Fly Over Country Baseball Pride

Even though we've been unable to watch all of the thrilling game 5 madness the last few days, Stinky and I have been reveling in the Midwest's October Glory.

For once, we don't just mean the fall foliage that dots the landscape of the upper midwest, though--certainly--writing this blog from a coffee shop in a quaint Wisconsin lakeside village, with elms and maples turning orange and golden and faded green in early afternoon light is pretty awesome. No, we mean the fact that our preferred play-off teams all managed to do pretty well. Sure the Rays got bumped off by the Rangers, but everybody else we were rooting for: the Cardinals, the Brewers and the Tigers, pulled out big series wins.

It's nice to know that our cheering for a team does not doom them to suckitude, and nicer still to know that we are blissfully free from three more weeks of "pinstripe mystique" and "four aces of the apocalypse" talk. Sure, some people will talk about low ratings and the fact that very few people beyond the Milwaukee city limits cares about the Brewers, but that misses the point.

The point is that, right now, the best baseball is being played in our neck of the woods. And it's being played by a bunch of guys who used to wear the Twins Blue and Red. So even though Delmon Young will be nursing an oblique through the ALCS, we'll keep chearing for the Tigers and our supractalicious ex-left fielder whose tattoos and glower seem to suit the hardened blue collar edge of the Motor City.

And even though the Cardinals have won more World Series' than any team whose name does not start with a "Y" and end with an "ankees", we'll cheer because there's little Nicky Punto scooping up grounders and flipping them to a glacier sized first baseman between the beer signs and the red brick facades of a classic old stadium in a classic baseball town.

And even though they're our border war neighbors, we'll keep cheering for the Brew Crew and the home run slide and Bob Ueker calling a World Series game, because last night there was our hyperactive ex-centerfielder careening across home plate with a giddy slide and popping up in a fit of glee to "BEAST MODE" it up with the vegetarian first baseman and goofily bearded closer.


Forget the big markets and the big budgets and the big names. Let's keep this ride going on to November! Let's relish the chance to see champagne corks get popped alongside bottles of Bud and buckets of cheese curds and gallons of axel grease. Let's root, root, root for fly over country and the parts of America where fandom isn't written off as a business expense and stars are nurtured over years rather than bought up during the offseason.

It's a great time to love baseball, and a great time to love the midwest. (Luckily for us, we love both!)

Root, Root Root for...? (Our Extremely Biased Guide to the Postseason)

Well, we're a few days into the playoffs but better late than never! We know you've been waiting with bated breath for us to instruct you as to who you should cheer for in the post season...but we're not going to. Instead, we are going to make logical (hah) pro and con lists for each matchup, tell you where our hearts lie, and let you pick from there.

ALDS: TEXAS V. TAMPA

Rangers - PROS
- Everything's bigger in Texas...so...make of that what you will.
- I dare you to find a cooler name than Yorvit Torrealba.
- Josh Hamilton
Rangers - Cons
- I really have nothing against the Rangers, but I traveled to Dallas once for work and wasn't a huge fan.
- ...it's Texas.

Rays - Pros
- I know they're this big power hitting team now, but in my mind the Rays will always be the ultimate underdogs, which makes them cool in my book.
- Their late-season run to eliminate the Red Sox was quite glorious, and very Twins-Circa-2006. Reminds me of when times were good.

- They play in an incredibly ugly dome, which also reminds us of good times.
Rays - Cons
- Johnny Damon

Verdict:
This one's kind of a toss-up. I think I'd feel good either way - but for some reason my heart seems to lie with Tampa.

ALDS: NYY Vs. Detroit

Yankees - Pros

- I'm super excited for the Verlander/Sabbathia matchup tonight after being cruelly robbed of it on Friday.

- Derek Jeter
- Mariano Rivera
Yankees - Cons
- Nick Swisher
- A-Rod
- Smug and obnoxious Yankees fans
- Emperor Palpatine

- Lord Voldemort

Tigers - Pros
- AL Central Solidarity
- Delmon Young... that trade made no sense to me, and I miss my Delmon. I hope he gets a better shot with Detroit than he did with us.
- Justin Verlander
Tigers - Cons
- I make fun of Tigers fans all year (except this year)... it's hard to go from cheering against them to cheering for them
- Detroit

Verdict:
As my dad would say, "Go Delmont!!" I wish to see him prance to a World Series Victory. Go forth and prosper, Detroit Tigers.

