Game Thread: Twins vs. Indians, 6/17 @ 1:10 and again at 7:10

[Dave The Dastardly]

 

 

Once More Unto The Breach

 

 

I grew up in a baseball town. We had Little League, Midgets, Legion ball, a traveling town team, high school teams and a semi-pro team for adults. We grew up on baseball, probably would’ve grown up faster if they’d served mash potatoes and gravy with the baseballs, but we cut our teeth on baseball, lost a few, too. Teeth I mean. We had lots of dentists in town. All baseball fans.

 

I think I set the record for being the tallest shortstop ever to play Midgets. The tallest midget. There’s something to be proud of.

 

I stood 6’ 1” in my baseball socks. You might say I was head and shoulders above my junior high teammates who spent their time standing on their tiptoes trying to impress the girls our age, who, in one of nature’s cruelest flukes, were all taller than they were. They didn’t see eye-to-eye, but what the boys did see at eye level allowed them to stare without being obvious about it.

 

The Midget coaches, for some unfathomable reason, tried me in center field, despite the fact I had always been an infielder. They soon learned why I had always been an infielder, I didn’t have the arm for playing the outfield. My cut-off guy needed a cut-off guy.

 

But I was pretty good with a Nellie Fox bat in my hands so I was moved back to infield duties. First base seemed like a likely position, tall guys make big targets and you can nickname them “Stretch” and it doesn’t sound incongruous and that’s every coach’s goal; not to sound incongruous. One coach told me I was so tall I could stretch down to second base and they could just hand me a double play ball. He was prone to exaggeration, but he never sounded incongruous.

 

However a couple of games into the season the coaches realized the team had a more pressing need than a tall first basemen nicknamed “Stretch”; a shortstop that could actually “stop” a hit ball. And a shortstop that can’t “stop” a ball does sounds incongruous. Which we have learned is something coaches prefer to avoid.

 

Since I’d been doing a lot of scooping at first base, our third baseman also could have used a cut-off man, the coaches, in their constant search for congruity, decided to move Stretch to short, their reasoning being that if nothing else I could just lay down, stretch between second and third and block any hot grounder hit to that side of the infield, thus at least preventing doubles. Which usually wind up as runs scored.

 

Unfortunately, I had just invested all my bean-walking money in a first basemen’s mitt and bean-walking season was over. That well had gone dry. So despite the incongruousness, I played shortstop wearing a first basemen’s mitt and the former shortstop who couldn’t field played first base with an infielder’s glove.

 

This made the coaches self-conscious, you know, because it was incongruous, so some of them decided to coach the other teams or stay home and mow their lawns instead of hanging out at the ballpark. I mean what coach wanted to be associated with a team that featured a bean-pole wearing a first baseman’s mitt playing shortstop?

 

The thing was, despite my gangly appearance, I was quick-footed and had lightening-like reflexes. Okay, maybe not lightening-like. Maybe more like short-circuit like reflexes. The kind of short-circuit that comes from inadvertently and simultaneously touching both the black and white wires when replacing the electric outlet in the bathroom that’s supposed to be on a GFI circuit but isn’t. Don’t ask me how I know about that. It’s not a proud moment.

 

Anyway, as a shortstop I sucked up hot grounders like a Dyson vacuum. I could play deep in the hole and still cover just about everything between second and third. Back-hand, fore-hand, worm-killer, short hop, between hops, hell, I even stopped a line drive with my throat once. Not that I would recommend doing that. I went the next two games without being able to chant “hum, babe, chuck in there big fella, this guy can’t hit”, much to the relief of the opposing teams, most of the fans and our own pitcher.

 

Yep, I was a helluva fielder. Gold Glove material.

 

I just had this one little problem; I had a tendency to rush my throws. Which usually meant the ball would clear the leaping first baseman by six feet and plunk the fat lady in the seventh row of the first baseline bleachers in the right ear while she was still looking towards home plate and digging into her popcorn bag wondering where the hell the ball had gotten off to.

