Twins Culture- Breaking the Stereotype

[Don't Feed the Greed Guy]

A lot of this "winning attitude" stuff is just people who either buy into hype created by the national media and their manufactured postseason story lines or think that life imitates sports movies.

 

When a team wins, you hear all about some rah-rah speech before the clinching game. But they don't tend to report the fact that the eventual loser was addressed in the same manner, so a lot of fans jump to the silly conclusion that the pep talk was the difference.

 

Sure, there is hype. The job of the media is not to "create" the hype, but to report on what happened in the clubhouse, AND on the field. There is no hype if there isn't production. The speech makes for great story, but the performance IS the backbone of the story. The grit and character of individuals who rise to the occasion--that's where a qualitative examination of character can't be registered in a quantitative examination of statistics.

 

It's sort of like the gaffe our President (and I am a staunch supporter of President Obama) made when he said, "you didn't build your business, the government did." Well, to follow your line of reasoning, Puckett didn't hit the home run, or make the catch against the plexiglass. The media did.

[BD57]

So disagree with the idea that the 2006 team "choked."

 

Mid season, our playoff starters were going to be Santana, Radke & Liriano. THAT would've been a powerful threesome.

 

By playoff time, two of them were gone - Liriano was out completely, Radke's arm had fallen off. Everything was premised upon Johan winning game #1 - and he got outpitched.

 

No shame or "choke" in that.

[glunn]

Hey all' date='

 

Since this is a qualitative analysis, not quantitative... I'd like to offer four examples of grit that separate the Twins of 87 & 91 from the teams of the 2000's:

 

1. The Big Hrbowski launches Gant off of first in game two of the 1991 series.[img']http://twinsdaily.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSMIt4S4_YKLvaqfleXkaXk1qqFQsoVQCL_t5kGppOm9kWf0jS_g2Z-gQ[/img]

2. Puckett's speech, game 6: "Guys, I just have one announcement to make: You guys should jump on my back tonight. I'm going to carry us."

 

3. Mad Jack Morris pitching 10 innings in game 7, "In the immortal words of the late Marvin Gaye, 'Let's get it on!'"

 

4. Dan Gladden--how's that for a character guy? Check out this blog on The Dazzle Man's fight with Steve Lombardozzi: http://twinsfanfromafar.blogspot.com/2011/06/clubhouse-fights.html

 

That's character, IMHO. The 2012 Twins clubhouse could use some of that.

 

I agree. It is unclear to me who are the clubhouse leaders, or even if there are any.

 

I also endorse the Derek Jeter custom of giving memorabilia to his one night stands -- that one cracked me up. But I would suggest that the married players just give jewelry.

[J-Dog Dungan]

Not sure if you guys saw a post by some website recently, but i read somewhere that Cuddy said that when they played the Yankees, they went in expecting to lose.

[one_eyed_jack]

It's sort of like the gaffe our President (and I am a staunch supporter of President Obama) made when he said' date=' "you didn't build your business, the government did." Well, to follow your line of reasoning, Puckett didn't hit the home run, or make the catch against the plexiglass. The media did.[/quote']

 

 

---Huh? I don't see how following my line of reasoning gets you anywhere near there.

[glunn]

 

It's sort of like the gaffe our President (and I am a staunch supporter of President Obama) made when he said' date=' "you didn't build your business, the government did." Well, to follow your line of reasoning, Puckett didn't hit the home run, or make the catch against the plexiglass. The media did.[/quote']

 

If you indeed support Obama, you will be glad to learn that this was not a gaffe and he never said: "you didn't build your business, the government did."

 

Here is EXACTLY what he said:

 

"If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

 

The people who are twisting what Obama said are trying to mislead the voters.

[glunn]

Not sure if you guys saw a post by some website recently, but i read somewhere that Cuddy said that when they played the Yankees, they went in expecting to lose.

 

I just found a story that looks like what you are talking about -- here is the link.

 

This makes me want a different manager.

[Don't Feed the Greed Guy]

 

It's sort of like the gaffe our President (and I am a staunch supporter of President Obama) made when he said' date=' "you didn't build your business, the government did." Well, to follow your line of reasoning, Puckett didn't hit the home run, or make the catch against the plexiglass. The media did.[/quote']

 

If you indeed support Obama, you will be glad to learn that this was not a gaffe and he never said: "you didn't build your business, the government did."

