Dave The Dastardly

"Just like the warning on Preparation H “Not for Oral Use”, you know that warning is on the packaging because someone did just that and then probably complained to the company after. “Dear Preparation H… I ate almost the whole tube and it did not cure me. I seriously question your product. I tried to call and complain but my mouth is so small that I can’t speak so I am writing you this letter. I would like my money back”." Manufacturer's Reply. Stick it up your a$$.

Yeah! I do remember that now that you brought it up. We got our first TV when I was in kindergarten. I recall coming home from school and sitting on the floor in front of this big box that showed nothing but "snow" while the TV guy was up on the roof rigging up the antenna when all of a sudden the snow disappeared and Axel came on. I thought the TV guy was the Wizard of Oz. My mind's been blown ever since.

The Lone Ranger's problem was he never read John Donne. If he'd had he would have known that no man is an island. But then what kind of macho ranger wanted to be seen packing poetry books in his saddle bags? Whoosh! Image right out the teepee window. Can you imagine the hard time the bad guys would've given him then? I'm old enough to remember listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio. For you young'uns out there, radio's in those days were these big wooden boxes full of tubes that glowed. Radio's pulled magic out of the air and stimulated the imagination of its listeners because you had to picture everything in your mind. Which is why us oldtimers vividly recall walking uphill both ways to school, snow up to our lunch boxes, eyelids froze shut from the bitter howling winds. Yeah, really. They hadn't invented soccer moms with mini-vans yet. So if anyone out there is still walking to school... well, don't feel like the Lone Ranger.

Yeah. He obviously threw his arm out. I wonder how close it landed to home plate.

Okay. What the hell. Send me a list of open game dates and I'll run it be the Small Council (I've been watching Game of Thrones reruns).

Can I do it incognito? I was actually in a bar once called "Cognito". I won't tell you what I did there because you won't be able to prove it...

I was pathetic in my youth. Come to think of it, nothing's changed much.

Mostly by my college professors.

Cheap beer does have its place. When a college student and too young to buy beer in Minnesota, a car load of us would throw our pocket change on the bar in Sioux Falls (again with the thread) and if we could come up with $1.99 we could buy a case of Bubs. Another $.29 would net us a roll of Rolaids, which proved to be a nice chaser. There's a lot of good things I could say about Bubs beer, but I can't remember any of them. It had the consistency of karo syrup, which gave you plenty of time to upright your beer if you accidentally tipped it over, and tasted like No. 2 diesel fuel cut with ammonia (don't ask me how I know that) but it got you where you wanted to go. The problem was by the time we finished the Bubs we no longer knew where we wanted to go. Or which one of us had the Rolaids. I often wonder how I managed to graduate from college.

Is there any responsibility involved? 'Cause I've been trying to avoid responsibility for the last 13 years. Getting pretty good at it, too. Though my wife claims I've been mostly irresponsible for that last 33 years. I don't understand where she's coming from. I gave her four kids to take care of.

I have a niece named Shy Ann.

I do have a keyboard. Pulse has been optional lately.

I knew that about South Dakota - about it being tilted to the southeast. I tried driving from Minnesota out to the Black Hills once and my car (it was a 4 cylinder Renault) kept rolling backwards. Some said it was because I didn't set the parking brake. But I couldn't see the advantage of setting the parking brake when I was trying to do 60 mph down the interstate. I finally gave up at the Corn Palace, got on the east-bound (and down - little play on words there if you remember the movie) lane, put the Renault in neutral and coasted all the way back to Sioux Falls. Which proved two things; French cars do get great mileage when they're going down hill and life is mostly uphill and full of reverses. Speaking of reverses, I once tried climbing the Big Horn Mountains in a 1946 6-cylinder Chevy hippy school bus. The bus came to a dead stop in the middle of the highway about half way up, even though I had it in super low and the accelerator to the floor. Had to back down the switchback highway for over a mile before I could find a shoulder wide enough to turn around. I didn't get a lot of love from the cars trying to get around me. But I did get a lot of birds. Of course once I managed to turn the hippy bus around without dropping it off the edge of the mountain, it rolled all the way back to Sioux Falls without using any gas. Which was good because us hippies didn't have any money anyway. There's another life lesson in there somewhere but I'm not sure what it is. That time period is kind of hazy for me. Sort of like whether or not the Twins will get in a ballgame today. Long way to go for a baseball connection... but it was fun getting there.

I drove through Cleveland once. Had to take a swing past Jacobs Field because my son's favorite movie at the time was Major League. Unfortunately the Indians were on the road. No Jobu. Life's been nothing but curveballs ever since. Though I have developed a taste for rum...

Patience, Grasshopper! That's advice for Molitor more so than Berrios. At this point there's nothing more for Berrios to learn in AAA so don't even think about sending him back down if he struggles early on. Let him know he has the season to prove himself, not just a couple of starts.

Free Jose!!!!

I toured the U-505 at the Science Museum there in Chicago. Reminded me of the Twins; usually submerged and the crew bailed out rather than go down with the ship.