 

I’d make an outstanding stop deep in the hole and the fans would go “Ahhh!” in amazement. Then they’d watch my throw to first sail over the first baseman’s glove and clear out four and a half rows in the bleacher section and they’d go “ohhhhh”.

 

It got to be such a routine that one of the local wags started calling me Ahh-Ohh. Which, after I’d airmailed a couple of throws and the fans had consumed a couple of Grain Belts, started to sound more like “A$$hole” than Ahh-Ohh. But only to the untrained ear; like the fat lady with the mashed right one. Though I think she may have been more deliberate with her speech pattern.

 

The thing was, our coaches, usually a stray dad or two that just happened to be at the ballpark so they wouldn’t have to mow the lawn that evening, never taught me how to set my feet or how to get a four-seam grip on the baseball before I threw to first. I caught it quick and got rid of it quick. After that it was out of my hands... as well as the first baseman’s.

 

But what eventually ended my baseball career wasn’t the occasional errant throw... well okay, maybe more than occasional. Maybe a couple three times per game. Usually in clutch situations.

 

Anyway, what ended my baseball career was my bat’s fear of curve balls.

 

 

Which brings me in my usual roundabout manner to today’s game with the dreaded Cleveland Indians. Pedro Cerrano isn’t in the Indians line-up, but whenever the Twins play Cleveland I can’t help wonder if JoBoo isn’t in one of the Indians’ lockers, smoking a cigar and sipping on rum. And I also dream how I could’ve made the pros if I had JoBoo back there with me in Midget ball when I was an incongruous shortstop. Who knows, with the right incentive, he might have made my Nellie Fox bat not afraid of curve balls.

 

The fly in that ointment however was that despite being a tall Midget I still wouldn’t have been old enough to buy rum for JoBoo. My dad however always kept a case of Grain Belt in the basement for those nights when he and other World War II vets would gather around our kitchen table to play poker and tell lies, mostly about how each of them won the war single-handedly. On those nights, my next oldest brother and I were drafted into running full bottles of Grain Belt from the basement to the kitchen, and returning empty bottles from the kitchen back to the basement. For which we were often reward handsomely; forty or fifty cents for an evenings’ work, which in those days was enough bread for two nights at the movies (double-features), a bag of popcorn and a pop.

 

And as me and the Great Goose discovered one such beer-drinking vet night, quite accidentally of course, that as the night advanced the vets were incapable of noticing how many bottles of Grain Belt we were sent to retrieve from the basement actually made it up to the kitchen still “full”.

 

Those purloined sips of beer were our first taste of sin. Been sliding down that slippery slope ever since.

 

Anyway, I don’t know if JoBoo would have worked his magic for a bottle of illicit Grain Belt, but considering how that brew seemed to work magic for the vets in the kitchen, it would have been worth a try. Who knows, JoBoo might have made me into a homerun slugger. Or he might’ve turned me into a real midget...

 

 

Lesson #10 From the Dastard’s Book of the Painfully Obvious:

 

There is no magic in life, a man’s just got to know his own limitations.

 

Which exponentially also applies to baseball teams. The Twins limitation? Pitching. As readily displayed this weekend. So we either have to steal JoBoo from the Indians’ locker room this morning and pour Grain Belt down his throat, or... put our catcher on the pitcher’s mound.

 

And that’s incongruous.

 

 

The much ballyhooed Adam Wilk (ERA 6.57) fresh from taking the “cure” at Rochester takes the mound for the Twins in the first game of today’s double-hinder with the semi-reliable Adalberto Mejia, he of the 8 earned runs in his last outing, climbs the sacrificial altar in the nightcap. Speaking of nightcaps... you got any beer in your basement? My knees are shot but for the right incentive I can still climb stairs.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

 

 

The much ballyhooed Adam Wilk (ERA 6.57) fresh from taking the “cure” at Rochester takes the mound for the Twins in the first game of today’s double-hinder with the semi-reliable Adalberto Mejia, he of the 8 earned runs in his last outing, climbs the sacrificial altar in the nightcap. Speaking of nightcaps... you got any beer in your basement? My knees are shot but for the right incentive I can still climb stairs.

