Chairman Mau-er Conquers First Base

Supreme Chairman Mauer Conquers First Base

"All is...uh...good" Glorious Leader Announces

Fort Kelly, TT

Following our secession from the United States of America last October the wonderful nation of Twins Territory has been savoring the sweet nectar of freedom bestowed upon us by our one and only glorious leader: Joeseph Mauer.

While the Supreme Chairman surprised many by announcing his transition from the position of "Catcher of All Furious Projectiles That Endanger Our Safety" to "First Guardian Against Infiltrating Base Runners", the change has been an unequivocal success.

"Our enemies may claim that I am a, uh, you know...tyrant," reported his eminence from the southern military strong hold where he is leading training drills. "But, Twins Territory is proud to be a democracy where all those selected to shoulder the burdensome honor of leadership can, ummmm, select those who are best for our nation, and stuff."

Our marvelous minister of all things good and decent has continued his reign of beneficence and generosity by sharing his knowledge with the heirs to his title while simultaneously adapting to his new position of prominence on the basepaths. Reported Field Marshal Gardenhire, "he's learning a lot out there, you know with [Field Marshal Emeritus] TK and [Chief Instructor of Scrapitude] Paul-ie and [Grand Poobah of Pabst Blue Ribbon] Hrbie. It's gonna be real good."

Some of the embittered and jaded citizens of Twins Territory may claim that this is merely propaganda for the regime, such criticism is unwarranted and merely serves to comfort our rivals. Should you know of anyone who doubts the power of our Premier Potentate, you need only direct their gaze to the glory of his regal visage, shining like a beacon of safety and security.

As Supereme Chairman Mauer has himself said, "All is...uh...good, you know. I feel pretty good, and you know, all glory to the citizens of Twins Territory."

Back at last

The regular season is so close you can taste it, and we Peanuts are back from our long hibernation with our season preview posts. Later in this week we'll post our preview of the Twins season (the optimistic, pessimistic, and realistic points of view) and predictions for the year ahead from the smartest analysts we know.

But first, the reason for the prolonged delay between posts. It turns out that it's easier to post about things when you don't have a full time job to attend to. With Stinky in her cube, and me tapdancing for 80 kids a day there's a lot to get done. So most of our days are filled with the reading of e-mails and essays on personal heroes or meaningful innovations. After work we've got choirs to sing for and track teams to coach and as if that weren't enough, we've just packed up our entire household and moved into a new home.

One thing that comes along with moving is chronicling just how much baseball stuff we have: a piece of Target Field artwork; bobbleheaded Joe Mauer; framed photos of Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner (bought during one of our earliest dates); signed balls; at least five kinds of TC hats and books like Crazy '08, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, The Glory of Their Times and Shoeless Joe. Moving also unearths prized possessions you forgot you had (particularly when your parents want to unload long dormant boxes in their basement).

That's when you discover this:

Yes, that would be a treasure trove of baseball cards, acquired when I was about 5 years old. I was convinced every card would feature a Hall of Famer, a legend in the making. Almost 25 years later I can see a whole lot of Frank DiPino's and Lance Johnson's and very few recognizable anythings. But with the benefit of hindsight I can chuckle at Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams before he had a mullet; Dave Concepcion in his final days; Kevin Seitzer (pre-glory days) and Chris Bosio (sans goggles). But there are a few particular names that stand out:

Clockwise from Top Left: Ron Gant, Mike Socia, Ken Williams, Jamie Moyer

This quartet will get no plaques or plaudits but I can remember them all clear as day. I remember Ron Gant getting pulled losing his balance scampering back to first in the '91 series. I remember Mike Socia winning the '02 series (coming back from his debilitating stint on the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant Softball Team). I remember Jamie Moyer making the Rockies last week (and making the Rockies back when he was minor league in the Paleozoic era). And I remember Kenny Williams, not from his playing days, but just from being a nice guy to a punk kid working in PR for a rookie league club in Montana.

Clockwise from Top L: Roy Smalley, Les Straker, Tim Laudner, Chili Davis

Sadly, from my tonnage of cards there were maybe 5 Twins cards, perhaps they were held back from packs after they won the World Series. But in none of my stacks of cards was there a Kirby or a Hrbek, there were two members of the FSN Team in Roy Smalley and Tim Laudner (even if I can't remember them playing a game. There's also a then rookie Les Straeker with his lofty hopes before a DL trip ended his career. And there's Chili Davis three years away from being "my guy" on the '91 Twins. But of all the piles of cards there are only two that really stand out.