Okay, I give up. The headline says LHP, the blurb says RHP, the photo shows LHP. What is this guy? Ambidextrous? More importantly, how bad is he? I mean what's the market value on a slightly used D Santana? Just north of a box of new baseballs?

Interesting article. My takeaway is that exit velocity and launch angle are not valuable predictors. But the limitation on stats is always that they tell us what happened and what's likely to happen, but not what is going to happen for sure on any particular play. And that unpredictability is what makes a ball game a ball game. If it were otherwise, why would we watch?

Forget sending him down. We already have far too many players in the minors that are too good for minor league competition, but haven't been given the chance to prove themselves at the major league level. It's sink or swim time for many of them, but if we never throw them in the deep end of the pool we'll never find out. Get on with it. Put 'em to the test and if they can't cut it, well then have a fire sale. At the least we'd open up some spots in the minors for future prospects that might prove to be major league material.

I must confess (little play on words there) that I attended a Catholic school and even did some time as an altar boy, until the parish priest decided it would be best for all concerned if I pursued my educational opportunities at the public school. I’m also a fan of fortune cookies and therefore feel qualified to weave a few of today’s game threads, Joe Torre getting reamed in church, platitudes instead of fortunes inside fortune cookies and the ashes on the forehead thing, into a nice little knot. First off, Catholics like to wallow in guilt. That’s why the woman chewed Torre a new one in church; she was just being a good Catholic and helping him feel guilty. Although just being the Yankee manager should be enough of a guilt trip for anyone. Dominus vobiscum. Secondly, Confucius died centuries ago and Charlie Chan last century. Now the Chinese are more into making shoddy products than coming up with meaningful predictions. They’ve lost their perspicacity and now just look for a paycheck at the end of the week. Ergo, no more pithy prognostications. Man lying on hill, not on the level. Lastly, my brother Goose and I decided to skip morning mass on Ash Wednesday once. Spent that hour driving around town in our 55 Olds smoking cigarettes, eating cookies and enjoying our good fortune. (You see how I snuck that in there?). The thing was, being the poor Catholics that we were, we forgot it was Ash Wednesday. So we show up for school as the only two unmarked students in the building. After a hasty barnstorming session, we slipped into the basement men’s room and lit up a couple of smokes, carefully saving the ashes in the palms of our hands. When he had enough ash, we smeared crosses on each other’s forehead and exited stage left only to discover Sister Lydia waiting outside the bathroom door for us. Apparently cigarette smoke is quite noticeable to nuns with large noses. We were toast and our immediate future looked pretty hazy. Needless to say we got our ashes kicked. Mind like parachute, work best when open.

18? The "kid" looks to be closer to 30. You sure he didn't sneak over here from Cuba? You know, the country that can't keep track of birthdates?

Hope springs eternal. Especially if you're a Twins fan. So this spring I'm hoping the Twinks won't be eternally in the Central cellar. Funny, it just occurred to me that my friends think I'm an optimist. But when it comes to the Twins, my beer mug is always two thirds empty. Maybe if I got hypnotized...

What's he pointing at? Is it a bird? A plane? Kent Hrbek in tights?

Here's my prediction: The Twinkies come out of the gate like a three-legged horse. They can't pitch, can't field and can't hit. But they're pretty good at marbles. By July the buzzards are circling. The Front Office fires Molly to save him from a lynching and their own necks from the dreaded "vote of confidence" from the owner. Dougie rides in to the rescue and gets carte blanche (that's French; means he can do whatever the hell he wants). Dougie demands solid baseball from every player and soon there's more players in the dog house than in the dugout. Veterans find themselves on the trade market and all those hot prospects languishing in the minors find themselves on the Big Club. They struggle through July, the Twinkies are paying homeless people with free hot dogs to take tickets and cheer every now and then. Dick and Bert spend gametime regaling us about that game back in 1987 when Herbie and Kirby hit back-to-back homers; it was a Tuesday. Dick remembers it well because he spilled mustard on his microphone in the excitement. Bert remembers it because he said WTF on the air and got a 1 week suspension. Dougie contemplates suicide, but instead opts for beating up the opposing manager during the pre-game. Then, just when all Minnesotans are traveling incognito (that's Italian - in this case it means no one takes their snowshoes with them) whenever they leave the state, the prospects begin to gel, like... jell-o. The young pitchers start throwing complete game shut-outs, the batters start hitting above the Mendoza line and are shooting line drives off the wall (the outfield wall - not Trump's wall) and the fielders start fielding like they're gloves are made of velcro - or maybe got some of that black pine tar in the glove pocket. Anyway, the North Pole (that's Dougie) has the kids playing like real major league baseball players and they're whipping butt like Lash Larue (you gotta way back in time for that one). And all of a sudden, just like that, The Twinks make the playoffs and the whole damn state drags their Homer Hankies out of mothballs, the bandwagons are overloaded and fans start leaving flowers on Halsey Hall's grave. That's when I wake up. Gotta lay off that medicinal marijuana. Is it summer yet?