The Way the Ball Bounces (Twins 2 Royals 7 – Game 102)

With the trade talk making the Minnesota Twins look like the garage sale everybody drives past, baseball kept being baseball. The game sounded great in my car, with the window down, and a few hints of fall in the breeze.

Provus described a routine foul ball and it reminded me how elegant but complicated the game is. The ball goes in the air, affected by the way it was thrown, the way it was hit, and the atmospheric conditions with which it’s forced to contend. Universal truths, but so many ways for a ball to bounce.

The nostalgia lasted about as long as Pelfrey did. I stopped seeing the forest and started seeing the trees (trees always being a sore subject for lovers of Target Field). I quit listening. When baseball has no chance at a postseason, you really just have to be there.

Who Traded Catcher Robin? (Twins 3 Royals 4– Game 103)

Butera is no longer a Minnesota Twin, but Justin Morneau is safe for now. Waiver wire wildness is on its way, and the Twins might still shed a player or two from their roster now that BreakEvening is totally unrealistic.

Drew Butera was Robin on a team without a Batman. The boy wonder had his moments, and definitely handled his business behind the plate, but sidekicks need a different class of hero than the Twins have.

Twins lose another one to the Royals, too. In the pop music world, there’s a song called “Royals” by Lorde. The ditty praises low-brow living, but this time it’s the Kansas City boys are showing more upward mobility.

(Twins 2 Royals 7 – Game 104)

Didn’t the Twins already lose 7-2 to the Royals this series? Is this like when college students just copy and paste old homework assignments and pass it off as brand new?

While the door was still slamming shut from Butera’s departure, Scott Diamond and Aaron Hicks found out there is more than one way to exit a major league ballpark. The Aaron Hicks story is filled with false starts and painful slumps. I still think he gets it, and at least this means we get to see Oswaldo Arcia again.

Diamond, though. A year of broken dreams is rough, and it scrubs away at a magical year of exceeding expectations until that story’s completely scraped away. Whatever comes back from Rochester will be a different man. Harder, perhaps, but maybe wiser and better as well.

I was just lamenting the uprooted firs the other day.

Great piece. Haven't they play 105 games, though?