Dave The Dastardly

May we get what we want, may we get what we need, but may we never get what we deserve.

Now that we've been knocked out of the Darvish Derby, I hope we don't make a deal just to make a deal so the front office can claim a "win" in free agency. I'm thinking about a couple past Rule 5 moves here...

You want to throw in a plow, too?

Remember how those circular ramps vibrated and jiggled under the feet of hundreds of fans leaving after the game? Scared the crap out of this country bumpkin the first few times I felt it.

Well written nostalgia piece. Brought back a lot of memories. Like the author, I remember the sounds and smells of attending a double-header at Met Stadium, my first professional baseball game. Four kids and three adults piled into one car for the 2 hour drive to the stadium. Got a bag of popcorn and an orange pop. Can still remember both the taste and the smell. Didn't break the old man to pick up the tab either. Bob Allison smacked a home run into our left field bleachers, touching off a stampede. Attended a Viking exhibition game that fall as a member (freshman) of our high school football team. Somehow the team got free nosebleed tickets, but we had to wear our team jerseys. I think the Vikes were that desperate to fill up the stadium for exhibition games. Drum up some fans. I had an uncle that played for the Packers in the 40's, so I'd been a Packer fan up till then. I arrived a Packer fan, left a Viking fan. Baptismal event. Been going through hell ever since. Baseball is still my game though. Twins are more like purgatory than hell; hope versus hopeless.

I agree with the writer's conclusion; no dumpster diving, go with the yutes. However I feel compelled to disparage the mythical importance of "team leadership" in players as long as I've taken the time to comment. When the day comes that teams start signing million dollar contracts with guys who can't hit their weight but supposedly possess this mystical team leadership quality, they will in effect have a nothing bat on the bench. How long will the other 24 players on the team revere the dead weight when he fails to deliver a timely hit to win a game? A game they busted their fannies to win? If you want a pinch hitter give me a guy that can hit in clutch situations. He don't need no stinking leadership. In my opinion, if you feel your team needs leadership, get a new manager. It's in his job description.

Count me as one of those old-school fans that likes to mock pitch-framing. If it's so subtle we can't see it, maybe it isn't there. Kind of sounds like the emperor has no clothes.

Well said.

Nice write-up. Interesting league-wide trend regarding the shift from fastballs to breaking pitches. Don't we have a guy named Duffy that's been sort of ahead of the trend? Just saying.

“The mission of Twins Daily is to gather a community of passionate readers around a core of independent, intelligent, and entertaining Twins writers.” “We haven’t had the success we anticipated we could have in developing a large group of independent Twins writers. When we designed Twins Daily, we attempted to create an organic model for growth. Readers become commenters, and eventually they try writing, which they do on their blogs, and then we promote those to the front page.” I’d like to offer something to this discussion without sounding either long-winded or pedantic. It is an endeavor at which I have often failed. Past failures aside, I occasionally do make a point. Most times accidentally. I am both an avid reader and an avid writer. It’s been my experience that the two traits are not often simpatico. A person can be one or the other, or both, but not necessarily to the same degree of “avidness”. In other words, some folks love reading, but either cannot, or have absolutely no desire to pen anything longer than a “Thank You” note while others write well but abhor reading anything longer than a “Thank You” note. Perhaps this explains the popularity of Twitter. I consider myself a semi-professional writer in that I have been paid for my writing efforts; not enough to retire a millionaire, but enough to remain retired without boosting cars or rolling drunks in order to avoid starvation. Though the pay is about the same. For weighting purposes you may consider me a Triple A level writing prospect who will probably never make the Bigs; a sucker for the off-speed pitch. I discovered my own writing interest as a sophomore in high school English composition class. My classmates, often for their own questionable motives, always clamored for me to read my writing assignments to the class, much to the chagrin of our instructor; the Nun of This, Nun of That. To this day, a half century later, I am the only one of my one hundred and fifty classmates who has ever been published anywhere about anything, though many still clamor to read my work. Was I the only classmate who had an ability to write? Far from it. But I was the only one who had the desire to be a writer. Point offered; you can’t reasonably expect to make ordinary readers into “independent, intelligent, and entertaining writers” with any great degree of success. Writers are born, in my opinion, not made. If a person does not harbor a desire to write, he will not become a writer despite all incentives offered to do so. That’s not to say you shouldn’t encourage those who demonstrate the desire. My initial encouragement came from my classmates. And there’s nothing like recognition from your peers when it comes to encouragement. TD’s “Like” system offers that to a degree. Perhaps an additional system based on the number of “likes” earned over the year, or average earned per written effort, and then turn it over to TD readers for a separate vote in some sort of annual award system like “All Star” , “Rookie of the Year,” “Gold Glove”, etc. etc. You could break it down by the various TD features; Forum, Article, Thread, Commentary whatever. Make it a fun thing. Throw in a Bob Uecher Award for best tongue-in-cheek writing, a Sandy Koufax Award for the writer that throws the most curveballs, etc. Post the winners on TD and email each winner a certificate they can print out and hang on their refrigerator at home. Recognition and maximum encouragement with minimal cost. As for my own TD reading habits, I seldom read blogs, mostly gloss over analytical articles, read almost everything regarding minor league prospects, peruse the “what if” articles for off-the-wall ideas, usually catch Tom’s game wrap-ups, but NEVER EVER miss game threads. Even written a few myself. I’ve gone so far as to “listen/watch” a Twins game on the threads alone. No radio. No TV. Why? Quips, banter, one-liners and the occasional intelligent observation. Maybe TD has to win this one for the Quipper.

