Game Thread, Twins @ A's, 7/18 @ 8:05pm CT weather: Cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny, with a high near 73. West wind 5 to 10 mph. Line up (not to be taken lyin' down) Twin Phil Hughes hurlin' rightly. Twin batterers: tbd A Scott Kazmir hurlin' leftly. A batterers: tba Alas, i'm not RiverBrian. As he offers things to think about, well, not bein' him, i figured, i should offer things not to think about... What not to think about? 1. The batting orders, respectively. They're not out yet, so don't think about 'em. Don't think about how well Sano's doing considering his youth and inexperience, or how Dozier can just turn on anything up and in, or how Hunter deals with forks. Or that i'm jinxing them. 'Cause i'm not. You also don't have to think about the A's line up, how they got the allstar catcher, or Billy Butler (if i know anything about mysteries, Butler did it) or Sam Fuld. But that's easier to do, 'cause they only play in like 6 or 7 Twins game a year, whereas the Twins seem to play in all of 'em. Strange, but true. Also not really worth thinking about. 2. Road trip! For some reason, i associate west coast road trips for the Twins with cruel and unusual punishment. I think it involved the occasional 1-9 trip, though some good can come of them. one such trip was when gardy pulled Morneau into his office and got his mind right (well, that's my interpretation of the article i read about it back when, with a sort of unwarranted Cool Hand Luke slant to it) but to belabor a point, we don't have to think o' that: we done won one game already! 3. Elephants. There be elephants on their jerseys! and not just the new ones... No one should think about the elephants in the ball park. If you want to complain this takes away your best joke, see me after class. I suppose if it has to, it can be grandfathered in, but that's a slippery slope, and elephants and slippery slopes are a bad combination. Don't believe me, ask Hannibal. 4. H's. In particular, i always want to drop the last one in Phil's name. Come on, wouldn't it be fun to call him Huge? Or rather Huges... Which isn't as funny, and it sets a bad example to misspell names in general. That's why we don't think of that. Scott Kazmir has no H's in his name, so feel free to think about him, and figure out how we can knock him for a loop. In general, dropping h's is supposed to be a distinguishing feature between gentry types and non-gentry? Which, if baseball is a sport of the people, dropping h's should be encouraged, no? But it would be artificial if you thought about it, so well, don't. 5. No matter what anyone else may tell you, today is not opposite day. Really. But this, i suppose you can think about it, if you must. Don't hurt yourself though. Enjoy the game!