TK looks thoroughly managerial here. Chaw shifted off to one side, looking askance at some shenanigan by the dugout. Pondering exactly how to say "shape up or ship out young man"...actually he probably would just say that. With TK's number set to be retired later this year, we are proud to salute him.

Best of all, there's this card of last year's retired number honoree: Bert Aberforce Blyleven. It might be a little better if there was an "I heart to fart" shirt, but as the most decorated and revered player in my baseball card collection we'll settle for his grizzled beard and death stare as some sort of absurdist ploy to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies...and also set up the curve ball.

Now that I've sorted through all these cards, and all the books and all the knick-knacks and doodads that comprise our Twins fandom, it's time to turn our eyes to the field and root root root for the home team. We're glad to be back (and if you are looking for a Danny Cox baseball card...give me a call)

Greatest. Promotional Idea. Ever.

Now that pitchers and catchers have officially reported to Ft. Meyers we can turn off the hot stove and turn on our baseball brains.

My baseball brain would like to offer the Twins the following promotional opportunity. The team recently announced that, for the first time in a decade, there would be no bobblehead give-away day this season. Since the bobbleheads were once a big lure for a team struggling to draw fans, boost attendance and generate revenue to put back into payroll, we need some kind of new event.

SO! We propose that, for one day this year, we turn Target Field into: Twinton Abbey!

This is made possible by the Pohlad Charitable Trust and Fans like You

Thrill at the drama as Lord Gardenhire tries to navigate the tumultuous world of the American League; Swoon as heir to all Twins Territory, Joe Mauer, mulls whether or not he can accept these responsibilities and the love of a good woman; Laugh at the lastest zinger from the Dowager Count Terry Ryan! ("Don't be a defeatist dear; it's so middle class, we might as well live in Oakland!")

We could have fans play the servants and mow the grass/fill the gatorade jug before the game. Dick and Bert could call the whole thing in a British accent. And after the game, season-ticket holders can have a formal dinner with the players at which something shocking is announced (war; engagement; end-of-war; trade of Matt Capps; end-of-engagement; Spanish-flu outbreak, etc).

Given the wild popularity of the show, baseball's inherent fondness for "turn-back-the-clock" type promotions, and the fact that PBS has been guilting people into giving them money for decades this is a no-brainer! Easy money for the Twins and pure hilarity for the fans.

Twins officials: I await your phone call!

Happy Birthday Stinky!

Hard to figure out what the best birthday present is for our fellow heavenly peanut, the immensely talented and intelligent Stinky.

First, players will officially report for spring training tomorrow. Sunshine, blue skies, balls, bats, baseball is coming back! After having to shovel off her car several dozen times this winter, this is a harbinger of good times and fortuitously timed to boot.

Second, the adorably scrappy Little Nicky Punto has been elected by you (our loyal readers) to the Peanuts from Heaven Hall of Fame. While he is small of stature he is great in grit, pluck and guile. Watching a man the size and shape of a supermarket bag boy play major league baseball never failed to make us laugh.

Third, Delmon Young has signed a contact and will be back in left field for the coming season. This means that whenever Stinky goes to the ballpark she'll be treated to another year worth of her dad saying: "Alright Delmont!!" (she'll also be treated to the various other things that people say about Delmon...but this is a family blog and we won't print them here)

Finally, there's the following clip of the honorable chairman Joseph Mauer honing his swing for the coming season. Better still, he's being serenaded by the roots raising Stinky's hopes still higher for a ?uestlove guest track on Mauer's upcoming rap album: Ballz and Strikz.

Clearly the Twins know how important it is to keep the fans happy--or at least, to keep Stinky happy. If Stinky ain't happy, ain't no body happy!

Ain't Too Proud to Beg...

There's just a week to go before pitchers and catchers report which means only 7 days left to vote for the Peanuts from Heaven Hall of Fame!!! So all you lurkers and random passers-by on the internet, don't be afraid, the buttons won't bite you! Look over there at the right hand side of the screen and click on the players who made watching Twins games a treat.

So cast your vote and leave a comment while you're at it. We like making new friends: Brazilians, Brits, Oregonians, Oklahomans, heck--even New Yorkers! We're Minnesotans, we're bound by state law to be nice. So leave a comment and make a Peanut's day!

