Bud Selig has tried really hard in the past few weeks to prove to people that he had no ulterior motive in making the Astros play two home games against the Cubs in Milwaukee while they were in the heat of the wild-card race. I actually believe him, but in all fairness, it doesn't do his case much good when word leaks out that he was crying tears of joy after the Brewers clinched a playoff bid yesterday. From the Brewers' blog:

As the Brewers and their fans celebrated their first playoff berth in 26 years Sunday afternoon at raucous Miller Park, Bud Selig sat in front of his television set at his home in Bayside, totally transfixed.

Before he knew it, the commissioner of baseball had tears in his eyes.

"It was an emotional day for me, I don't mind telling you that."

Can we cut Selig some slack because he owned the Brewers for 22 years before becoming acting commish, then they stayed in his family for 12 years after that? I'm gonna go with no. I mean, sure, he's allowed to have a favorite team. But when you're a commissioner that's constantly accused to selling out, can't you just pretend that your neutral? I mean, go ahead and cry when the Brewers make the playoffs, but why does the Journal-Sentinel need to find out about it?

Now that baseball season is almost over, it's time to completely forget about baseball and focus on awards season! My original idea for tonight's Dugout was the AL Cy Young Award 2008 Chatroom, but that ended up being Cliff Lee bouncing a rubber ball against a wall for 35 panels, so here is that Dugout's hotly-contested National League equivalent. On second thought, they should just give that to Cliff Lee too.

Tonight's Dugout, with all the speculation and obsessive statistical analysis you come to the Internet for, is after the jump.

Hank Steinbrenner is jumping bad. As Fornelli reported earlier, the Yankees' co-owner is upset about a number of things. In a magnificent transcendence of introspection, clarity, and common sense, Steinbrenner terms the AL East as unfair, laments the socialist nature of revenue sharing, and shrieks foul of the NL West and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals.

I love obtuse, obscenely rich folks as much as the next guy, but they sure don't make it easy!

Today's Dugout is after the jump.

Since the Astros road trip to play Milwaukee in the wake of Hurricane Ike, they're 0-5. That puts them five games out of the wild card, which might as well be 100 games out at this late point in the season. They're upset with Bud Selig, but until now they've done a good job keeping mostly silent. Now, though, the Houston Chronicle has spotted players wearing protest t-shirts.

"We survived Ike," the back of the shirt read in red lettering atop a drawing of the radar impression of the eye of the storm.

On the front, it read: "Bud killed us," over a red drawing of the commissioner's bust.

It's impossible to know what would've happened if the Cubs/Astros series had been moved somewhere closer to Houston or postponed until later in the year, but it's certainly understandable for the 'Stros' players to be upset. The storm was vicious, there are stil stories like this one coming out of the Houston area, and the league did very little to accomodate the Astros. I realize that there's not much the league can do, but it seems like they didn't even do that.

The Astros, on the other hand, are doing their best to help out even in the face of the collapse of their playoff hopes. FanHouser and Houstonian Stephanie Stradley just e-mailed me today to tell me that the Astros have donated $1 miillion to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund (a cause that could certainly use as much help as possible ... just sayin'). Because really, missing the playoffs isn't the end of the world and if anyone knows it, it's the Astros.

It goes without saying that the tired Astros, who managed one hit in two home games that happened to be played in Milwaukee after Hurricane Ike are probably a little frustrated with the world right now. That tends to happen when you have to leave your family to clean up in the wake of a hurricane while you're forced to play home games in front of screaming Cubs' fans. Cecil Cooper took those complaints to Bud Selig:

"He and I are good friends," Cooper said. "We talked about it. He vented. I vented. We're done with it. He did what he thought was the best thing to do. I disagreed. That's where it lies."

Say that he "vented" is probably putting things nicely. With a 2 1/2 game wild-card deficit and only 13 games left, the players are probably doing more than "venting" at the moment, as every advantage is huge.

For his part, Bud Selig seems to believe he made the best possible decision here. I assume that a lot of people differ on that opinion and watching the listless Astros play the last two days, it's hard to disagree with them. Still, there's not much else the Astros can do at this point. The games are in the books, they lost, but they're still in the playoff race. Dwelling on things won't get you anywhere. Ask Ned Yost how dwelling on CC Sabathia's one-hitter worked out for him.

International Pastime looks at baseball's influence outside the U.S.

For years major league teams have honored a handshake agreement with Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) not to sign Japanese amateur prospects. Once a player signs in Japan, he's not eligible to test free agency for nine years, meaning any player who hopes to jump across the Pacific to play in the majors before then must go through an expensive posting process which compensates his Japanese team.

It's a system that has allowed Japanese baseball to flourish, but from a player's perspective, it's obviously quite limiting. As Peter Abraham of the Journal News describes, Junichi Tazawa, a 22-year-old right-handed pitcher, hopes to buck the system by skipping the NPB and signing with a U.S. team.

Tazawa has been heavily scouted by several MLB teams (Abraham mentions the Red Sox, Braves, Mets and Dodgers, and another report puts the Tigers in the mix, as well) and last week asked the 12 teams in the NPB not to draft him so that he'd be free to sign a major league contract. Not surprisingly, NPB quickly went into freak-out mode, issuing the following press release last week:

"The initial rules for amateur player acquisition was created back in 1962 by the Commissioners from the Majors and the NPB," the release said. "Since then, no amateur players have signed with MLB teams and it is this fact that indicates that this was more than just a gentleman's agreement, but rather an implicit understanding that the Majors would do no such thing," it said. "That a handful of clubs from the Majors is trying to break this gentlemen's agreement is truly regrettable."

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Chicago Cubs (88-58) "at" Houston Astros (80-67) - 8:05 PM ET

When is a home game not a home game? Well, when Hurricane Ike (and Bud Selig) force you to go to a domed stadium located conveniently in Milwaukee for a Houston Astros home game against the Chicago Cubs, who reside about 90 minutes away from Miller Park and will no doubt be represented well in the crowd for games there tonight and tomorrow afternoon. And it's not like Brewers fans are going to show up in droves to support the Astros, who are 2.5 games behind them in the wild card. If anything, Brewers fans will show up and they'll root for the Cubs too. Too bad the Packers aren't playing the Sunday night game ... then maybe Brewers fans would all have their portable TV's handy to watch the Pack and cheer at completely random times during the baseball game and confuse everyone involved.

The NFL made a quick and decisive decision that because of Hurricane Ike no football was getting played in Houston this weekend, canceling the Texans - Ravens game and shifting around bye weeks so we would never actually know the difference. This makes a ton of sense -- after all, no one needs a bye week more right now than the city of Houston and its football team.

However, because it's already mid-September and there's a playoff race going on, baseball probably didn't feel comfortable trying to find a later slot for the Cubs - Astros series that was scheduled in Houston this weekend. So they're gonna play in Milwaukee instead.

The Astros and Cubs will play a 7:05 p.m. CT game Sunday at Miller Park, a 1:05 p.m CT game on Monday and a third game on the 29th, if necessary. The Astros will be the home team.

The decision arrived less than 24 hours after Hurricane Ike, labeled as a Category 2 but only one mph short of qualifying for a Category 3, slammed into Galveston and made its way up to Houston, home to nearly four million residents.

Kudos to MLB for getting these games moved out of harm's way and letting baseball take place -- natural disasters will not short change Bud Selig! Tie All Star Games? Maybe. But natural disasters? No sir!

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.