As a blogger with no real job, I spend most of my day loading and refreshing FanHouse, looking for something to write about. Imagine my shock and dismay yesterday upon seeing Tom Fornelli's report that Jane Austen invented the game of baseball.

Frankly, this changes everything. From now on I'm going to start writing Dugouts in the spirit of which the game itself was created. I'm going to wear a hat in the style of Abraham Lincoln to my next pick-up game, and I'm going to film at least six new innings for Ken Burns' Baseball to be played before the program that feature men and women about to play baseball, but handicapped by their inability to tell the opposing side whether their runner was safe or out.

Today's Dugout is after the jump.