 

After reading this, I might need to stock up on rum.... or something harder.

[wsnydes]

 

After reading this, I might need to stock up on rum.... or something harder.

I'll have more scotch by first game, first pitch.  Hopefully I won't have to go get more by second game, first pitch.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

I just had this one little problem; I had a tendency to rush my throws. Which usually meant the ball would clear the leaping first baseman by six feet and plunk the fat lady in the seventh row of the first baseline bleachers in the right ear while she was still looking towards home plate and digging into her popcorn bag wondering where the hell the ball had gotten off to.

 

I’d make an outstanding stop deep in the hole and the fans would go “Ahhh!” in amazement. Then they’d watch my throw to first sail over the first baseman’s glove and clear out four and a half rows in the bleacher section and they’d go “ohhhhh”.

 

It got to be such a routine that one of the local wags started calling me Ahh-Ohh. Which, after I’d airmailed a couple of throws and the fans had consumed a couple of Grain Belts, started to sound more like “A$$hole” than Ahh-Ohh. But only to the untrained ear; like the fat lady with the mashed right one. Though I think she may have been more deliberate with her speech pattern.

 

The thing was, our coaches, usually a stray dad or two that just happened to be at the ballpark so they wouldn’t have to mow the lawn that evening, never taught me how to set my feet or how to get a four-seam grip on the baseball before I threw to first. I caught it quick and got rid of it quick. After that it was out of my hands... as well as the first baseman's.

Trevor Plouffe the Dastardly, is that you?

[USAFChief]

Outstanding, DTD!

[Halsey Hall]

I too used  a Nellie Fox bat, nice thick handle!

[Halsey Hall]

 

 

Trevor Plouffe the Dastardly, is that you?

Former Twins third baseman Trevor Plouffe reportedly was designated for assignment by the last-place Oakland’s A’s on Thursday, his 31st birthday. Plouffe, who signed a one-year, $5.25 million deal this winter after the Twins cut him loose, was hitting .214 with a career-worst .634 combined on-base/slugging percentage.

[USAFChief]

I too used  a Nellie Fox bat, nice thick handle!

Me too! A lot of us in the over 60 league were big fans of Nelllie when he first came up.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Former Twins third baseman Trevor Plouffe reportedly was designated for assignment by the last-place Oakland’s A’s on Thursday, his 31st birthday. Plouffe, who signed a one-year, $5.25 million deal this winter after the Twins cut him loose, was hitting .214 with a career-worst .634 combined on-base/slugging percentage.

so your telling me it's too soon?

[wsnydes]

 

so your telling me it's too soon?

No, he's foreshadowing the upcoming Twins/Plouffe reunion.

[Halsey Hall]

 

so your telling me it's too soon?

No, just so happy he wasn't with us anymore.  We were to late to get rid of him.  He gone!

[Halsey Hall]

 

Me too! A lot of us in the over 60 league were big fans of Nelllie when he first came up.

Nellie Fox.  He was involved in the greatest catch I've ever seen.  At the old Met, I'd go early to watch bp. I was down the left field line in the corner standing next to the fence. Nellie was shagging balls out there. One came his way, and this little kid standing next to me hollered "throw me a ball". Nellie, with his cheek all puffed out full of tobacco, fired the ball at the kid. In a flash the kid stuck a few fingers through the chain link fence and the ball stuck between his fingers. I couldn't believe it! Nellie almost swallowed his chaw. So we are standing there looking at the ball and wondering what next. All of a sudden the kid lets the ball drop and drops to his stomach on the ground. The bottom of the fence was hinged so they could move that section to drive cars onto the field. He pulled that section up and grabbed the ball and left with a big grin on his face. Greatest catch I'd ever seen.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

No, just so happy he wasn't with us anymore. We were to late to get rid of him. He gone!

i recall while I was singing his praises the last couple years, you were not. I guess history is written by the victors

[wsnydes]

 

No, he's foreshadowing the upcoming Twins/Plouffe reunion.

