A Twinsmas Carol

[Lou Hennessy]

Image courtesy of Purple Wolf Graphics

Gleeman was dead, to begin with. 
Well, maybe he wasn’t dead, but he had officially decided to fully buy in to the “never leaves his home” hermit bit, and to end his involvement in his longstanding and ever-popular Twins podcast, Gleeman and the Geek. So effectively, we’ll say he was pretty much dead to us. 
His longtime podcast partner, Ebenezer John Bonnes, had plans in the works to continue the show with a fully automated artificial intelligence partner, but he hadn’t disclosed this to his adoring fans, or even to his loyal employees with Twins Daily. He had dabbled with the digital dark arts in the past, but this would be a full sell out to the generative demons that have begun to plague our society. 
Bonnes made his way through the streets of downtown Minneapolis on Christmas Eve, Raycon earbuds plugged into each ear, fully detached from the bustling winter wonderland that surrounded him. 
“Look, isn’t that Ebenezer John Bonnes? I had heard he skipped town for Costa Rica after his show ended, never to return to Twins Territory again!” cried one of the many Cody-named peasants to another in the street. “Merry Christmas, master Bonnes! May you have a blessed off-season. We miss you dearly!”
Bonnes turned to look at the Codies. He scowled and huffed with disgust. 
“Bah. Hotdog!” the old man shouted to them before shuffling into his posh downtown condo building. “Go bug someone else for once.”
As he approached the front door of the lobby, he was startled by the cold, dead, scruffy  and disapproving face of his old partner, Aaron Gleeman, staring back at him through the front window. Bonnes fell backward to the ground. He stood up and rubbed his eyes in terror, as he couldn’t believe what he had seen. When he looked back up into the window, the face had disappeared, leaving only his own reflection. 
“Okay, no more french pilsner tonight.” Bonnes said to himself before scurrying inside. 

---

As nightfall crept over the solemn skyline outside of his penthouse apartment, Bonnes lit a fire and sat in his easy chair for his nightly dinner provided by Factor meal delivery service, the sponsor of this holiday parable (use code SPIRIT at checkout for 50% off of your next order of roast goose). His phone buzzed with a notification from the Twins Daily Slack channel, letting him know that one of his annoying stooges, Sweet Lou Cratchit, had submitted an article regarding the Twins recent free agent transaction, one that he had poured hours of hard work into, and it was awaiting approval for the site. 
“Bah. Hotdog!” Bonnes huffed, yet again. “ChatGPT can do the work of this oaf for a fraction of the price.”
He ignored the message and fell into a deep slumber in the fire's warm glow. He was awakened in the middle of the night by the unmistakable smell of Dior cologne and the clicking of metal baseball cleats on the porcelain floors of his hallway. 
“Ebenezer John Bonnes. . .” a trembling voice howled from the hallway. “I am the ghost of free agency past, and I am here to show you the error of your ways.”
A spirit slowly approached through a cloudy haze. Bonnes couldn’t believe his eyes. It was former Twin Carlos Correa. 
“It can’t be!” Bonnes yelled. “The Twins traded you! You should be in Houston!”
The spirit grabbed the old man by the hand and the two soared through time to the year 2022, when Correa originally signed with the Twins. 
“It was at this moment when you first used artificial intelligence to gather some general talking points for your episode to discuss my signing. It seemed innocent enough, but little did you know that it would start you down a treacherous path of over-reliance on these programs.”
Bonnes looked at a younger version of himself, sitting at a pub in Ireland and inputting a prompt and awaiting automated bullet points with notes so that he wouldn’t have to do extensive research on his own. 
“I hardly remember this,” Bonnes said in confusion. “Honestly, I barely remember any part of that trip after the tour of the Guinness factory.”
He was then transported back to the Twin Cities, where he saw Gleeman realizing his partner had sold out, even if just for a moment. A single tear streaked down his cheek, as he was overcome with immense disapproval and disappointment toward his dear partner. 
“I guess I didn’t realize he knew of my shortcut,” Bonnes reflected. “I guess he did start to seem rather distant from that point on, but I thought maybe he just had gas or something.”
Spirit Correa then clapped, creating a thunderous boom that awoke Bonnes, now back in his easy chair in the present day. 

