Deadline's coomiiiiin'--

Fans you better hide your heeeeaaarrrrt! Your lovin' heeeeaaaarrrt!

Look, we all know the story here. We want a trade. Gardy wants a trade. The players want a trade. But try as Bill Smith might, there's just not a team out there who will give us a quality infielder or pitcher in exchange for a pile of magic beans. (Note to self: do not invest as heavily in magic bean futures next year)

Our trade targets are once again a long list of the overpriced and untouchable:

Freddy Sanchez--snapped up by the Giants (would have cost Swarzak or better)

Marco Scutaro--verboten unless Roy Halladay moves (which he won't)

Jarrod Washburn--The Yankees want him, which means we don't stand a chance.

Chad Qualls--Way too pricy

Michael Wuertz--Local boy, kept under lock and key by Moneyball Ogre Billy Beane

Orlando Cabrera--Aging and being treated by Moneyball Ogre Billy Beane as though he were the second coming of Honus Wagner.

Deadline's coming and the cards say: A broken heart!

Let's go and get the Angels regardless, eh fellas?

Sweeps and Duct Tape

First things first: SWEEP BITCHESSS!!!

Moving on.

Directly in front of me on my cube wall is a two-page spread, torn out from the April 6 Star Tribune, which features Perkins, Liriano, Baker, Slowey and Blackburn (looking totally bad-ass) and a tag-line which reads: "Up in Arms: the Twins have one of the most anonymous - and effective - starting rotations in baseball. The five are good friends who became a unit last season, and they're ready to get the Twins back to the playoffs."

...who would have thought that by the end of July we'd be trying to piece together our starting rotation with the baseball equivalent of tape and some Elmers glue. Throwing Duensing in there had a definite "Look ma, I fixed it!" feel to it - very similar to when my caretaker decided to keep an invading squirrel out of my living room by slapping some boards on the window, putting a few strips of duct tape in random places and calling it good.

Luckily, it all turned out fine. My apartment is still squirrel-free, and Duensing did what we needed him to do - put in five solid innings before handing things over to Ze Ubermensch, Jesse Crain.

I'm pretty sure the credit for our win on Monday goes primarily to whoever put butter all over the gloves of White Sox infielders - Butter Gloves brought to you by Carlos Gomez, who apparently used the same butter to send his bat on a death mission into the stands.

Credit for Tuesday goes to Karma. I mean, one guy can only get so many outs in a row - clearly, the universe owed Buehrle some hits. Deal with it Mark - you got your "perfect game" and your "major league record" already... give us a series win and we're happy.

Credit for yesterday's win goes to small ball and stellar relief pitching - good old Twins baseball. That's what we like to see :)
In conclusion - squirrels in your living room are bad. Fixing things with duct tape is not ideal but occasionally it gets the job done.

Have a lovely off day.

WTF??@?

So I just checked MLB.com and discovered that Liriano is NOT in fact starting tonight.

Instead we have..........


wait for it...........


wait for it............................


Duensing.


WTF!?

I'm starting to worry that our starting rotation is being cursed one by one. Or given the plague.

I'm skeptical of this whole setup. We shall see.

I just hope the drunk guy in section 118 is there to represent with his repetitive, slurred yelling: "CONTREEEERRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAS!!!!!!! I OWWWNNNN YOUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!"

Well Done

Stinky's gonna cover this series in greater detail but let me point out a couple things real quick:

1) Mark Buerhle pitches pretty damn well--I mean, a perfect game is one thing, doing it for 14.66 innings...that's just wicked good. I know we've had a lot of fun at Buerhle's expense. I mean, he was the man we claimed could never resist sexy mermaid cake. Still and all, well done Beuerhle. Have some cake.

1a) Speaking of well done, well done us. Probably the classiest thing I've seen from fans in a long time, applauding an opposing player, and one from a rival--a rival we are battling for a division lead, and we give their best pitcher a standing O. Who needs a championship when you're just awesome pure and simple--and also humble.

2) I want everyone to note something--in Texas we had a discussion regarding not using homeruns as our sole source of runs--then came the trip to Cali, where we forgot that discussion, and suffered as a result. These last two games, when we needed wins, we slashed, we bunted, we ran, we used the surprising the distracting bottom of the line-up and we won.

Coincidence, or the fine fine art of supraction?

I know it's a day late...

but heart felt none the less...

My co-blogger in crime will handle the game we witnessed tonight (magical as it was). It falls to me to explain the end of the road trip that would not, could not! be anything more than pure unadulterated lame-i-tude.

Yesterday there was this--

MORNEAU: C'mon Guys! I know things have been bad! I know you're down and out! I know everyone just wants to go home so they can hold on to their teddy bears and hold on to their blankets, but if we win this game we can go home with our heads held high.

EVERYONE: [grumumblemumblewuhhuhhh]

MORNEAU: Seriously guys, we got this one, I mean no matter what goes wrong at your place of business there's always one guy you can turn to when times are tough?

BOBBY KEPPEL: Who's that big plaid chested man?

SWARZAK: SWARZAK!!!

MAUER: Can't be me, my sideburns are wilting in the hot Pacific sun.

SWARZAK: SWARZAK!!!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY: Can't be me...I died before the game was invented...oh, and I should be dead now...[awkward pause]so I guess I'm a zombie...[awkward pause]blaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

SWARZAK: SWARZAK!!!!!!!

MORNEAU: C'mon guys, he's dependable, reliable, and exactly what you need when you need it.

EVERYONE: Who is it? [P.B.S. blaaaaaaaaahhhhhh]

SWARZAK: SWARZAK!!!!

