It's opening day and I'm wearing my Joe Nathan shirt for the tenth year in the row. The Twins are playing the Royals, because the Twins are ALWAYS playing the Royals. Advanced statistics will confirm the Twins play 127% of their games against the Royals, and 75% of those games mean nothing to anybody anyway. But we sure play them, now knowing that all of us can go to Hy-Vee afterwards.

A guy named Duffy is taking the mound for the Royals, which kind of pissing me off. I don't know Duffy, and I have no desire to expend any effort to find two facts I can string together that make it look like I cared.

Our Minnesota Twins lost over 100 games last year and, on their first battle of 2017, a pitcher with a name sounding like pure aw-shucks happiness is going to be come trotting on to the field. Couldn't we have found a team with a pitcher named "Grimm-Reeper" or "Rebuilding-Year?"

I know, everybody's in first place now. Groovy. It was a short weekend and I still remember trying to have meaningful discussions about the team's future while they circled the bases in reverse, like the were slugging runners round the rim of a toilet bowl.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not insulting the players who put in the work and try their best and are probably more frustrated than the average fan can imagine. I just have to spell out my feels because I know some of you out there will pick up what I'm putting down. I love the Twins like I love air and water, but I can't just forget 2016. If my wife had a sexy affair with a guy dressed like my arch-nemesis Sweetums, from the Muppets . . . we would try to work through it. But I would insist on having her deloused and I would leave the house and burn it if I saw one brown muppet hair.

Soon, those blue-billed Royals will emerge from the secret tunnels between their stadium and the Twins, tipping their Morlock bus driver as they exist. It will be the first of 1000 games between these two teams, before the All-Star break. Next, Twins fans will arrive.

"I want to see a double!" a small child will say, and everyone will understand. We love our team to death, but bruised hearts start slow.

-Axel Kohagen