NLDS: St. Louis Vs. Philly

Cardinals - Pros
- Albert Pujols
- Nick Punto
- We visited St. Louis on our baseball road trip two years ago: it's a nice city and the fans seem like cool people.
Cardinals - Cons
-.... I honestly can't think of any

Phillies - Pros

- Delicious Cheese Steak

- My friend Lewis lives there

- Amazing pitching rotation of awesomeness

Phillies - Cons

- I once got lost in Philly trying to get back on the highway after stopping for a cheese steak. It was miserable - we were lost for probably an hour and got stuck in ridiculous traffic. You fail, city of Philedalphia.
- High payroll. Pinstriped jerseys. Eastern division domination. Remind you of anyone else we know?

Verdict:
I'm gonna go with St. Louis, more because of how much I like the Cardinals than because of any bad feelings towards the Phillies.

NLDS: Milwaukee vs. Arizona

Brewers - Pros

- Prince Fielder

- Ryan Braun

- If you haven't heard Bob Uecker call a game, you're missing out

- Neighborly love

- New Glaurus

- Cheese

Brewers - Cons

- Neighborly hate

- Constant drunkenness: we also went there on our baseball road trip and saw people passed out on the concourse.

- Strange phallic hot dog races

D-Backs - Pros

- Scrappy young underdog of the NL

- I dunno...I'm generally a positive person

- ...that's about it really.

D-Backs - Cons

- D-Backs sounds suspiciously like D-Bags?

- Douchey Fans: D-Backs hit a home run over Ben Revere's head and a fan yelled "YOU SUCK REVERE!!" When interviewed after the game and asked what he had yelled the fan proudly repeated the sentiment. So apparently Ben Revere sucks for not owning a jet pack? Bad form, D-Backs fans.

Verdict:

We'll give our support to the cheeseheads next door!

Well, that's all we have for now. If you'll excuse me I have to try to stop the cat from eating Ben's tie and shirt buttons.

Our Love Don't Cost a Thing

The long baseball season is finally over, and this year it felt especially long. The Twins stunk...clearly and badly...like moldy limburger, like fermented clouds of Axe Bodyspray, like Scott Boras' soul....they stank, stunk, stinked.

And yet we watched as much as we could. We cheered when they did well, and shook our heads disappointedly after loss 99 just like we did after loss number 1. We found reasons to cheer: a few solid whacks by Mauer and Thome, slick fielding by Denard and Ben Revere, amazing pitching from Liriano and Nathan and of course the innumerable contributions of Plouffe, Hughes, Perkins, Tosoni, Oliveros, Rivera and a bunch of other names we never thought we'd say when the season began.

So, no matter what else happens, we love the Twins, loved cheering them this season and will love them on and on. So when we've heard other people saying that the organization "owes" them, we can't help but cock our head to the side and ask: "Really?"

I tried to do the math, figure out how much one might really spend on being a baseball fan, and then how much of that ends up in the pockets of the biggest scapegoats for this year. If you spend $500 on being a Twins fan, you contribute about $0.10 to Joe Mauer, want him to give it back? You want the penny you contribute to Gardy and Bill Smith...really? Can't you just chalk it up to the incidental costs of loving a team, loving a game and getting 162 days of entertainment a year?

My better half (Stinky) raised a better point. If you buy a ticket to a Twins game, you have to acknowledge that you're taking a risk. Being a fan is like being a stock holder--you buy the stock and you hope it goes up...but you acknowledge it might go down. Buy a ticket to the game and you hope the Twins win, but you acknowledge that they might lose. They could win 162, they could lose 162. If you agree to go, or watch or support the team you have to accept the good and the bad as a risky (but entertaining) investment.

Sure there were times when we wondered if we should just turn the tv off and leave it off the rest of the year, there were times we didn't want to turn on the radio or open a newspaper, or surf to the team site for fear of hearing or seeing another loss in black and white. But tonight, as we drove back from church choir, and heard Cuddy get stranded at third we sighed and groaned, when we heard John Gordon call the "Parmalee flips to Dinkle-Hughes" we laughed and decided that "Dinkleface" is bound to be a nickname for our future utility man. And when Plouffe delivered the walk off hit we cheered, and we'll cheer this winter, and we'll root, root root for the home team.

No questions asked.