I'm just reading now that the Rays have acquired Plouffe.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

JoBoo.jpeg

 

 

Once More Unto The Breach

 

 

I grew up in a baseball town. We had Little League, Midgets, Legion ball, a traveling town team, high school teams and a semi-pro team for adults. We grew up on baseball, probably would’ve grown up faster if they’d served mash potatoes and gravy with the baseballs, but we cut our teeth on baseball, lost a few, too. Teeth I mean. We had lots of dentists in town. All baseball fans.

 

 

I think I set the record for being the tallest shortstop ever to play Midgets. The tallest midget. There’s something to be proud of.

 

 

I stood 6’ 1” in my baseball socks. You might say I was head and shoulders above my junior high teammates who spent their time standing on their tiptoes trying to impress the girls our age, who, in one of nature’s cruelest flukes, were all taller than they were. They didn’t see eye-to-eye, but what the boys did see at eye level allowed them to stare without being obvious about it.

 

 

The Midget coaches, for some unfathomable reason, tried me in center field, despite the fact I had always been an infielder. They soon learned why I had always been an infielder, I didn’t have the arm for playing the outfield. My cut-off guy needed a cut-off guy.

 

 

But I was pretty good with a Nellie Fox bat in my hands so I was moved back to infield duties. First base seemed like a likely position, tall guys make big targets and you can nickname them “Stretch” and it doesn’t sound incongruous and that’s every coach’s goal; not to sound incongruous. One coach told me I was so tall I could stretch down to second base and they could just hand me a double play ball. He was prone to exaggeration, but he never sounded incongruous.

 

 

However a couple of games into the season the coaches realized the team had a more pressing need than a tall first basemen nicknamed “Stretch”; a shortstop that could actually “stop” a hit ball. And a shortstop that can’t “stop” a ball does sounds incongruous. Which we have learned is something coaches prefer to avoid.

 

 

Since I’d been doing a lot of scooping at first base, our third baseman also could have used a cut-off man, the coaches, in their constant search for congruity, decided to move Stretch to short, their reasoning being that if nothing else I could just lay down, stretch between second and third and block any hot grounder hit to that side of the infield, thus at least preventing doubles. Which usually wind up as runs scored.

 

 

Unfortunately, I had just invested all my bean-walking money in a first basemen’s mitt and bean-walking season was over. That well had gone dry. So despite the incongruousness, I played shortstop wearing a first basemen’s mitt and the former shortstop who couldn’t field played first base with an infielder’s glove.

 

 

This made the coaches self-conscious, you know, because it was incongruous, so some of them decided to coach the other teams or stay home and mow their lawns instead of hanging out at the ballpark. I mean what coach wanted to be associated with a team that featured a bean-pole wearing a first baseman’s mitt playing shortstop?

 

 

The thing was, despite my gangly appearance, I was quick-footed and had lightening-like reflexes. Okay, maybe not lightening-like. Maybe more like short-circuit like reflexes. The kind of short-circuit that comes from inadvertently and simultaneously touching both the black and white wires when replacing the electric outlet in the bathroom that’s supposed to be on a GFI circuit but isn’t. Don’t ask me how I know about that. It’s not a proud moment.

 

 

Anyway, as a shortstop I sucked up hot grounders like a Dyson vacuum. I could play deep in the hole and still cover just about everything between second and third. Back-hand, fore-hand, worm-killer, short hop, between hops, hell, I even stopped a line drive with my throat once. Not that I would recommend doing that. I went the next two games without being able to chant “hum, babe, chuck in there big fella, this guy can’t hit”, much to the relief of the opposing teams, most of the fans and our own pitcher.

 

 

Yep, I was a helluva fielder. Gold Glove material.

 

 

I just had this one little problem; I had a tendency to rush my throws. Which usually meant the ball would clear the leaping first baseman by six feet and plunk the fat lady in the seventh row of the first baseline bleachers in the right ear while she was still looking towards home plate and digging into her popcorn bag wondering where the hell the ball had gotten off to.

 

 

I’d make an outstanding stop deep in the hole and the fans would go “Ahhh!” in amazement. Then they’d watch my throw to first sail over the first baseman’s glove and clear out four and a half rows in the bleacher section and they’d go “ohhhhh”.

