PROGRAMMING NOTICE

You may have noticed I haven't been posting here as much this year, for which apologize.

However, I do post at Twinkie Town at least a couple times a week. So if you really miss me, I suggest checking Twinkie Town out (especially because of the other super talented writers there). I do plan to keep posting here periodically, but my writing will be more spread out between here and Twinkie Town.

2012 Twins Opening Home-Stand: How About That Josh Willingham?

The Twins have completed their first home-stand of the season, winning 2 out of 6, and ultimately leaving them 2 for 9 on the season total. Accordingly, hence, we can say the Twins suck−except for Josh Willingham.

JOSH WILLINGHAM. Josh Willingham has quickly catapulted himself to the front of my "Favorite Current Twins List." He's already hit FOUR HOMERUNS−FOUR−not to mention, three AT Target Field (eat it Cuddy [omg jk we luv u]). He's been, by far, the biggest offensive stand-out thus far for the Twins.

Which is funny−because you know how I used to sit often on the first baseline? Yeah−now I sit in left field. And I love it! I love left field! Like last Thursday, when Josh hit a homerun right into the flowers in front of me and I watched all these older guys dog-pile in front of me for the ball, but then I was the one on sports center for some reason. We did a number to those flowers.

I was told by the guy who eventually found the ball that it was about 6 inches in the bowl−hence the dig.

(Me, upper right-hand corner, officiating all this or something)

Today (Sunday−Jackie Robinson Day) was also pretty cool when I noticed Josh Willingham had ripped a huge hole in his pants.

Gritty.


Home-Stand Food

One of my favorite parts of getting back to the ballpark is ballpark food (because I'm kinda a fatty, represent!). Out of the new food items presented this year, the Buffalo Chicken Mac 'n' Cheese seemed to be the most anticipated. It was for me! So here's my official review:

The Buffalo Chicken Mac 'n' Cheese is good, but EXTREMELY overpriced. Imagine paying $10 for a bowl of easy mac with extra topings. Ok? This tiny bowl of Mac 'n' Cheese is $10.75.

Not worth it.


Other New Additions to Target Field

I haven't been all around the ball park, but what I've noticed is new:

• A bronze statue of Kent Hrbek has been added outside Gate 14 (No, it does not include Ron Gant, as many multiple 'jokesters' on Twitter asked).
• The lime stone engraving of "Target Field" behind home plate has been moved slightly towards left field (thank god, right?)
• There is NOOO SMOKING AT TARGET FIELD. For reals now. There is not even a smoking section by Gate 6. No smoking. None. NOOOOOOO Smoking. (Rest in Peace Bob Casey).
• Best Additions: A picture of a cancer ribbon hugging the state of Minnesota in right field, along with a large ad for "StandUp2Cancer"−Harmon Killebrew's favorite charity−in the right field second deck.

• LIVE MASCOT RACE: Remember the between-innings video race on the jumbotron amongst the blue ox, loon, mosquito, Target Dog, and fish? Yeah−now they have mascot costumes for all and do a live race. It's awesome. I will probably grow tired of it after awhile, but I know yesterday I laughed my ass off every time the Target Dog fell on its face (because it happened like five times).

Public Service Announcement  

STOP BOOING JOE MAUER YOU IDIOTS.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

It’s that time of year. You know what I’m talking about. That time when you find yourself watching reruns of Seinfeld you’ve seen a million times. When the days get shorter, and you have no idea what to do at 7:00 PM. You find the sports section of the newspaper sitting around somewhere, flip through it in a few seconds, and toss it aside. Then, one day, all of a sudden, you wake up and you’re watching a Vikings game, and that’s when you realize you’ve hit rock bottom.

It’s Seasonal Affective Disorder—and you’re not alone.

I, like so many of you, am attempting to combat this crippling disease. So today, I would like to share some of the things that have helped me through these dark times.


