A Review of Our First Half

As brought to you by the smartest baseball roundtable in the business:

SERGEANT GARDY'S LONELY HITS CLUB BAND!

[Massive cheering and teenage girl swooning as the Lonely Hit's Club Band steps up to their crosslegged position on the meditation mat they received as a gift from the Mahareshi in Rishikesh.]

MCNEAU: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you [gets hit in the face by a woman's undergarment, sighs and continues] Thank YOU. Welcome once again to Sergeant Gardy's Lonely Hits Club Band, the most in depth panel discussion of issues in baseball ever held.....in silly costumes. With me once again are Brendan Harrisson--

HARRISON: Hi-ya.

MCNEAU: Denard Spannon--

SPANNON: Namaste, planet Earth.

MCNEAU: and Carlos Ringomez--

RINGOMEZ: WHEEEEE!!! CAMERA!!!!!

MCNEAU: Gentlemen, we have reached the half-way mark in our season and the Twins are merely a .500 baseball club. What must be done to win the division?

HARRISON: Nothing.

SPANNON: Lots of things.

RINGOMEZ: PUPPIES!!

MCNEAU: Explanations?

HARRISON: We have everything we need to win, we simply need to execute more consistently. We have won 6 of 8 against the Tigers and already have more wins in Chicago than we did all of last year. Additionally, we've completed our schedule against New York, Boston and Tampa Bay. The White Sox have played neither of the Evil Empires, and the Tigers still have to deal with the Rays. We had the harder schedule, it's natural for us to be a few games back, but everyone's playing relatively well, give us another month to clobber the AL West and we'll have everything we need.

SPANNON: Typical isolationist hubris. You can't rationally expect stasis to elicit the same positive results as dynamism. It's the natural order of life, you either adapt or you die. The industrial nations of the world must reexamine their economic principles in order to remain a force in the global marketplace.

MCNEAU/HARISSON: Uhhhhh....?

RINGOMEZ: I agree, Denard, but your vociferous loquations not withstanding we are still left with the knotting vexation of our pedestrian NAY prosaiac play of ourselves and our comrades in arms and bats and gloves.

ALL: Uhhhh....?

RINGOMEZ: I mean...PUPPIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!

MCNEAU: Phew...I thought our roles were going to be subverted, Denard, you were saying.

SPANNON: Uh--yeah--In a baseball context I think we need to remain active, ever changing, fluid as the river. We have a few outfielders and a great deal of wealth from the Pohlads, let's use some of that to obtain peace in the middle east, an extra relief pitcher, a cure for world hunger, or a middle infielder who can hit over .250.

HARRISON: Ahem--

SPANNON: Yeah...over .250 consistently.

[Speaking all at once]

HARRISON: That's the kind of over-reactionary liberal minded recipe for disaster--

SPANNON: Yet again, another dyed-in-the-wool, anti-innovation, anti-inspiration--

RINGOMEZ: I WANNA PUPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

[Cutting over the noise]

MCNEAU: GENTLEMEN! Perhaps we are all right in our own way, perhaps a combination of increased confidence and an initially unremarkable trade could do the trick, I'll give you one more moment to state your ideal situation for the rest of our season.

HARRISON: We remember how cool we are, take the division lead in the last week of July and never look back.

SPANNON: We pick up a reliever from Pittsburgh and ride his bucaneering behind all the way to October.

RINGOMEZ: Labradoodle!

MCNEAU: Thank you gentlemen. This concludes Sgt. Gardy's Lonely Hits Club Band's mid-season report, please remember: Friends don't let friends become Yankees fans. Goodnight.