 

 

It got to be such a routine that one of the local wags started calling me Ahh-Ohh. Which, after I’d airmailed a couple of throws and the fans had consumed a couple of Grain Belts, started to sound more like “A$$hole” than Ahh-Ohh. But only to the untrained ear; like the fat lady with the mashed right one. Though I think she may have been more deliberate with her speech pattern.

 

 

The thing was, our coaches, usually a stray dad or two that just happened to be at the ballpark so they wouldn’t have to mow the lawn that evening, never taught me how to set my feet or how to get a four-seam grip on the baseball before I threw to first. I caught it quick and got rid of it quick. After that it was out of my hands... as well as the first baseman’s.

 

 

But what eventually ended my baseball career wasn’t the occasional errant throw... well okay, maybe more than occasional. Maybe a couple three times per game. Usually in clutch situations.

 

 

Anyway, what ended my baseball career was my bat’s fear of curve balls.

 

 

Which brings me in my usual roundabout manner to today’s game with the dreaded Cleveland Indians. Pedro Cerrano isn’t in the Indians line-up, but whenever the Twins play Cleveland I can’t help wonder if JoBoo isn’t in one of the Indians’ lockers, smoking a cigar and sipping on rum. And I also dream how I could’ve made the pros if I had JoBoo back there with me in Midget ball when I was an incongruous shortstop. Who knows, with the right incentive, he might have made my Nellie Fox bat not afraid of curve balls.

 

 

The fly in that ointment however was that despite being a tall Midget I still wouldn’t have been old enough to buy rum for JoBoo. My dad however always kept a case of Grain Belt in the basement for those nights when he and other World War II vets would gather around our kitchen table to play poker and tell lies, mostly about how each of them won the war single-handedly. On those nights, my next oldest brother and I were drafted into running full bottles of Grain Belt from the basement to the kitchen, and returning empty bottles from the kitchen back to the basement. For which we were often reward handsomely; forty or fifty cents for an evenings’ work, which in those days was enough bread for two nights at the movies (double-features), a bag of popcorn and a pop.

 

 

And as me and the Great Goose discovered one such beer-drinking vet night, quite accidentally of course, that as the night advanced the vets were incapable of noticing how many bottles of Grain Belt we were sent to retrieve from the basement actually made it up to the kitchen still “full”.

 

 

Those purloined sips of beer were our first taste of sin. Been sliding down that slippery slope ever since.

 

 

Anyway, I don’t know if JoBoo would have worked his magic for a bottle of illicit Grain Belt, but considering how that brew seemed to work magic for the vets in the kitchen, it would have been worth a try. Who knows, JoBoo might have made me into a homerun slugger. Or he might’ve turned me into a real midget...

 

 

Lesson #10 From the Dastard’s Book of the Painfully Obvious:

 

 

There is no magic in life, a man’s just got to know his own limitations.

 

 

Which exponentially also applies to baseball teams. The Twins limitation? Pitching. As readily displayed this weekend. So we either have to steal JoBoo from the Indians’ locker room this morning and pour Grain Belt down his throat, or... put our catcher on the pitcher’s mound.

 

 

And that’s incongruous.

 

 

The much ballyhooed Adam Wilk (ERA 6.57) fresh from taking the “cure” at Rochester takes the mound for the Twins in the first game of today’s double-hinder with the semi-reliable Adalberto Mejia, he of the 8 earned runs in his last outing, climbs the sacrificial altar in the nightcap. Speaking of nightcaps... you got any beer in your basement? My knees are shot but for the right incentive I can still climb stairs.

Did you play basketball?

 

 

When meeting a tall person for the first time, you should always wait for them to finish talking, and then ask them if they played basketball.

[jimmer]

From the last post in yesterday's game thread:

 

'Edit: I looked up the game log on Brooks. Carrasco had 6 balls out of the strike zone called strikes, and zero balls in the strike zone called balls.

 

Turley had 5 balls out of the strike zone called strikes, and 4 balls in the strike zone called balls.

 

That's 5% of Carrasco's pitches called wrong, and that's 12% of Turley's pitches called wrong.'

 

Got to wonder why the great pitch framer, Castro, couldn't help in this regard. :-)

[wsnydes]

 

Did you play basketball?


When meeting a tall person for the first time, you should always wait for them to finish talking, and then ask them if they played basketball.

I'm 5'-4", I ask nearly everyone if they played basketball.

[David HK]

 

From the last post in yesterday's game thread:

 

'Edit: I looked up the game log on Brooks. Carrasco had 6 balls out of the strike zone called strikes, and zero balls in the strike zone called balls.

 

Turley had 5 balls out of the strike zone called strikes, and 4 balls in the strike zone called balls.

 

That's 5% of Carrasco's pitches called wrong, and that's 12% of Turley's pitches called wrong.'

 

Got to wonder why the great pitch framer, Castro, couldn't help in this regard. :-)

If I had a Grain Belt right now, it woulda gone right out my nose....  *snort*

[David HK]

 

The much ballyhooed Adam Wilk (ERA 6.57) fresh from taking the “cure” at Rochester takes the mound for the Twins in the first game of today’s double-hinder with the semi-reliable Adalberto Mejia, he of the 8 earned runs in his last outing, climbs the sacrificial altar in the nightcap. Speaking of nightcaps... you got any beer in your basement? My knees are shot but for the right incentive I can still climb stairs.

A tip o' the old cap to you, sir, for that fine opening.  

 

Come to think of it, as long as you're down there, I could use a bottle of Premium.  And a can of Snap-e-Tom to mix in a little.  And why don't you go ahead and grab one for yourself!

[Jerr]

 

I too used  a Nellie Fox bat, nice thick handle!

I traded 15 baseball cards to get a Nellie Fox card hopefully to get more from my older neighbor....well, I didn't and he has told me his cards are in a bank vault....mine????? Sold them for pennies years and years ago....and I had some great ones.....never thought I'd see Nellie Fox on here...such a great site and those memories   

 

 

      

[Oldgoat_MN]

Great start to a game thread, Dastardly!

[Intramural Legend]

Over / Under 9 innings out of the bullpen today? I'm taking the over.

[Danchat]

If I've got my numbers right, the Twins gave given up a run in the first inning in the last six of seven games.

[Darius]

From the last post in yesterday's game thread:

 

'Edit: I looked up the game log on Brooks. Carrasco had 6 balls out of the strike zone called strikes, and zero balls in the strike zone called balls.

 

Turley had 5 balls out of the strike zone called strikes, and 4 balls in the strike zone called balls.

 

That's 5% of Carrasco's pitches called wrong, and that's 12% of Turley's pitches called wrong.'

 

Got to wonder why the great pitch framer, Castro, couldn't help in this regard. :-)

I think that has more to do with the umpire's pre-conceived thoughts about the guy on the mound, myself. If you swap Gomes and Castro onto the other team, I'm not sure anything changes.

[DrNeau]

Stupid Adam Wilk Booth.

[Darius]

Over / Under 9 innings out of the bullpen today? I'm taking the over.

You could've thrown that out for just the first game before it started, and I wouldn't be totally comfortable with the under.

[Intramural Legend]

Live updates to the odds - 14 innings?

 

You could've thrown that out for just the first game before it started, and I wouldn't be totally comfortable with the under.

 

[Huddy]

Bald with a bushy beard fetish?

[Blake]

 

Did you play basketball?


When meeting a tall person for the first time, you should always wait for them to finish talking, and then ask them if they played basketball.

Yeah, and the correct answer to you short people asking us tall people if we play basketball is to look  down and ask if you're a jockey.

 

(I've got a 7' nephew who came up with that one. He may even have a t-shirt)

[Aggies7]

The "apparent" fact that there is NO ONE better than these last two SP's in our entire organization should quell any doubts about how badly the previous administration F-ed things up. It's on full display this weekend.

 

Either that or we have better people we aren't calling up for unknown reasons.