Join the gang, join the discussion, life's more fun when we share. Seriously, I need some baseball conversations; I need debates and complaints, pleas and analyses. Who will lead our team in scrappiness without Nicky Punto around? Is Joe Nathan healthy, and if not, will he cut off Matt Capps' arm and make it his own? If a Jason Kubel falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?

These are the kinds of question that make baseball fun! Now that we're free from the iron grasp of pro football let us rejoice and make merry!! Baseball's back, share the joy! (PLEASE?!?)

Delmon Young and the case of the foolishly high hopes

I like Spring Training, even though there are no games and therefore very little to watch or scream about (unless you live in Florida/Arizona in which case, thanks for rubbing it in). I think the main reason I like spring training is that news paper guys have nothing bad to say about anyone.

During spring training everybody's primed for a career year, every team is confident that their rotation will come together, everybody think they have the hot prospect who's going to revolutionize the game, everyone truly believes that maybe, JUST MAYBE, with a little luck and a couple surprises they could win the whole thing and prove that their manager is a genius. And all the columns reflect this optimism.

Come opening day all the expectations run out on to the field and slowly, surely reality sets in. Cincinnati is Cincinnati is Cincinnati and no amount of optimism is going to change that (prove me wrong, AROLDIS CHAPMAN!!). As the games go by and the season builds up, all the optimism and positive thinking fades away and we get new stories about crumbums with no talent in the rotation, overpaid bonus babies whose bubble bursts under the bright lights of the big time, and hot seats from sea to shining sea as one by one squads fall out of the race.

I was thinking about this because I've been reading about a player who is quite confusing to us here at the Peanuts from Heaven blog. A man by the name of Delmon Damarcus Young.

Now Delmondo (as we sometimes like to call him) is something of a special case. Since he joined the team, there has been a large amount of complaining, whining and full-on fulmination regarding his ability (or lack thereof). And while many of our fellow Twins fans believe that he is a--well--it rhymes with "Duck-Wad"-- we here at Peanuts from Heaven disagree.

Stinky believes that he's a fine human being who simply can't quite play baseball as well as some other guys (he does play it better than 99% of the populace though, so she will shake her head and sigh but never EVER boo/curse him). I, Scruffy, have a different opinion. I believe, TRULY believe that somehow, someway Delmon Young can still become a GREAT player.

I own a Delmon Young jersey and wear it with pride. I try to give Delmon special character traits on the blog that make him seem like less of a "Guck-wad" and more of an amusing young fella. And so I'm very very very very excited by reports that Delmon seems to have put his past (and his cheeseburgers) behind him, and may at last be smiling and "where he should have been 5 years ago". He's even cracking jokes--FUNNY ONES!

And yet, the cynical can read this, yawn and say: "heard it before!" They are done with Delmon, they see him as the Lucy to our Charlie Brown, perpetually offering the possibility of glory only to pull it away at the last second. In their minds every promise of maturity, every claim of turning the corner ever chance that this time MAYBE it will work out is fundamentally flawed. They call this feeling: "Realism". My mom calls it: "Poopy-pantsitude".

Me? I'm fully of blind hope and optimism, full of eager anticipation, full of the dream, impossible though it may seem that this is the year that Delmon reaches his potential, that this team reaches its potential, that everything comes to fruition and all is right with the world. Call it silly, call it childish, call it nothing more than spring fever which will fade (along with Delmon) when summer comes. Call it what you will, I'm much happier with my hopes than I'd ever be with your "realism".

Something old, something new...

This is it. After months of reading pointless commentaries by baseball pundits, after days and days of no news but Scott Boras' latest ransom demands for major league talent, after the weeks of winter finally, at long last, baseball is in the air again.

Last week the other 29 teams in baseball turned up in their training complexes, began trading stories of fishing trips and bar hopping escapades, and this week the coolest team in baseball (the one whose name starts with an "M" and ends in an "-innesota Twins") arrives in Fort Meyers to start pitching, catching, and feeling the warm rays of Floridian weather before returning to what the Twin Cities laughingly refers to as "April".

We've kept a steady eye on the news outlets gathering all manner of information, and though our time in graduate school has precluded us from posting as often as we would have liked to, not posting did allow us to, you know, learn things. But before everyone arrives we'd like to take a moment and say a "Hi, hello," to the newest members of the Twins family.