Ominous...and yet...

I feel like I'm beginning a lot of posts this way lately but: "Apologies for the delay in posting...we peanuts have been awfully busy". Work, school, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Yup...pretty dark...

So why break radio silence as the Twins are about to fall even farther behind the Royals for fourth place (yes, fourth place) in the AL Central? Because, for as ominous as the end of this year is becoming there's something else, out there in the distance that we haven't thought about yet.

See, in baseball it's easy to get transfixed by the little things, the moments, the day to day minutiae of the game. They say it again and again for players--"he's overthinking", "he needs to put his bad at-bats behind him", "they've just got to take it one day at a time." Some players just can't help but worry about every single at bat that turned into an easy ground ball, every fielding chance they fumbled, every pitch they failed to execute.

See! No signs of hits or throws!

One bad play begets another, which begets another, which begets another and so and so forth. If you don't believe me ask Trevor Plouffe and his mid-June spurt of throws that missed the broad side of every barn between here and Brainerd. Or ask Tsuyoshi Nishioka who so plainly wants to succeed and seems so utterly shamed every time he walks back to the dugout after failing to beat the throw to first. Or ask Brian Duensing as he sits on the bench, chewing his nails, mentally replaying pitch sequences that turned an inning with two quick outs into a sudden three-run, chase-him-from-the-game, question-his-spot-in-the-rotation-and-career-path nightmare.

One player struggles, then another, and another and the panic grips the team. Even the indomitable Pav-stache and robotic Joe Mauer seem to be waiting for the inevitable defeat at this point. Sure they'll try, but they just accept that when it's a borderline pitch, the call is going to go against them. They haven't given up--but the looming doom is right there over the Twins collective shoulders.

While that makes watching the games (and rehashing them in blog form) a little rough at times, there's something we have to remember.

There. Is. Hope.

Start with the fact that a lousy record now means a solid draft pick next year (and at a fairer price if MLB and the Union agree on a better draft system). Sure the Twins farm system isn't great now...but bear in mind that we've been drafting at the ends of rounds for the last decade--our best players were picked up during our decade of slump-tacular mid-90's horror. A true top-flight prospect who can contribute in a year or two rather than 5 will be much appreciated.

If only it were this easy

Also remember that the Twins did not flip a switch and go from a good ball club to a lousy one. They didn't forget to pack the talent with them as they left Fort Meyers, they simply could never dig themselves out of a considerable hole made in April and May (and dug again through injuries and poor pitching in August). Make good moves for 10 years and you're a model organization--make bad moves for 1 year and you aren't utterly hopeless...you've just run up against a law of averages.

Finally, never forget that through it all Twins fans keep plopping down cash to go to Target Field, keep buying jerseys and bobbleheads and all kinds of gear. That's money we could use to get another good pitcher, or infielder, or whatever. (It's also likely those prices won't rise next year, given the shoddy product on the field this year.)

Ahh, there it is!

I see this all the time when I teach. Kids look up and see the gloomy cloud of an impending test, or project, or class. They struggle once, they expect to struggle again and again, and nothing will ever be good or fun and life is horrible.

But once they see a little gleam of hope: a word they know from their notes, a thumbs up from a truculent teacher, a smile from their crush, then the world is marvelous and beautiful and completely peachy keen!

The Twins (and their fans) have seen the dark clouds all year long. Don't forget--there's always a silver lining.

Missing Something

It's been a long week.

Losing two games to the White Sox made things a little grim in Twins Territory--so grim we couldn't bear to watch the pain (something about those pale hosers always brings out the doom and gloom in us). And even though the Twins have won back-to-back games we weren't able to catch them given that one took place during the workday and the other happened on the West Coast last night...ending well after our Peanut bedtimes.

Missing four games this week made feel funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, but odd, awkward, and out of sync. Even though the Twins are way out of the race, and the team hasn't played well, and the face of the franchise (a three-time batting champ) seems to be backing up a guy who's hitting .165, I can't help but feel like something's missing if I don't get a daily Twins fix.

Maybe that's weird, maybe it's strange that I'm still wanting to watch relatively meaningless games for three hours a day, maybe it's irrational that I want to know about call ups and Lester Oliveros' strike zone control and Luke Hughes' new batting stance and Tsuyoshi Nishioka's (very very gradual) improvement. But that's the thing about baseball, if you connect with a team and stay with them for more than half a year they're a part of your life and it's not the same without them. I don't want to watch to complain, or bellyache or whine about the front office--I want to watch because it's what I love.

