(AP)

The Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks just split a two-game set, which means the boys in blue still hold a big 8 1/2-game lead over the defending NL West champions. Considering that margin, D-backs manager Kirk Gibson probably didn't have much in the way of the comeback department in his conversation with Orel Hershiser and Tommy Lasorda on Tuesday night.

As an aside, seeing this picture just reminded me that next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the Dodgers' title team. Time really isn't messing around any more, is it?

So have at it, amateur Internet copy editors of the world. How should this caption read?

Follow the jump for winners from the last C-a-C featuring Elvis Andrus and a suspicious sneaker:

I'm not saying that this Ron Washington puppet is inherently evil (though if it has a voice that sounds like the ghost of Nipsey Russell I probably have no other choice).

What I am saying is that the Texas Rangers are 0-2 since this fan turned the stands of Rangers Ballpark into an episode of the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

_

By the way, this isn't the first time that Ron Washington has been portrayed in puppet form. During the last World Series, a woman showed up with dueling Wash and Tony La Russa puppets.

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Say what you will about the new caps of the Miami Marlins, but one actually ended up a hero during Tuesday night's game against the Astros. Well, maybe the guy who used the cap to stop a foul ball from hitting a small baby was the actual hero, but I wouldn't miss this opportunity if I were in the team's merchandising department. ("Baby-saving caps for sale!")

Here's the video of the catch. It's a little hard to see, but you can hear Marlins team president David Samson doing a little play-by-play as it unfolds. And there's no way he'd ever intentionally deceive us.

Right?

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David Wright was more than willing to take the chance of becoming a fat target at the plate in the seventh inning of Tuesday night's 8-0 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

Terry Collins, however, was not willing to put his best player in that position. With the possibility of retaliation hanging in the air after Ryan Braun was hit by a D.J. Carrasco pitch in the top half of the inning — a plunking that came directly after a Rickie Weeks homer and resulted in Carrasco's ejection — Collins made the decision to lift Wright from the game.

"(Wright) said, 'If somebody should be hit, I want it to be me,''' Collins told reporters after the game. ''I said it's not going to be you.''

As you can see in this video, Collins and Wright had a pretty good go at it when their two viewpoints were revealed:

But things soon settled down in the Mets universe with Collins apparently getting his point across and Wright telling the media that he's "loved playing for [Collins], the short amount of time we've had together."  So all's well that ends well?

Not quite.

The Juice is back for its fifth season of fun! Stop by each weekday for an ample serving of news from the action, plus great photos, stats and video highlights.

Hit the bricks: The Los Angeles Angels made batting coach Mickey Hatcher the scapegoat for one of the worst offenses in the major leagues by firing him Tuesday night. The team announced the switch to minor-league coach Jim Eppard about 90 minutes after a 4-0 victory against the Athletics. In a near-irony, Los Angeles produced 12 hits, including three from Albert Pujols for the first time in a month, in Hatcher's final game as coach after 12-plus seasons. Though comments about Pujols being behind the change might sound funny and even plausible given the disagreement he had with Hatcher earlier in the season, the change comes from owner Arte Moreno and GM Jerry Dipoto. Sometimes, the boss said, change is necessary when a team is next-to-last in runs scored in the AL:

"Sometimes in the sports world a point is reached where perhaps a new voice is needed in order to attain the desired goals and objectives," Dipoto said in a statement. "Unfortunately we feel this is one of those times. Offensively we have underachieved and everyone shares in the responsibility of what has transpired thus far."

Hatcher just gets a bigger share than everyone else.

Upstream: Rookie outfielder Mike Trout hit his third homer (see above video) and had his sixth multi-hit game of the season. So he obviously wasn't tainted by Hatcher's influence. Neither was slugger Mark Trumbo, who spoke respectfully of his former instructor on Twitter. In the pitching universe, the Angels got nine strikeouts from Ervin Santana, who must have keeled over at all of that run support.

It was the Mariners, but...: Josh Beckett says "Take that," you fried-chicken-and-beer, golfing-lat-muscle, and blister-obsessed media! No, he didn't really say that. But he pitched with authority against the Mariners, striking out nine and scattering five hits over seven innings in a 5-0 victory for the Boston Red Sox. Much better than the previous outing.

His name is Wei-Yin Chen: Baltimore's rookie left-hander from Taiwan pitched seven innings of of four-hit ball against the New York Yankees, lowering his ERA to 2.45 and leading the Orioles to a 5-2 victory. This was Chen's second outing against the Yankees — and thank goodness for that, he said:

Toronto Blue Jays slugger Brett Lawrie apologized later for his tantrum, and he seemed to mean it, but video of him slamming his batting helmet to the ground and it hitting umpire Bill Miller in the right hip is incriminating. Lawrie deserves a long suspension, and one is likely.

Adding to the miserable ending of Miller's night, a disgruntled fan in the stands at Rogers Centre tossed a mostly full cup of beer and hit Miller in the right shoulder (video swiped by Deadspin) as he walked off the field. No matter how poorly Miller might have called the final two pitches of Lawrie's at-bat — strike two appeared to catch even less of the zone than strike three — he doesn't deserve either reaction.

[Related: Astros' Carlos Lee shaken up after collision with umpire]

Umpires don't need the league to protect them from their own poor performance, but they do need protection from players and fans (or anyone) who flies off the handle. Miller seemed remarkably measured in his postgame comments:

''Upon seeing that he was ejected, he took several steps toward me and fired his helmet. It hit me in the right hip,'' Miller said.

''That's a bit extreme,'' Miller said.

It was, though Lawrie had stopped going berserk by the time reporters reached him:

Umpires (usually) are an extension of the playing field in Major League Baseball. If a ball hits an ump in fair territory, the fielder must be ready to play the ball as if it hit a pebble on the ground, or the second base bag. Reaction time is key. In that vein, if a fielder stumbles during a play and — say — runs into an umpire, he runs the risk of getting elbowed in the face if he's not careful.

That's what happened to Carlos Lee of the Houston Astros after he tried to play a sharp grounder hit by Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies in the first inning Tuesday afternoon. After the ball went off his mitt, Lee's stumbling momentum carried him into first base umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, who tried to brace for impact but was sent tumbling on his backside anyway. But not before he accidentally (it's assumed) stuck an elbow in Lee's left eye.

(AP photo)

Yeesh. It sounds like even the great Stephen Strasburg isn't impervious to feeling the burn a little more than is usually preferable.

In a somewhat mysterious episode on Tuesday afternoon, Washington Nationals manager Davey Johnson told the team's beat writers that Strasburg's poor pitching performance was due in part to some "Hot Stuff" that "got to the wrong place."

How the tingling analgesic ointment reached somewhere it shouldn't — or exactly what area of sensitive skin it came in contact with — the 69-year-old skipper didn't know, or at least wouldn't say. But coupled with a damp day at Nationals Park, it apparently had a negative effect on Strasburg who gave up four runs in four labored innings of work during Washington's 6-1 loss to the San Diego Padres. It was the first loss of the year for the Nationals ace.

From the Associated Press: