Okay it is August and the Twins have kept us around and speculating since Spring Training. Who will be cut, what FA will be brought in, will the minor leaguers get a chance, will Dozier's 1/2 year of brilliance begin soon? Are we buyers or sellers, who will be our all-star, will anyone take our deadwood at Trade Deadline. Now what?

The Twins are 9 games back in the Central and perhaps even more telling they are 13.5 back in the wild card. At 49 - 57 the Twins now have 56 games left. Being just an 8 fame winning streak from 500 what are the chances of strong finish? Yawn - does it matter.

The new acquisitions are ready to contribute to the big club in about 5 years, the best players in the minors in 2 years.

The Twins still have Belisle taking innings. Why? They still have slugger Morrison and his 193 BA taking regular ABs - Why? I believe DFA was created for these two.

Any reason that Romero and Gonsalves are not in the rotation for the rest of this waste year? Is there some logic that it is better to go with Belisle, Rodney, and Reed than some of our minor league arms? Is there any reason Rooker should not get a preview rather than Morrison?

Is there no one in the minors who could benefit from removing Wilson at Catcher? Other than seeing new talent and getting a preview of better times what does the rest of the season mean? I know the Vikings are about to start playing exhibitions that are even more pathetic than our chances to catch Cleveland, but at least there are individual goals for the players on the Twins. Or we can watch Thibodeau in daily debates with his best player as we wait the highly anticipated (cough-cough) Timberwolves, or switch over to the 8th place United.

Maybe a trip to the lake, a walk in the woods (my choices) are the best choices. Meditation about what it means to be a Twins fan. Our all-time record puts us 101 games below 500 - maybe that is our destiny. The state parks await. Or the state fair with everything on a stick can take away our baseball blues. A concert or two, or a trip to the minor leagues to see what the young Twins look like (and please do not repeat that we have built up our minors so we can use them for trades). Look for hope before the leaves turn, the wind shifts and the flakes fall.

We know that there are a lot of fans with the same doldrums. Most of them entered the season without hope and that is the hardest part. Baseball is such a tease.

And, of course, there are the teams like the Cubs, Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees that should be put in one division so that they can beat each other up and give the rest of us a real chance.

Enjoy the sunshine, harvest your garden, check Twins Daily for new stories and let the radio put the Twins in the background while you sit on the deck and remember what a gorgeous place we live in.