If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

 

That's a gaffe, it offends the human capacity to innovate. I completely agree with 90% of President Obama's extended quote. Thank you for publishing the whole thing and making the Republican rubes on this website swallow the whole story. But I think our President opened himself to unnecessary criticism, and that's what's disappointing.

 

I've got a Republican friend who quit a cozy job working for IBM to open up a small craft brewery. He chased the dream, and keeps gettin hosed by the local government in order to get his business off the ground. The hours he works are crazy. But he loves his job, and is gearing up to work even harder in order to meet growing demand--a 5x expansion of his brewhouse. On behalf of my friend Gregg, President Obama's quote was offensive. And Gregg has good reason to be offended.

 

Getting back to baseball, that's where individual achievement meets team--whether that's government, public schools, little league coaches, parents, etc... Baseball, unlike almost any other team sport, depends upon individual achievement. The batter has to leave the dugout and stand alone in the batter's box. The pitcher holds the ball until he has to hand it over to the manager. When the individual takes one for the team, it's called a "sacrifice." But for the most part, baseball is played on a big green field, with plenty of room for individual achievement.

 

Curt Schilling's bloody sock is about grit. The media just happened to take the picture. http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/6948862/

 

Teddy Roosevelt's great "Man in the Arena" quote is what each of us can take to our line of work, and the love of our family, country, or even our favorite baseball team. Because baseball is a fanciful microcosm connected to what all of us do, day in and day out. Some ballplayers show a qualitative grit that captures our imagination, and inspires us. And then there are the disappointments: the cautionary tales of a Kevin Slowey, or a Danny Valencia, or Tsuyoshi Nishioka--or even the sad tragedy of Puckett's eye, and the tailspin that followed.

 

Baseball entertains us, while inspiring us too. That's why I love the game. Getting back to the point, I think the Twins lack the guy who cries out "You guys should jump on my back tonight. I'm going to carry us." (and we could use some quality starting pitching, too!)

 

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

President Theodore Roosevelt

Citizenship in a Republic,

Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

 

[Don't Feed the Greed Guy]

And, to sharpen the point, check out Joe Christianson's blog, "Postgame: Mauer takes another walk, but the Twins needed him to swing": http://www.startribune.com/sports/tw...166676076.html

 

There's more in the article, but here's the point about qualitative performance vs. quantitative statistical analysis:

 

"I didn’t have time to ask Mauer about his plate appearance, but I’m just going to say this: He has to have more urgency to swing the bat there. His otherworldly .414 on-base percentage is a big reason for whatever success the Twins have had offensively this year. But sometimes, a guy making $23 million per year needs to take it upon himself to take his shot.

[one_eyed_jack]

That's a gaffe' date=' it offends the human capacity to innovate. I completely agree with 90% of President Obama's extended quote. Thank you for publishing the whole thing and making the Republican rubes on this website swallow the whole story. [right'] [/right]

 

---Did you get lost on your way to Daily Kos? This is a forum for discussing Twins baseball.

[one_eyed_jack]

Not sure if you guys saw a post by some website recently, but i read somewhere that Cuddy said that when they played the Yankees, they went in expecting to lose.

 

I just found a story that looks like what you are talking about -- here is the link.

 

This makes me want a different manager.

 

---Come on folks, don't we know better than to take Jon Heyman seriously? If the guy had done any actual research instead of just fishing for quotes to fit a narrative, he would have found out that the situation described by Hunter never actually happened.

 

Also, Hunter was long gone by the '10 series, which is really the only one that Cuddyer could seriously make the "no talent disparity" claim about.

 

Heyman made the exact "psyched out" claim about the Twins previously, e.g. here in 2010 and here in 2009, and was merely looking to validate it. It's no accident that he went first to a known blabberer in Hunter, then got confirmation from Cuddyer, who is too diplomatic to publicly challenge a former teammate on something like that. It's really an opinion piece masquerading as a report.

 

Lew Ford had a very different take on the whole thing.

[twinsnorth49]

 

Curt Schilling's bloody sock is about grit. The media just happened to take the picture. http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/6948862/

 

 

Curt Schilling's bloody sock was about theatrics. The great baseball soldier who bravely gutted it out to carry his team to victory!!

 

It made me barf when I had to watch it and it makes me want to barf now, it was pure Hollywood, the mainstream media pumped it up for the WS viewing audience and they ate it up. All that was missing was Johnny Cochran doing the play by play.