Orioles at Twins A Damn Shame (Game 32) These days, it’s a lot easier to keep up with the Twins when you’re traveling. This can be perilous, however. For example, when the Twins blow a six run lead and you find out in the middle of a friendly conversation with your family. There are words and phrases that desperately need screaming, but politeness dictates you keep your mouth shut. I settled on letting out a wordless scream. I think it did the trick. Later, as we settled in to sleep
Twins at Red Sox Too Old for the Gang at Cheers (Game 28) Home early, with my wife home as well, I started getting a hankering for watching the Twins play at a sports bar. Baseball’s just a little bit better when you’re covered in buffalo sauce and ordering another beer. Except it was Monday. And I’m old. And wings plus beer plus anything else starts to add up to be a decent chunk of change. Don’t get me started on the calories, either. Plus, then you’re surrounded by a lot of people and y
Twins at Cleveland Except Tonight (Game 25) For me, skipping the 10th inning of an extra innings game is like skipping the opener of a rock concert. You usually don’t miss much. Except tonight, when the Twins crapped out in extra inning (singular). Because I am a fan of the heart and not of the head, I assume the Twins will win all games where the score stays close. And when a home run comes flying out of the Magical Land of Parmelee, the Twins just have to win. Except tonight, when t
Twins at Detroit That Was Fast (Game 22) If the Twins have to lose, maybe it’s best they lose quickly so we can all watch a nice movie before we head to bed for the evening. When Kris Atteberry does the postgame report after a brutal Twins loss, it always sounds like the narration on a Civil War documentary. All they’re missing is a lonesome harmonica sound. I don’t like it when Mauer isn’t hitting. It’s like adjusting to a world where the laws of physics aren’t in affect. I did like i
RANGERS AT HOME Have Cap, Will Travel (Game 18) Took the wife to Wits at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, where Michael Ian Black joined the show for the evening. Black is a comedic laser so sharp you can correct people’s vision with his jokes. Wits projects tweets onto the wall before the performance and at intermission. Couple tweeters in attendance used the board as a way of checking the score. Caught a couple Twins caps and jackets in the audience, too. The Wits performance was o
Double-headers are perfect. Ideally, the Twins would play twenty-four hours a day and I could always listen to them on the radio. There's probably some silly reason that wouldn't work, though. Heard about the Arcia home-run on a quick phone check, then listened to enough game to feel like the Twins had it ready to put in their pocket. Then I alternated snippets of radio updates and smart phone monitoring to realize the second game might stay close, but it was probably never going the Twins way
Spent the day with friends I hadn't seen in far too long and observed the Twins cementing a victory, via my phone, on the drive home. Plus, the sun is starting to smack back the zombie hordes of winter snowdrifts. Groovy. There was another Twins fan present at our afternoon gathering, so I felt no shame about checking the score. There are those other times when you have to monitor the boys of summer without getting caught. What's your strategy? The sly peak into your purse or pocket? T
Weather kept Twins baseball off my radio from the game ending Tuesday night until today's 2-1 victory over the White Sox. In that time, the nation struggled to reclaim meaning from tragedy. Locally, winter weather kicked Minnesotan ribs while the state was still down from the last snowstorm. Baseball would've helped. Somehow, the Twins are at .500 again. I haven't looked at any stats, but my gut's telling me their at bats have a little more pep in them than last year. Keeps us going in t
I'm ashamed to admit I used to complain about Joe Mauer five years ago. I was an impressionable baseball fan, and I think I allowed the tough dudes of sports bitchery to get too far inside my head. I picture those men, the constant whiners, as if constantly huddled under bleachers and punching each others' arms to emphasize every point. I think I'm older and wiser now, and I appreciate Joe Mauer a great deal. He's very good in his bad years, and a precision hitting machine when he's at his
I'm happy the Twins won 8-2 over the Angels on a cold and snowy night. I'm even happy Brendan Harris got a home run for the Angels. I always had a soft spot for him when he was a Twin, even if he did find himself on the losing end of an on-field squirrel attack. Mostly, I'm thankful that tonight there was a patch of my fair city where people gathered together to watch an ordered, fair, and safe contest. More people watched the event on their televisions, and other (like me) listened on the ra
Zombies have already been mentioned twice on my Twins 2013 game-by-game blog. This should not surprise anyone. I mean, I'm not Mr. Cowboypants. And I guess it's not surprising the Minnesota Twins had me thinking about zombies again, although not in the same way as the last few times. The Mets' Matt Harvey took a no hitter into the seventh inning. He's a heckuva picture -- Aaron Gleeman's giddy obsession with the hurler reached photoshopping levels during the game. That said, the Twins are
With a ground covered by snow and flakes drifting down from the sky, yesterday made me wonder if spring is coming again and the Twins pitchers and catchers need to report to Florida soon. A double dose of spring training couldn't hurt, right? I tuned into the game when I started in on supper, and Vance Worley had coughed up 10 runs by the time our meal was done. I had a hankering to go to that game, but when I texted the wife to see if she was down for wintery baseball game, her exact words
Another bland game, suffered through on a Minnesota night where the only thing worse than the grey ugliness in the sky is the twenty feet of snow coming next. The Twins didn't plate a run in a game. 11 strikes outs. Swept by the Royals. I sincerely hope we can bury this game under the snow and forget it. Earlier in my day, I enjoyed the Rue Morgue Podcast. Horror expert Andrea Subissati mentioned a Wade Davis, the ethnobiologist whose work regarding voodoo and zombies was the direct inspiratio