The games don't have to be great. The team doesn't have to play well. It just needs to be there. The Twins have been part of my life for years, and will be tomorrow, so they better be today. Call me strange, call me stubborn, but be sure to call me when the game is on.

After all I don't want to miss something.

Ron Gardenhire's Dirty Secret

Last night's game started at 7 and was over shortly after 9, and that was largely because Matt Capps came in to throw a few pitches, give up a run and make sure that Dick and Bert got to do all their in game plugs.

Even though the Twins lost, and team manager/life-sized garden gnome/prototype for crusty managers everywhere Ron Gardenhire looked like he was having a furious internal debate about whether to take a couple

tylenol or a couple shots of tequila, he also looked pretty darned pleased to be leaving the park so quickly. Maybe it was because he got to go for drinks with rival manager/polar opposite/walking twitter feed Ozzie Guillen, maybe it was because he really wanted to watch Real Housewives of Orange County in his hotel room, or maybe it was because Mark Buehrle was pitching.

Mark Buehrle does the things that make Ron Gardenhire happy. He throws strikes (65% of all pitches). He pitches to contact (84% of all pitches, with batters stuck with a .293 average on balls in play). And he makes quality starts (65% of all his starts). This season the Twins staff was a little worse than Buehrle in all those categories (63% Strike Rate, 82% Contact rate, .304 BABIP, just 51% of all games are Quality Starts). Now...Gardy doesn't know or care about any of those stats...he focuses solely on the GSQ: Gardy Scrappiness Quotient. And whereas Buehrle (by virtue of his defense, endurance and beard) rates 94.8/100, current Twins pitchers earn a meagre 51.6/100.

At the end of the day, I can help but imagine Gardy sitting back watching the game, dreaming of the offseason when Mark Buehrle is a free agent, and Gardy can confess his deep and abiding admiration for him. And Buehrle admits that, deep down, he has always wanted to be a Twin. And he signs a fiscally sensible contract, and dons the red, blue and white, and anchors the Twins rotation and leads us to glory and through it all Gardy never has to drink away the sadness and the world is a bright and happy place again. But of course Buehrle wears the black and white, and all Gardy can do is fantasize. Fantasize about Buehrle.

Home Sour Home

So the Twins, our loyal boys in blue, are spending the next few days in Chicago, which must come as a relief after having to spend 11 whole days at home.

I'm not quite sure why, but the Twins sure didn't seem to enjoy their respite from the road. In the 9 games the Twins lost this past home stand they averaged 1.5 runs & 6.5 hits per game, that's clearly down from the season overall, where they've averaged 3.8 runs & 8.4 hits per game. But it's not all declines against the season average! In those same 9 games the pitchers went from averaging 9.5 hits & 4.4 runs per game to 11.8 hits & 6.1 runs per game. (Note: I tried to find a more Sabremetric-y stat as per my older brother's suggestion but I'm still a novice at that...suffice to say: "something, something, something, you'd be better off putting Larry, Curly and Moe at the bottom of the order than Tosoni, Tolbert and Butera")

But enough of this silly math stuff. Clearly the Twins have lost track of what makes playing in Minnesota so special. It's not the number of pretty girls who profess their undying love for Joe Mauer in sign and shirt form. Nor is it the giddy kids, seniors and drunk guys who always find something to cheer for even in the darkest days.

Perhaps it's because they're working, instead of watching tv during the games but perhaps they simply have missed this catchy jingle espousing the greatness of the Land of 10,000 Lakes:

So next time you're in town we encourage you guys to do the things advertised in this ad and more. Perhaps Brian Duensing needs to go camping, maybe Jason Kubel could take a kayak out on Lake of the Isles, maybe Ben Revere and Alex Burnett could start an emo/hip-hop fusion band (hemo?) or maybe our local renaissance man, Michael Cuddyer, should make time for a trip to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.

Whatever the case guys, please come back ready to win some more games...it's a little tough to watch when you play like Joe Mauer sings. For now, just beat the White Sox and we'll all be happy.

(I'm sorry, that was mean and not constructive...but seriously Joe, I thought singing four part harmony was part of Minnesotan citizenship. Maybe you can slip some voice lessons into your offseason routine.)