1. Buy “Ken Burns: Baseball”

You need to do this. Even if you aren’t suffering from SAD. “Ken Burns’s ‘Baseball’” is the greatest thing in the world, except for, um, baseball. And cheese curds. It’s 23 and ½ hours—11 full-length DVDs—of pure baseball glory. It chronicles all of the most important events in baseball history (except the 1991 World Series), and it will make anyone who watches it love baseball. It’s the most watched program on PBS—EVER. The Third Inning (all the DVDs are named after innings) is all about how ridiculous Babe Ruth was. And by ridiculous I mean drunk.

GET IT.


2. Buy the 1991 World Series on DVDs.

Last summer, some company selling the Twins 1991 World Series DVDs sponsored contests by Twins Blogs to give away 1991 World Series DVDs for free. Apparently, my blog did not have the clout to take part. HOWEVER, after entering every contest on all of my fellow Twins’ bloggers blogs, I BAGGED MYSELF SOME 1991 WORLD SERIES DVDS! WOOT WOOT! (Shout out to the awesome BAT SHATTERERS!)

The DVDs are awesome. You get to see all the crowd shots and special segments from the ‘80s (oh wait—‘90s! My bad). The 1991 graphics, by themselves, are worth the money. You can switch the audio from the TV broadcast to the radio broadcast (“TOUCH ‘EM ALL KIRBY PUCKETT! TOUCH ‘EM ALL KIRBY PUCKETT!”). You can watch Kent Hrbek pull Ron Gant off the bag, then rewind and watch Ron Gant’s momentum pull Kent Hrbek off the bag, then rewind again and… seriously what the f*** happened there?


3. Learn about Japanese Baseball

Japanese baseball is really cool. You watch it and it’s like you’ve entered some bizarre-o world where people eat breakfast at night and dinner in the morning. Which you then realize is super awesome. And you get to see stuff like this:




HOLY CARP!

Unlike the USA, professional baseball is the most popular professional sport in Japan. Really—Japan loves the American pastime more than Americans! That might be why they’ve won every World Baseball Classic ever held.

But just remember—the Hiroshima Toyo Carp are the best.


4. Read Books About Baseball

I recently got around to reading “Moneyball”. Eh, it was okay. But the best part was that I really actually felt baseball was alive again. ALIVE. This is important when combating SAD.

Some good baseball books I recommend:
- “Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game?” by Jimmy Breslin
- “Past Time” by Julies Tygiel
- “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis
- “Eight Men Out” by Eliot Asinof (how “alive” this book makes you feel about baseball is to be debated)

Have you read any other good baseball books? Please comment!


5. Hockey!

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!


6. Go to Law School/Med School

I actually don’t necessarily recommend this route—but it’s pretty good as far as battling seasonal affective disorder. As in “I’m so f****ing busy/stressed out I never even realized baseball stopped.” Plus, you’re doing something other people think is awesome, even though you know there are no jobs out there for law school graduates these days.

F***ing s***, I should have gone to med school.


7. Get a Sun Lamp

This is just what my therapist tells me. I can’t really afford one though—anyone know if this works?


Do you have a solution for SAD? Leave a comment!

TOOT TOOT! Twins Train of SUCK Coming Through!

The Minnesota Twins sucking it up against the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday night.

So far in the month of August, the Twins have won 5 games and lost 17. They were just swept by the Baltimore Orioles—the team with the worst record in the league—at Target Field. The Twins scored all of 4 runs during the series. And yes, it was a four-game series—the first four-game series the Orioles have swept in Minnesota. Ever.

What has been the cause of the Twins suckitude? The following table may offer some insight:

Minnesota Twins Team Statistics August 1st, 2011-August 25th, 2011
Statistic	Twins Performance	Rank Among MLB’s 30 Teams
Hitting
AVG	.233	27th
OBP	.287	30th
SLG	.357	29th
OPS	.643	29th
Pitching
ERA	5.22	28th
ER	112	3rd (more like 27th)
WHIP	1.58	30th
SO	1.15	30th

So basically, every facet of the Twins is sucking harder than a Dyson no-loss-of-suction vacuum cleaner.

