World Series, Homeboy

Not really a Doug Grow fan or anything But:


I grabbed the paper's sports section Monday morning, eager to read about the hometown baseball team, which had defeated the Detroit Tigers in three of four games to move ever closer to first place.

But to find stories of the Minnesota Twins, I first had to get past a page that featured a massive photo of Brad Childress, the Minnesota Vikings football coach who appears to fancy himself a general.

This was proof again that even in a wonderful baseball season; we live in a football nation.

Doug Grow, Star Tribune, September 12




I’ll go with that. I don’t ever remember being so NOT interested in the Vikings and the upcoming Football season. Who cares. The Twins are having their most exciting season and I’ve been following the Twins through the drudgery of the mid-90’s. Sometimes I think Minnesotans would rather watch a Vikings Wednesday practice scrimmage than Santana pitching against the Tigers. I can wait for the Vikings 8 and 8 season, let's watch some baseball.

Is this some huge issue? No. I know. While I stress out my days away over lies and war and poverty, I occasionally seek out little happy things—innocent, little, escapist, tiny, little, bitty, cute, squishy, happy things to get away from the madness of the world. These are primarily MST3K, maybe an occasional chocolate malt, a little extra salt on my eggs, and Major League baseball.

Keep in mind, After the All Star game, The Tigers were, like, 12 games ahead in the American Central, The greatest division this season, everyone, and myself, just gave up that division to the Tigers.

The Twins have crawled within 1.5 games of Ist place, and a 4.5 game lead in the Wild card. Geez. They did it with injuries galore.

Okay, we lost Radke and this year’s Dwight Goodwin, Francisco Liriano. No Shannon Stewart. It sucks. But here now—

Mauer- A catcher with the American League batting title. Let’s go.

Morneau- .320, 33 HR, 133 RBI, 144 games. We lost Ortiz. Dumb. But look. He’s arrived!

Castillo- He’s doing all the things we wanted Christian Guzman and Rivas to do.

Cuddyer- We lost Jacque Jones. People were freaking. But look--.279, 22 HR, 100 RBI, 137games. He’s giving us Jacque numbers.

Punto—He’s channeled Greg Gagne or something.

Hunter--.271, 26 HR, 81 HR. Pretty good numbers for being injured for a few weeks. He’s a gamer. He can smell victory and pushes himself.

Redman--.342, .368 OBP, 161 AB. Damn.

Tyner, Bartlett—Welcome contributors in that Scott Leius sorta way.

Starting Pitching—Santana-Cy Young. Bonser-Welcome. Radke-pretty solid. Anyone else?

Bullpen- the BEST in all of baseball.

Who really needs to start doing their job if we’re going to the World Series—Rondell White, Carlos Silva, Lew Ford, and maybe Scott Baker.

There, that’s your expert analysis, move over Peter Gammons.

Go Team.