Here is a quick list of excuses to explain where The Dugout has been: our website is producing a code that angers Google and now nobody can look at or operate it properly, we got "busy with life stuff," popular video game or television show is addictive, we had softball practice, we realized baseball was boring and decided to change The Dugout into an endless blog about mixed martial arts, our favorite teams were all eliminated (in my case, "eliminated in April") and therefore we lost interest, our wives had babies, our grandmothers died, our pets reproduced via binary fission, and the most believable one, "we got distracted watching baseball."

Regardless of the excuse you believe, we're back, and tonight we play catchup by over-analyzing everything that has or could happen between now and the end of the season. Who's bullpen will be stronger? Will Guerrero bust out his wonky danger slide again? How many singles will Thome get in the 8th inning? All this and more in our intense playoff blog... thing, after the jump.

The Dugout

	Online Host Welcome to the Major League Baseball on TBS Chatroom!
	ErnieYourKeep: Good evening everyone and welcome to Major League Baseball on TBS.
	ErnieYourKeep: Tonight, the ALCS Game 2 between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels is being broadcast on FOX, so tonight we're in studio to talk about this inconsequential reairing of the 1996 Will Smith Earf-Welcoming film "Independence Day."
	ErnieYourKeep: And who knows, if we have fun, maybe we'll stick around to review the three Seth MacFarlane TV shows airing after the movie, and the two that premiered before it.
	ErnieYourKeep: I'm your host, Joe Buck.
	ErnieYourKeep: wait /squints at teleprompter no, I'm sorry, I'm your host, "the poor man's Joe Buck."
	CalJr2131: That's funny, I thought you were "the rich man's Karl Ravech."
	EckersUponYourHouse: How can you be the poor man's Joe Buck, how poor of a man would you have to be to buy a poorer version of Joe Buck
	EckersUponYourHouse: I always thought of you as the economically sound man's Chip Caray.
	ErnieYourKeep: I'm an announcer of indeterminate monetary value, and with me as always are Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr., and a fat lady who needs a shave
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: heeeeey
	ErnieYourKeep: All right Cal, we're gonna start with you... and Cal, your favorite part of the film is Will Smith comically commenting on his own piss
	CalJr2131: Definitely, and I think it paved the way for OTHER piss commenting that we see in today's younger movies, like Transformers or Transformers 2, where characters piss out of nowhere for big laughs.
	CalJr2131: If you pay close attention, you can see that Captain Hiller's line of "A little shake and they all runnin" is both funny AND informative, and that's the kind of ammunition you need to win an alien war, Ern.
	CalJr2131: A good piss take and the classic "Aw HELL NAW" are enough to really put this film ahead of the rest.
	ErnieYourKeep: Dennis?
	EckersUponYourHouse: pfft, yah, well, pfft I mean it doesn't take any real TALENT to comment on ... on on on your, on your urine, you know
	EckersUponYourHouse: I think RULLY what you want to look at when you look at, when you look at Independence Day is the special effects
	CalJr2131: definitely
	EckersUponYourHouse: You know? When they blow up the White House where the PRESIDENT lives and it explODES, you know, and there is debris flying around and aliens are gunning and... I gotta tell ya, when I saw that in theaters, I about sh** myself.
	EckersUponYourHouse: whoops
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: /sits motionlessly, adds nothing to conversation /sticks sharpie up nose
	ErnieYourKeep: Now, changing the subject for a moment, I just switched over to FOX to check the game, and after grimacing through a commercial for The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 20, found out that the ALCS game is tied 2-2 in the fifth. Any comments?
	CalJr2131: Absolutely Ernie, I think I speak for everyone when I say that current The Simpsons is pretty much the worst thing ever. I mean, how many jokes about Youtube can one group of people make?
	EckersUponYourHouse: when you lose the integrity of your characters, all you're left with is wacky situations and pop culture references
	ErnieYourKeep: David? Any thoughts?
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: i'unno, one time me an kirk gibson had a ranch where we was kings
	CalJr2131: what
	ErnieYourKeep: Anyone want to comment on the baseball game? Replays show that A.J. Burnett just threw the worst pitch in the history of baseball
	ErnieYourKeep: it didn't even make it to the dirt, it bounced in the grass... I'm surprised he made it past the mound with a horsecrap 10 pounder like that
	ErnieYourKeep: Guerrero is probably kicking himself for not swinging at it. No? Anybody? That sh** looked like it was from T-Ball. Really? Nobody?
	EckersUponYourHouse: /shrugs, looks around
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: /burps
	ErnieYourKeep: Cal? Anything?
	CalJr2131: you can't expect us to talk about baseball, Ernie, it's not exciting when it's not on TBS.
	CalJr2131: besides, I know a lot about baseball and make some great points, but out of uniform I'm about as charismatic as Billy with a bat no magic marker
	CalJr2131: my only passion is making sure my head and eyes make me look as much like one of the Children of the Corn as possible
	EckersUponYourHouse: my problem is that I got passion, probably too much passion, so much that if you fart I'm gonna flip out and start cussing you out
	EckersUponYourHouse: but my whole career was built on "going out there and doing it," I don't have any idea what I'm talking about ever
	EckersUponYourHouse: I did so well because the only two guys to hit homeruns between 1980 and 1990 were on my team
	ErnieYourKeep: How about you, David? What's your problem?
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: hey is this dog anybodys, because if it aint i'm gonna eat it
	ErnieYourKeep: What? What dog?
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: this dog back here, it keeps running around
	CalJr2131: I don't see any dogs back here, I don't know what he's talking about
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: the dog that was... aw nevermind, i prolly fever dreamed that
	EckersUponYourHouse: Ernie can we go to commercial, David's pool of sweat is starting to seep into my socks
	CalJr2131: how did you even find a business suit big enough for him?
	EckersUponYourHouse: can we just throw a tarp over him and write "baseball" on it, because that's all he's contributing
	ErnieYourKeep: Like anybody's paying attention to us anyway
	ErnieYourKeep: all right stick with us, folks, we've got a lot more baseball discussion on the way, and at the very least you're rewarded with 55 episodes of House Of Payne
	AllsWellThatEndsWells: /slumps out of chair /becomes entangled in green screen

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