Whether I watch the Twins on the television, listen on the radio, or follow along with Gameday on my phone, I can assure you I am doing my part. Yet, somehow, this team is failing.

When Twins players stand in the batter's box, I say "Home Run." I mean, I actually say the words out loud. And I nod once, with my chin in the air, to let that player know I am as sincere as Linus van Pelt singing praise in the pumpkin patch.

The crappy thing is they aren't hitting them when I say they should. It forces me to live in an empty baseball world where the path to first base is covered in chalk and bitter existential ennui. At some special time, I'm demand to scream "called it" -- as is my birthright as a homer fan.

I'm calling victories for pitchers, too. I do this in an even more elaborate way, explaining which pitch will earn the strike-out or how the next pitch will drop two runners with some 6-4-3 magic. Then, as you might expect, those home runs show up and the other team's players prance around the bases like some ancient black and white cartoon.

Clearly, you other fans deserve more. I will not let you down. I will enunciate, in case our hometown nine think "home run" really means "strike out looking . . . again!" I will simplify the cheers I make for our pitchers to a very clear, if inelegant, "please make the man with the bat go back and sit down in his dugout with sadness and zero runs."

If it's not me, gang? Then the failure could be back, And you can't cheer your way out of the failure. We'll all spend twice as much on food, but we'll be eating it at home because it's too sad to see the failure in person.

So blame me, because none of us can take another season like we usually get.