With the evening pre-booked, I monitored this Twins game from my cell phone while revisiting cherished David Cronenberg movies from years past. At least, I started to. After it took me days to scroll down through MLB At Bat listings for Mike Pelfrey's first inning, there was no need to devote excessive brain power to watching the Twins continue their swirl down the drain. Three home runs was nice, though. Monitoring the game on your phone is as close as you can come to watching the game wh
I caught the beginning of the Twins/Royals game on my car radio. I parked to catch the first pitch and enjoy shivering memories of watching the Evil Dead remake in the theater. The movie was good, and I finally experienced my horror lover's no-hitter: I watched a scary movie in a theater all by myself. That's right - in a theater devoid of all other human beings. That's a good'n to watch solo, too. If the creepy noises don't get you squirming, the over-the-top gore will have you wiggling in
With one week of 2013 in the books, the Twins have won their first two series of the year and boast a 4-2 record. The mechanism powering these victories seems to rely on the team getting a few lucky bounces per game. If the team doesn't find some stable slugging and more dependable fielding, this burst of good fortune may give way to a mudslide of loss and despair. The real star of Sunday's 4-3 victory of the Twins was Carly Rae Jepsen. The "Call Me Maybe" threw out the first pitch for the
Didn't listen to the Twins game. Had the chance to see the Timberwolves play, and I was lucky enough to see the game where Coach Adelman got his 1000 career victory. The Twins won, too. In our social media world, you never miss the baseball game. My friend and I tuned into it on the radio on the car ride to the game, when things still seemed sluggish for the team in blue. I learned they had taken the lead from a Twins tweet texted directly to my phone, and I learned the game was tied up when
A day after imaging a Twins path to the playoffs, everything awful I was expecting from the team showed up for 9 innings of baseball. Mauer didn't get a hit. The starting pitcher didn't go 5 innings. The bullpen gave out like a bad back. To top it off, the sky filled with snow while the game was on. I didn't catch much of this one - just enough to give me the idea that Liam Hendriks might be a threat to my blood pressure this year. Snow after opening day is like getting your Christmas list t
As Twins broadcast signs off and repeats the 8-2 score, my thoughts turn to a Minnesota Twins playoff run. Don't blame me. I tried to smother them in cynicism and reality. The Twins just have to win games ugly and scrappy for this first third of the season. It's going to take cold weather, weird heroes, and relentless scrappiness. In that time, they sort out their pitching staff. If they can come up with 3 above-average pitchers and then they can grind out some victories. It's not much,
I missed most of this game. I got into my car in time to hear Glen Perkins get all Mama Said Knock You Out on the top half of the ninth. My hopes went up, and Plouffe got on base right as I parked my car. By the time I got inside and let the dog out, the Twins won on a walk-off double from Eduardo Escobar. I thought about tuning into the game for the post-game celebration but, when you miss the moment, you miss the moment. From what I heard of the game, music at Target Field sounds like som
When I sat down in my home office and turned on the Nationals game to hear how Denard Span did with his new team, the sun was friendly and my view was mostly free from snow. By the time I got in my car and tuned into the Twins game, all I could see were piles of snow and gloomy skies. Gray is the official color of being down by two runs. The Twins must have settled in after that, but when I got back in my car I listened to them waste a bases loaded opportunity. Duensing came in and I winced
The Twins take the field tomorrow for the first time in 2013's regular season. It'd be an awful lot easier to find some hope for the year if the snow wasn't so stubborn in getting off of my lawn. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to record my impression of every Twins baseball game on this, my TwinsDaily blog. I'm taking a page from Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan, who documented a Red Sox season in their book Faithful. Red Sox won the World Series when they wrote that book. I'm not holding my br
I've been married for over ten years, so trying to find an emotional connection with this group of Minnesota Twins pitchers is really hard for me. Let me explain. Trying to keep up with the Twins players getting their innings in on the mound feels like trying to keep up with a string of bland blind dates that almost - but don't quite - squash the hope right out of your heart. I know this from single friends. It sounds like there's always something to like in the people stuck playing resta
I've liked Cory Provus from day one. The man calls a good ballgame. He doesn't oversell the drama. He sounds like baseball ought to. Since I've permanently ditched cable for the radio, I've been spending a lot more time listening to Mr. Provus. My opinion hasn't changed. However, I've begun to notice something. He's funny. He's really funny. He isn't flashy about it. He's not about loud voices, zingers, or crazy stories. I can't quote you a kneeslapper to prove my point. But he's funny
While I was moping behind my snowblower, I noticed an unusual formation of snow. I turned off the machine and stepped closer to it. The identify of those piles of snow became clear. You've seen them before, too. They're the smiling, handshaking baseball players whose image lights up when Twins players hit home runs. The players looked at me as if they were waiting for me to speak. "Who will these 2013 Twins be?" I asked. "Who can I cheer for? Who can I believe in?" The figures just kept sh
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?
At this point in the pre-season, I’m just so happy to be seeing games again, I don’t care about the Twins record in 2023. I think they’ll win it all, unrealistically speaking 🙂
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?· 0 replies