Please, Indians, for the love of God, take Jim Thome away from this giant ball of suck.

OMG BOBBLEHEADS

If you aren’t living under a rock, you heard that yesterday was bobblehead day at Target Field. And you know that it wasn’t just any ol’ bobblehead day—it was the EPIC 1991 World Series Game 2 Hrbek-Gant Bobblehead Day everyone and their dog has been waiting for since Hrbek lifted Gant off first base in game 2 of the 1991 World Series (or held the tag on Gant while he fell off base. Whatever.)

I’ve done the bobblehead day thing many times, but holy cow were people crazy for Hrbek-Gant dolls. By the time I arrived at Target Field around 3:30pm, there were already lines circling around the stadium. It was the most people I’ve ever seen already there waiting that early on bobblehead day.

Bobble Bobble

Faced with the already long lines, Mom and I decided to diversify to maximize our chances of receiving at least one bobblehead. Mom got in line at Gate 14, while I walked around to check out the lines on the other side of the stadium at Gate 6 and Gate 3. What I found was amazing: the lines actually ran into each other, so there was basically one long line with a middle point where people were suddenly facing the other direction. People were confused and the line at Gate 6 wasn’t actually that long, so I got in line.

And we waited. And waited.

There is a special moment on every bobblehead day. It’s the moment when—after all the waiting and waiting—the line suddenly starts to move. The ticket scanners start to bing. And you move closer and closer to the gate, where you see that—YES! There are still boxes of bobbleheads left I’mtotallygoingtogetoneSUCCESS!!!

But not everyone gets to experience this moment. Alas, there are the poor souls who showed up at 4:00 pm, or weren’t smart enough to know the lines at Gate 34 and 29 are way longer than the lines at Gates 6, 3, and 14. They get to the front of the line only to have their tickets scanned and realize they just came to the game hours early for no reason.

I met one of these women coming in Gate 14 just as the last bobbleheads had been given out. “There was a family of five in front of me and EACH ONE got a bobblehead,” she lamented. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the way it works, but I tried to put on my sympathetic-stranger face as I clutched my own Hrbek-Gant bobblehead. I’m not sure if she thought I’d take pity and give her my bobblehead, because she could have had mine if she preyed it from MY COLD DEAD HANDS.

After locating my Mom, who was also victorious, we went to the Metropolitan Club to celebrate our obtainment of the Hrbek-Gant Bobblehead Dolls with some libations. All of the tables and chairs were already taken so we had to sit on the floor and play with our dolls.

Two hours later there was a baseball game, and it sucked. The Twins lost to the White Sox 5-3.

The end.



P.S.

Twitter friend and fellow blogger Betsy—who apparently almost had her bobblehead snatched at Hubert's after the game—tweeted a picture of one lucky Twins fan who got a GANT-GANT bobblehead doll. Woah.

The Heat Index is 115 Degrees—Let’s Play a Double Header!

In the stands at Target Field, basically.

Last April, the Twins rescheduled a rained-out game against the Indians for July 18, 2011, setting up the double header that was played yesterday.

Conveniently, the heat index was 115 degrees.

It was hot. It was sooooo hot. How hot was it? Consider:

• The photograph accompanying an Associated Press story on the heat wave was of fans at Target Field.

• Dozens of fans needed medical attention. ESPN 1500 reported the number as fifty for the noon game alone. At least several fans were taken to HCMC.

• Anthony LaPanta and Roy Smalley fried an egg.

• Players were offered IV bags in-between games. Michael Cuddyer opted for one.

• At least one player—Tsuyoshi Nishioka—did not play the second game due to fatigue (although he was later seen inexplicably wearing a sweatshirt during a meet-up with a youth soccer team from Japan, which was in town for the Schwan’s Cup in Blaine).

• The Star Tribune has a poll up asking fans if they miss the Metrodome and its AC ("No" is winning, but not by all that much).

• Oh, and the Twins lost both games of the double header to the first-place Indians.

Playing multiple games in this heat will likely wear the Twins players down significantly. On the bright side, however, Joe Mauer did go 6-for-8 yesterday, raising his batting-average to .290.