---

“Was it but a dream?” the old man questioned, before hearing the doorknob of his front door jiggle. The door swung open, revealing another spirit, but this one was considerably bigger than the last. 
“Josh Bell?” Bonnes questioned while jumping to his feet. “What on earth are you doing here?”
The massive ghost approached and took him by the hand. 
“I am the ghost of free agency present, and I have come to continue showing you the error of your reliance on AI.”
The two soared through the sky now, landing outside of a humble home in St. Paul. They looked through the window, and saw a family sitting at the dining room table. 
“Why, that’s Sweet Lou Cratchit. He’s on my staff at Twins Daily. And that must be his lovely wife and their  6’10’’ adult son, Tiny Gregg.”
The lowly peasants sit gathered around a single can of Hamm’s to share between the three of them. Sweet Lou cracks it open and pours it into three small jars and passes one to his wife and son. He raises his own jar.
“A toast; to my boss, Ebenezer John Bonnes, who we have to thank for this year’s bounty,” he says with a grateful smile. “It may not be much, but it’s enough for us after a meager year for ad revenue.”
They each clink their glasses and take a swig of their paltry feast. Tiny Gregg lets out a wet cough, as he has grown ill in recent weeks without any hope of Sweet Lou being able to afford the medicine for his bout with Kreidler fever. It’s getting worse with each passing day. 
Bonnes can’t help but feel rotten after seeing the consequences of his decision to opt for AI content rather than paying his staff. 
“Oh, ghost Bell, I fear that I’ve gone too far with ChatGPT. Surely, it’s not too late for me to change my ways, right?” Bonnes asks the hulking ghost. 
The ghost claps just as his predecessor did, waking Bonnes yet again. Only this time, he isn’t in his easy chair, but in the middle of a cemetery. He sees a cloaked figure approach. 

---

“You must be the ghost of free agency yet to come,” he says. “Who could that be?”
The ghost keeps himself concealed, but he’ll probably be a reliever in his late-30s that costs somewhere around $3 million on a one-year contract. Probably a lefty, if I had to guess. I don’t know. 
The figure nods and points Bonnes toward a couple of headstones at the top of a hill. It’s dark and raining steadily. As the old man approaches the first memorial, he starts to make out the words chiseled in the stone.

Tiny Gregg Masterson
Beloved Son, Delivery Driver of the Month November 2022
“Should the Twins sign Miguel Sano??”

Bonnes hanged his head in shame. He didn’t much care for Tiny Gregg when push came to shove, but he still regretted that his reliance on generative AI led to the young fool’s demise. 
But his attention quickly shifted to the other tombstone, which was far bigger and more polished than Tiny Gregg’s. 
“Oh, spirit. Please tell me this isn’t what I think it’s going to be,” he cries before wiping the mud off of the headstone. 

Twins Daily
Once a shining beacon of independent Minnesota Twins coverage.
Ultimately replaced in full by artificial intelligence. 

Bonnes falls to his knees and buries his face in his hands. He can’t believe that the site he helped build from the ground up would perish due to his own cost-saving decisions. His grief is suffocating, and he’s sick to his stomach, worse than the time he tried to do the 9x9x9 challenge on a whim. 
The ghost of free agency yet to come claps his hands, and Bonnes wakes up back in his easy chair in his home.

---

It’s morning now, and he rushes to his balcony. He sees Cody Schoenmann waiting for a bus.
“You down there,” Bonnes shouts down. “What day is it?”
“Why it’s Christmas day, of course,” Cody says. “And while I have your attention, I think I’m going to write an article highlighting the top remaining free agents who were born on a Saturday and like long walks on the beach. Would that be alright with you, boss?”
Bonnes rolls his eyes. 
“Yes, yes, that would be fine, son. But before you do that, I need you to run to the nearest bottle store and buy the biggest rack of Hamm’s that you can find, and bring it to Sweet Lou Cratchit and his family,” Bonnes said, tossing a sack of gold coins to the young man. “Then you can go write whatever drivel you have planned.”
Bonnes heads back inside and reads the piece that Sweet Lou had submitted the night before. It’s downright awful, and riddles with typos, but he approves it for publishing and leaves his apartment. He walks to the Cratchit house and peers in the front window. He sees Sweet Lou and his wife with happy tears streaming down their cheeks. Sweet Lou hands a beer to Tiny Gregg, and kisses him tenderly on the forehead. The behemoth stands up and raises his can. 
“God bless us, everyone.”
 

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[thelanges5]

Slightly different adaptation than what I recently saw at my local community theater. 

[palmspringstwinsfan]

More product placement than a James Bond movie. Nice work. 

[Blyleven2011]

A great rendition of a Christmas carol ...

the past few years have sucked , present looks dreary , the future looks alittle better if falvey wasn't meddling with the baseball operations and lying to his bosses that we are good enough to win the weak central division,  couldn't do it in 2024-25  , I would like to win it in 2026 but as of now it doesn't look promising enough  ...

New year is right around the corner ...

Let's get some decent hitters that also can play defense  , as most fans agree we have to many DH's and we don't need more ...

Let do the right thing for the fans ...