MORNEAU: D'uh....it's me!

Brawny dudes and talking ducks--a winning combination.

What the F----?

By the way that stands for What The FLUKE!?!?!?

This is by far the flukiest, stupidest, most infuriating road trip I have ever watched. I cannot explain it, I cannot fathom it. I cannot grasp, decipher or comprehend it either (thank you thesaurus at 1:17 AM)

Let us look back at what has happened to us lately:

1. We lost in Texas in extra innings after completely controlling the series up to that point, and it took only one bad pitch from noted loather of bad pitches Richard Alpert Dickey to lose.

2. Justin Morneau did not catch a pop fly--which may be because Justin Morneau felt bad for it...pop flies are not as attractive as him.

3. We had a ten run lead and lost it because our bullpen, which had been so dominant for the past two or three weeks suddenly couldn't control anything: witness--

3a. Bobby "K-Zone" Keppel giving up his first runs....EVER.

3b. Jose "Pretty Princess" Mijares giving up his first home run to a left handed batter....in a YEAR.

4. Despite this disaster, we still came close to winning the game, only being thwarted by an umpire's terrible call that prompted Michael "Cutey Pants" Cuddyer to become angry...seriously? Cuddyer getting angry? That's like Mother Theresa calling you a ASDF@&*#%AKFGASL!@$!!!

5. Through all of this Joe Mauer suddenly decided to see what it felt like to occasionally NOT hit the baseball...that changed tonight, presumably because Mauer learned that hitting like Alexi Casilla is not fun...unless you are Alexi Casilla.

6. Tonight, Dread Pirate Joe Nathan couldn't find the strike zone, and he's there so often that it has a seat indentation from his butt.

7. The tying run tonight bounced off the only possible part of second base that WOULD NOT lead to an inning-ending, game-winning third out.

Now, I love the Twins no matter what, and I will cheer them whether we win or not, I just cannot understand why we have to lose in such stupid manners? I mean...I do not like losing 16-1, but I understand it--if we do not play well, we should lose. The other games?....the ones where we make minor mistakes that turn into total devestation....I don't get that. I don't expect to win every game--just the ones where we don't play like a pack of platypi with their bills in the mud. (Hopefully, since Baseball is a game of averages, losing three games in so totally stupid a manner will later be balanced out by our winning three games in a totally stupid manner.) 

I can come to only one conclusion: we have offended Set, the Egyptian God of Evil. I do not know what to do now. I would beg for forgiveness, but it would be to a god of evil...which does not seem cool. I mean...look at this dude, we might not want him on our bad side--but having him on our good side seems similarly nas-tastic.

So I ask you, loyal reader, what the fluke should we do about this fluking losing jag we're on?

(Ps, feel free to include Set in your answers, or "fluke", or pie...whatever)

How to comeback from a hosing:

Please forgive the delay in our posts--but I mean, c'mon...would you want to blog during this series of doom and devastation?

After our Monday's game/screwjob, we chose to wait until our wroth waned, we here at Peanuts from Heaven took a deep breath and came right back the next night, eyes focused on some sign of superb silliness that would give us a chance to feel proud as we continued our roadtrip out west.

What we saw, was this conversation in the dugout, prior to the game.

[Michael Cuddyer sits despondently, with duct tape over his mouth at the end of the bench, when Delmon Young approaches him]

DELMON: Yo, Cuddy, what up?

CUDDY: mummmawummawumma!!

DELMON: Hang on, you have duct tape over your mouth...[Delmon rips the duct tape off] what was that?

CUDDY: I said, I'll KILL YOU STUPID ASS UMPIRE WITH YOUR BLOWN CALL AND YOUR--

DELMON: Shhh, shhh, shhhhhhhhhhhhh...it's okay Cuddy, it's okay...I'm here [Delmon takes Cuddy in his arms and rocks back and forth slowly, while murmuring words of comfort]

CUDDY: [Words punctuated with sobs] They're. Just. So. Mean. I. Was. Safe!

DELMON: I know, I know, I was there. It was awful Cuddy, I mean, Gogo warned us not to get too homerun happy...and what happened to us? We got beaten by homeruns...Gogo was right

GOGO: [Running up to them with a gleam of hope in his eye] I WAS RIGHT ABOUT SOMETHING?!?!?! [Gogo takes off running around the stadium at supersonic speeds] YIPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...........

DELMON: I mean, even supraction was powerless to stop them.

CUDDY: Su-wha?

DELMON: Don't you remember supraction, Cuddy? You're a master of it, we suprise and distract the opposing team, that's why I slipped a jumping bean into that wild pitch last night. I was at the plate and I magicked it into the ball with my mind...then it bounced and you should have been able to score but...

CUDDY: The umpire was a JERK!! [Gomez completes a lap, "eeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeee....."]

DELMON: Yes, he was, but that doesn't mean Supraction wouldn't work Cuddy! C'mon there must be something we can do...

CUDDY: Well...since everyone thinks we just hit home runs now, what if we ALMOST hit home runs...but instead--

DELMON: just hit triples over the heads of outfielders!

CUDDY: It's brilliant!!

DELMON: No one would think I could run to third base!!!

CUDDY: IT'S SURPRISING!!

DELMON: IT'S DISTRACTING!!!

TOGETHER: IT'S SUPRACTING!!!!!!!! YYYYAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!

Delmon and Cuddy join hands and leap in the air as Gogo completes another lap (eeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee........)and the sound of his joy mirrored the joy in their hearts as the strategy was begun and a victory was won.

Welcome back supraction--we have missed you.

And then we lost...and that stank...but Supraction, that was awesome.