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

The Dugout

 

** Online Host **
Welcome to the "Wandering Through The Desert" Dream Sequence Chatroom!

 
WeirdNakedIndian: /trudges forth  
fLORIdA: for the last time, tell shapiro that he can have brad hand and we’ll pay $413,986 of his contract for 2012 just to not be the team in the majors trying to convince people brad f**king hand is worth a shit  
fLORIdA: if 14 dollars is still too expensive, tell him i’ll swing by the dump next week and bring him some lunch  

WeirdNakedIndian: /stops as they approach a lone figure standing in the desert

 
fLORIdA: who are you  
TheLizardOfId: I’m Jim Morrison.  
fLORIdA: cool. who’s he /points to spirit guide  
TheLizardOfId: Chris Antonetti, Cleveland’s general manager.  

fLORIdA: see i f**king new it

no wonder you haven’t said a word to me this entire offseason

 
fLORIdA: why have you brought me here, is this the part where i stick meg ryan and have an emotional hippie freakout  
TheLizardOfId: to help you find some answers, Jeff.  
fLORIdA: answers to what  
TheLizardOfId: Ask me a question.  

fLORIdA: is it a great idea to give prince fielder a 9-year contract, because yeah he’s a 27-year old vegetarian or whatever but he literally weighs 600 pounds, has the korean symbol for his own first name on his neck and named one of his kids "haven"

so neither his legs nor his brain are gonna make it through year 3 of that shit an i’ll have to drag jeff conine’s decrepit asshole out of retirement to play first

 
TheLizardOfId: no, ask me a question about your life.  
fLORIdA: … what am I supposed to do with my baseball team.  
TheLizardOfId: You should spend money on them, build them a beautiful new stadium with a retractable roof, change their name and make them wear clothes that look like something I might’ve worn when I was screaming about f**king my mother.  

fLORIdA: ennnhhh i dunno, that sounds like work and effort

how am i supposed to fill a new stadium, our annual attendance is four buckets of orange paint

 
TheLizardOfId: …If you pander to the Latin community, they will come…  
TheLizardOfId: any more questions?  
fLORIdA: will logan morrison ever get his sports illustrated football phone  
TheLizardOfId: tell him to stop being ironic, he’s a f**king thousandaire grown-up  

fLORIdA: got it

how do i get back to the bottom of the division?

 
TheLizardOfId: follow the Indian  
  **Online Host**
Three months later…
 
TheLizardOfId: so you’re saying you guys took Nigel Wilson as your first pick in the expansion draft?  
GoodBarger: lol yep he went 0-16, vanished from baseball and didn’t get a hit until four years later  
TheLizardOfId: jesus, how is he not dead yet  
  **Online Host**
fLORIdA and WeirdNakedIndian have entered the chatroom.
 

TheLizardOfId: excuse me

Jeff, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Carl Barger.

 
fLORIdA: who gives a sh*t  

fLORIdA: so anyway i forgot most of what you said before but i am now Kingshit of the latino community’s F**k Mountain, Ozzie Guillen is our manager now and he’s already gotten his retard kid to post upwards of 700 bitchy gay slurs about the reds or whoever on the Internet

it’s great, other races are WEIRD on the internet

 
TheLizardOfId: that wasn’t really what I was trying to say, what I meant was-  
fLORIdA: and then we brought in carlos zambrano, because how funny is it gonna be when he starts flipping out and his heart explodes and we have to go to a quinceaƱera  
fLORIdA: that’s a mexican funeral, right  
TheLizardOfId: hold on there’s a lot wrong with what you just said, let me-  
fLORIdA: we made an offer to pujols, but he wanted to play a year more than we were comfortable with so we took out our dicks, showed them to him, and gave jose reyes like 22 million dollars  
fLORIdA: it’s gonna be great, we’re gonna be so expensive and pissed off all the time  
TheLizardOfId: you’re freaking me out, man, let me drink this entire bottle of … wait what is this, sand  
TheLizardOfId: am i dead  
fLORIdA: we’re making each miami-area taxpayer pay 2 billion each to build a big f**k-off clambake spaceship with barn doors on the roof  
fLORIdA: we’re gonna call it "marlins park" and pretend like the price has gotten too high for bidders, then never change it because nobody offered and we’re getting enough money from local single moms and shit  
fLORIdA: also, because we’re out of our goddamn minds we’re building this colossal moving piƱata thing in center so the crowd’s stupider children and the homeless people we let in as seat-fillers can go into epileptic shock the five times a year Emilio Bonifacio hits a home run  

fLORIdA: seriously look at this thing, it’s like somebody airbrushed my cock into centerfield /

 
TheLizardOfId: oohhhhh goddddd  
WeirdNakedIndian: /cries single tear  
fLORIdA: hey, don’t cry! it’s almost baseball season  
fLORIdA: this whole thing is gonna be awesome, especially if it turns out this bad  
WeirdNakedIndian: /manages a smile  
fLORIdA: see?  
fLORIdA: oh btw you have brown skin, follow me back into waking reality and clean up some garbage for me  
  **Online Host**
Meanwhile, back in the Florida Marlins Waking Reality Chatroom…
 
NoLomo: @persononphone loooool yes im callin you from a football  
NoLomo: @persononphone lol yes it’s funny, lol  
NoLomo: @persononphone meh no, if you don’t know why it’s funny im not gonna explain it to you #ordinaryf**kinpeople  
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