The Twins play again today at 7:00pm. The heat index forecast is 113 degrees.

Opinions are like…

This post is about the current debate over replacing Tsuyoshi Nishioka with Trevor Plouffe at shortstop. Yes, I know many of my posts this year have been about Nishi. But no, I’m not in love with him and he isn’t my favorite player. I just find all the hoopla with him especially interesting. And I’m addicted to Google Translate. Seriously. (Side note: I just realized today that when Google-Translated Japanese reports on the Twins mention “Libya,” they are actually referring to Ben Revere.)

Over the past couple days, it seems everyone has expressed some sort of opinion on Tsuyoshi. Aaron Gleeman is worried, but still thinks it is too early to write Nishioka off. Sid Hartman talked with Chiba Lotte Marine president Ryuzo Setoyama—a close personal friend in town to present Tsuyoshi Nishioka with his 2010 championship ring—and he thought Nishioka needs to relax and will in time become a good major leaguer. Tom Powers of the Pioneer Press second-guessed the Twins’ decision to sign Nishi, but also reserved the right to second-guess his second-guess in case Nishi improves. Phil Mackey of ESPN 1500 talked about some stat-head gobbledegook that apparently proves Nishioka isn't actually as good as he played last year. Nick Nelson of Twinscentric advocated sending Nishioka to AAA and calling Plouffe back up to play shortstop. Twins Outsider advocated against replacing Nishioka with Plouffe, believing it wouldn’t be an upgrade.

And, of course, the ever delightful Jim Souhan took a little break from calling Joe Mauer an overpaid, lazy son-of-a-[redacted] to verbally poop all over Nishioka.

In fact, Souhan’s remarks were so scathing they were quoted and described by several Japanese media outlets. One report went so far as to describe the STAR TRIBUNE WEBSITE COMMENTS on Souhan’s article. So now the Japanese are really in-the-know.

Curious as to what Japanese fans thought, I googled around until I found a Japanese message board post commenting on Souhan’s remarks. Now, I don’t know exactly what was being said because I don’t know Japanese. But what I did discern was pretty interesting—the comments left by Japanese fans seemed pretty much the same as the comments by American fans: "Nishioka has been painful to watch," "It’s still too early to judge Nishioka," "Nishioka is just another Kaz Matsui," "Nishioka will come around," "Joe Mauer is batting even worse than Nishioka," "Nishioka should be sent to the minors," and "Come home Nishioka!" I even found a comment suggesting Plouffe as a replacement (comment number 889).

So yes, opinions are like... well, you know. We all have them.

Here’s my opinion: Nishioka has only played 19 major league games. Replacing Nishi with Plouffe is not going to propel the Twins to a division championship. I’m not convinced Plouffe’s minor league numbers overshadow his major league struggles. Nishioka did alright in spring training and in his minor league rehab stint; I’m not convinced the Twins need to send him to the minors. Gardenhire and the Twins are 100% justified in treating these two very different players in a different manner. Everyone knew Nishioka would have quite an adjustment period, and I certainly didn’t expect that period to be over in fewer than the equivalent of three weeks of major league games. The Twins suck this year anyway. Just let the kid play.

I believe that whether Nishioka can succeed in the majors will depend in a large part on whether we start to see him making adjustments in the coming weeks, even if those adjustments don’t necessarily fix everything right away. I just want to see, for now, what his effort and ability at adapting will be. From everything I’ve heard and read, he seems to have a good disposition for making changes. The story of how being cut from the World Baseball Classic team in 2009 and struggling later that season caused Nishi to reflect on his playing and lifestyle, and then go on to have a career year in 2010, makes me think he has a promising reaction to failure.

Adjustments can start with Nishioka swinging the bat without looking like the final stages in a game of Jenga. Seriously. It's freaking me out Nishi.

So yes—maybe Nishioka will end up just being another Kaz Matsui. But maybe he won’t. No one knows what will happen, but feel free to leave a comment with your opinion.