First, the former Milwaukee Brewers short stop and Betsy, Katie, and pretty much every lady Twins' fans favorite new piece of eye-candy JJ Hardy. To be sure, JJ offers better hitting than most of our recent short stops...but we'd rather focus on his ability to offer unparalleled mystery solving abilities (as is evidenced by the series of novels based on his childhood)

Second, JJ's new double play partner, Orlando Hudson, whose arrival caused Twins fans excitement to reach a high not felt since he of the Radiant Sideburns first arose to the Major Leagues. Best of all, we here at Peanuts from Heaven get to reuse two of our favorite nicknames from last season which we had thought would fall into desuetude with the departure of Orlando Cabrera. Lucky us: two

seasons, two Orlando's (question: did either Orlando's mother name an older son "Oliver", if so, Shakesfan would be most impressed)

Finally, there's Ol' Smokey. You remember him, the guy who tormented us, destroyed us, ravaged our hopes and left them crumbled like the dusty remnants at the bottom of a box of Cheeze Its? Well, now he's on our side...which, I guess makes our team Sawyer to Jim Thome's Faux-Locke (or Flocke, as we might like to call him)

Yet, all the elation at these three arrivals is tempered by the fact that it came at a hefty price. Namely, the one, the only, THE Carlos Gomez. He has, throughout the past two seasons, inspired us to call him a super villain, a cranky pants, a Ringo Starr body double, and a Velociraptor. He talked to his bats, he screamed in primal fury, he leapt, he dove, he refused to take a pitch. He is, without doubt one of the most entertaining players we have ever seen. And while we wish him well in Milwaukee (Algonquin for the Good Land, don't ya know) we have chosen to honor the memory of Carlos Gomez by making him the second member of the Peanuts From Heaven Hall of Fame.

Good night sweet prince wherever you are, and good morning new princes. Glad you're on our side at last.

T minus 4 days!!!!

A;KDJPQIOHA;SDKFJ!!!!! I am so excited!!!!!!!!!!!
Baseball starts on Monday! Fortunately, my dad has tickets to opening day....unfortunately he only has two. Fortunately my mom is a kind soul and recognized that I would probably spontaneously combust if I didn't get to go, and shot my dad down so that he could invite me. So it all turned out well in the end.

In addition to kick-ass seats and season tickets, my dad also has this beautiful baby residing in his office:



I want to steal that thing in the worst way. I mean, I recognize that it's "real", and probably needs to be installed in the "new stadium", and that I probably would have to donate a ridiculous ammount of money plus my pinky toe and my first born child in order to actually own it...but couldn't we just bury it and say it was stolen by pirates...?



.......?

Anyways I digress.

Spring training was fun. I'm ashamed to admit though, that I wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention to the finer points of who was playing up to snuff and who was having an off-day, mainly because I was trying not to melt to my seat in the 90-degree heat with no breeze and no shade. I'm pretty sure I drank about five gallons of soda just to keep from dehydrating. But I did take a lot of photos that looked like this:



mmmm...............
Morneau......
I feel like I've gotten off track here......

Oh yeah baseball. Young played well - very well. He seems much more solid this year. The outfield selection was Young, Cuddyer and Span. I have a feeling this is how we'll start the season. Crede hit a home run, which almost dragged me fully onto the Crede bandwagon. But, he still needs to prove himself to me because I've been burned by one too many overhyped home run hitters, and I still need some time to heal. I still have nightmares about Rondell White (and I know, Rondell was no Cre-D!, but I'm still waiting to see definitive, consistent proof of awesomeness in the regular season).

On Monday (or more likely Tuesday since I'll probably fall asleep in the car on the way home on Monday) - PfH's first game recap of 2009!!!!

The Good, the Bad and the (potentially) Ugly

So the good news is this - Peanuts from Heaven is able to send half of their staff to spring training! This half is...me. And I'm also accompanied by my parents. But still, I will be able to blog live from spring training. I promise you exclusive (and possible imaginary) interviews and detailed reports from the scene.

Here's the bad news - weather.com is forecasting scattered thunderstorms.

This leaves me with several options:

1) Bring an umbrella
2) Beg Gardy to let me hang out with him in the dugout.
3) if begging does not work, bestow more photoshops upon Gardy.
4) If Gardy cannot be swayed, turn to Carlos Gomez. He'd probably let anyone into the dugout.
5) wear a poncho.

Some of these ideas are obvioulsy more practical than others.
Mostly, I'm just looking forward to the florida sun, since getting into your car in the middle of March and realizing it is 3 below is never a fun situation.