The Mod Squad makes TD a fun place to be!!!! Thanks people!

Yeah, but we got walleye.

Whiff Stuff. I'm thumbing through the thesaurus...

You mean they actually play? I thought the purpose was to watch the commercials.

I have that problem every now and then.

That's the second slowest national anthem I've ever heard.

You mean like goat barbecued in bourbon?

There's this woman that keeps calling my cell phone...

The ability to take a pee outside without the neighbors watching was a big factor in purchasing my 12 acre hobby farm. No more quick zipper accidents.

Relax guys, I removed the Yankee curse last night. I burned an old Yankee pennant that my son bought at a Twins-Yankee game back in 2003 when he was too young to know any better and a dead goat (you know how hard it is to find a dead goat?) in a backyard bonfire. With the smell of barbecued hairy goat meat in my nostrils, I poured what was left of a bottle of bourbon over the flames. I no longer have any eyebrows, a picnic table or a back wall on my house. I may no longer have a wife either. Damn Yankees!

I was productive once... but I never let it happen again.

Agree. Sometimes it is not the size of the victory, but only that you were victorious. As Brian mentioned, Rome wasn't built in Bulgaria. And it wasn't built in Minneapolis either, but I think this year the Twins may have laid a new foundation. I always celebrate when doing some laying. So should the Twins.

I take my whuppings like a man; I run to the nearest bar and cry in my beer... maybe beat up on a pygmy... though they're in short supply.

I'm probably the TD resident expert on Hills. I've been there twice. Both times at night. There wasn't much to see. Legend has it that a couple of Scandinavian settlers named the town. They were out wondering around the flat prairie for a couple of weeks looking for a place to settle when one of them spotted a rise on the horizon. "WTF is that?" Ole asked, pointing at the rise. Lars scratched his, uh, tender parts and answered "Hills?" Truth be told, Hills-Beaver Creek was the home of one of Minnesota's winningest (sp) high school basketball coaches, Hugo Goehle, selected for the the MN Coaches Hall of Fame back in the late 1980's. Hugo completely changed his offense and defense every half. So opposing coaches came in with a game plan for the first half and a prayer book for the second half. Besides being a master strategist, Hugo was a class act and a real gentleman. I've never been whupped by a nicer guy. Hard to find coaches like that anymore. By the way, it's a little known Wikipedia fact that Hills' racial breakdown includes .01% Pacific Islander. Somebody must have really hated the ocean.

I drove my 1946 hippie school bus across North Dakota back in 1970. Drove for hours on the interstate without seeing another vehicle. Or maybe it just seemed that way. Things were kind of hazy in the bus even though we had the windows open. Passed a cowboy sitting on his horse alongside the freeway. He shook his head in disbelief as we zoomed by at 45 mph. Guess he'd never seen a hippie bus with smoke rolling out the windows before. Or maybe he'd just never seen a bus, period. Got to Teddy Roosevelt National Park and the ground was smoking! Like blew us away, dudes! We expected to see North Dakotans running around sniffing the park fumes but I guess all fifty-five of 'em were in church or something. I always wondered why Teddy bailed out of New York and went ranching in North Dakota... I guess it was a natural high for him. We had no trouble finding our way back to Minnesota. If you stood on the bus roof you could see Fargo from the park's entrance. Which was good because there was no one around to ask directions from. We got half way back to Fargo and the cowboy was still sitting on his horse in the same spot. That's when we realized he was North Dakota's highway cop and he was running a speed trap.