Hello Twins fans and fanatics!

My name is Melissa, and I’m romantic about baseball, the Twins, and Dollar Dog Night.

I'm so excited to be starting up this blog to share my hot takes, musings, and ramblings about all things Twins baseball. 

My deep love for the Twins comes from a baseball and softball-centric upbringing. 

Growing up, softball truly was the love of my life. Like many little girls, my mom first tried putting me in dance. My dear readers, I *hated* dance. One of my most vivid memories entails me angrily crawling around on the floor of my mom’s minivan as she drove me to another dreaded dance rehearsal in a stuffy church basement. It was not a match. 

So, my parents stuck me in tee ball; my older sister played softball and of course I wanted to be ~just like her.~ I loved softball more than anything- I loved bunting and sliding, I loved practicing and executing rundowns but NOT getting into them, I loved my Jennie Finch glove, I loved tournaments and my jersey tan lines, I loved playing CF and 3B, I loved the number 12, and I loved being part of a team. Before I traded all my fast twitch muscles to the devil for the slow twitch marathon runner muscles I have today, I was an incredibly fast baserunner. Always the fastest on my team and usually the fastest overall at softball tryouts. In softball my favorite thing of all was stealing home- I’d take a larger than usual leadoff off third base aka the hot corner. The catcher would shoot me daggers and think ‘what the heck is this girl doing?’ and then the second her wrist snapped to throw the ball back to the pitcher, I’d be charging full speed towards home. I think I made it in safety every time.

Growing up, and thanks to my parents, I went to a myriad of games at my beloved Metrodome. I have fond memories of arriving hours before weekend games to line up for Hormel bobblehead or bat giveaways and staying after the game to run the bases on Sundays. I think it’s an interesting cultural change that even in the past 10 or 15 or so years that people don’t really go crazy over these giveaways of material collectibles anymore and that teams don’t do as many of them. I’m admittedly quite a nostalgic person, so look for a blog post where I wax nostalgic about my favorite parts of the Dome sometime soon. 

We also went to Twins fest regularly, where I have wonderful memories of meeting players like Harmon Killebrew, who yes, was truly every bit as kind and warm as everyone says, and I attended uncountable free autograph signings at Cub Foods and Twins Pro Shop locations. Again, you don’t really see autograph signings like that anymore, and if you do, you might have to pay for the autograph. 

These days, I’m an attorney, competitive Nordic (cross country) skier, marathon runner, and ski coach.  I love golfing and have to be frequently reminded to not “kill the ball”- a vestige from my softball days and a desire to swing as hard as I possible. I am a fierce advocate for women in sports and am proud to mentor both the boys and girls I coach.  

I attend around 30+ Twins home games a year, a handful or two of Saints games, and I’m hoping to road trip out to Chicago to catch a White Sox beatdown with some college friends this season as well. I love going to Spring Training and have a goal to visit as many MLB stadiums as possible. 

Some of my hot takes and views include a moderate aversion to modern analytics and using them to “overmanage” (especially in the playoffs), a disappointment in the disappearance  of bunting, an annoyance in the Twins’ aversion to spend money on quality starting pitching, a belief that "The Trop" is a wonderful stadium, and being kind of bummed that the NL added the universal DH. 

That’s more than enough about me for now. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you around the diamond! (Hopefully.. hop to it, Manfred!)