Dave The Dastardly

Better yet, consider retirement. I highly recommend it. First thing I've ever been good at.

I just woke up from my nap. But I'm still having a nightmare. Or is it deja vu?

Once More Unto The Breach I grew up in a baseball town. We had Little League, Midgets, Legion ball, a traveling town team, high school teams and a semi-pro team for adults. We grew up on baseball, probably would’ve grown up faster if they’d served mash potatoes and gravy with the baseballs, but we cut our teeth on baseball, lost a few, too. Teeth I mean. We had lots of dentists in town. All baseball fans. I think I set the record for being the tallest shortstop ever to play Midgets. The tallest midget. There’s something to be proud of. I stood 6’ 1” in my baseball socks. You might say I was head and shoulders above my junior high teammates who spent their time standing on their tiptoes trying to impress the girls our age, who, in one of nature’s cruelest flukes, were all taller than they were. They didn’t see eye-to-eye, but what the boys did see at eye level allowed them to stare without being obvious about it. The Midget coaches, for some unfathomable reason, tried me in center field, despite the fact I had always been an infielder. They soon learned why I had always been an infielder, I didn’t have the arm for playing the outfield. My cut-off guy needed a cut-off guy. But I was pretty good with a Nellie Fox bat in my hands so I was moved back to infield duties. First base seemed like a likely position, tall guys make big targets and you can nickname them “Stretch” and it doesn’t sound incongruous and that’s every coach’s goal; not to sound incongruous. One coach told me I was so tall I could stretch down to second base and they could just hand me a double play ball. He was prone to exaggeration, but he never sounded incongruous. However a couple of games into the season the coaches realized the team had a more pressing need than a tall first basemen nicknamed “Stretch”; a shortstop that could actually “stop” a hit ball. And a shortstop that can’t “stop” a ball does sounds incongruous. Which we have learned is something coaches prefer to avoid. Since I’d been doing a lot of scooping at first base, our third baseman also could have used a cut-off man, the coaches, in their constant search for congruity, decided to move Stretch to short, their reasoning being that if nothing else I could just lay down, stretch between second and third and block any hot grounder hit to that side of the infield, thus at least preventing doubles. Which usually wind up as runs scored. Unfortunately, I had just invested all my bean-walking money in a first basemen’s mitt and bean-walking season was over. That well had gone dry. So despite the incongruousness, I played shortstop wearing a first basemen’s mitt and the former shortstop who couldn’t field played first base with an infielder’s glove. This made the coaches self-conscious, you know, because it was incongruous, so some of them decided to coach the other teams or stay home and mow their lawns instead of hanging out at the ballpark. I mean what coach wanted to be associated with a team that featured a bean-pole wearing a first baseman’s mitt playing shortstop? The thing was, despite my gangly appearance, I was quick-footed and had lightening-like reflexes. Okay, maybe not lightening-like. Maybe more like short-circuit like reflexes. The kind of short-circuit that comes from inadvertently and simultaneously touching both the black and white wires when replacing the electric outlet in the bathroom that’s supposed to be on a GFI circuit but isn’t. Don’t ask me how I know about that. It’s not a proud moment. Anyway, as a shortstop I sucked up hot grounders like a Dyson vacuum. I could play deep in the hole and still cover just about everything between second and third. Back-hand, fore-hand, worm-killer, short hop, between hops, hell, I even stopped a line drive with my throat once. Not that I would recommend doing that. I went the next two games without being able to chant “hum, babe, chuck in there big fella, this guy can’t hit”, much to the relief of the opposing teams, most of the fans and our own pitcher. Yep, I was a helluva fielder. Gold Glove material. I just had this one little problem; I had a tendency to rush my throws. Which usually meant the ball would clear the leaping first baseman by six feet and plunk the fat lady in the seventh row of the first baseline bleachers in the right ear while she was still looking towards home plate and digging into her popcorn bag wondering where the hell the ball had gotten off to. I’d make an outstanding stop deep in the hole and the fans would go “Ahhh!” in amazement. Then they’d watch my throw to first sail over the first baseman’s glove and clear out four and a half rows in the bleacher section and they’d go “ohhhhh”. It got to be such a routine that one of the local wags started calling me Ahh-Ohh. Which, after I’d airmailed a couple of throws and the fans had consumed a couple of Grain Belts, started to sound more like “A$$hole” than Ahh-Ohh. But only to the untrained ear; like the fat lady with the mashed right one. Though I think she may have been more deliberate with her speech pattern. The thing was, our coaches, usually a stray dad or two that just happened to be at the ballpark so they wouldn’t have to mow the lawn that evening, never taught me how to set my feet or how to get a four-seam grip on the baseball before I threw to first. I caught it quick and got rid of it quick. After that it was out of my hands... as well as the first baseman’s. But what eventually ended my baseball career wasn’t the occasional errant throw... well okay, maybe more than occasional. Maybe a couple three times per game. Usually in clutch situations. Anyway, what ended my baseball career was my bat’s fear of curve balls. Which brings me in my usual roundabout manner to today’s game with the dreaded Cleveland Indians. Pedro Cerrano isn’t in the Indians line-up, but whenever the Twins play Cleveland I can’t help wonder if JoBoo isn’t in one of the Indians’ lockers, smoking a cigar and sipping on rum. And I also dream how I could’ve made the pros if I had JoBoo back there with me in Midget ball when I was an incongruous shortstop. Who knows, with the right incentive, he might have made my Nellie Fox bat not afraid of curve balls. The fly in that ointment however was that despite being a tall Midget I still wouldn’t have been old enough to buy rum for JoBoo. My dad however always kept a case of Grain Belt in the basement for those nights when he and other World War II vets would gather around our kitchen table to play poker and tell lies, mostly about how each of them won the war single-handedly. On those nights, my next oldest brother and I were drafted into running full bottles of Grain Belt from the basement to the kitchen, and returning empty bottles from the kitchen back to the basement. For which we were often reward handsomely; forty or fifty cents for an evenings’ work, which in those days was enough bread for two nights at the movies (double-features), a bag of popcorn and a pop. And as me and the Great Goose discovered one such beer-drinking vet night, quite accidentally of course, that as the night advanced the vets were incapable of noticing how many bottles of Grain Belt we were sent to retrieve from the basement actually made it up to the kitchen still “full”. Those purloined sips of beer were our first taste of sin. Been sliding down that slippery slope ever since. Anyway, I don’t know if JoBoo would have worked his magic for a bottle of illicit Grain Belt, but considering how that brew seemed to work magic for the vets in the kitchen, it would have been worth a try. Who knows, JoBoo might have made me into a homerun slugger. Or he might’ve turned me into a real midget... Lesson #10 From the Dastard’s Book of the Painfully Obvious: There is no magic in life, a man’s just got to know his own limitations. Which exponentially also applies to baseball teams. The Twins limitation? Pitching. As readily displayed this weekend. So we either have to steal JoBoo from the Indians’ locker room this morning and pour Grain Belt down his throat, or... put our catcher on the pitcher’s mound. And that’s incongruous. The much ballyhooed Adam Wilk (ERA 6.57) fresh from taking the “cure” at Rochester takes the mound for the Twins in the first game of today’s double-hinder with the semi-reliable Adalberto Mejia, he of the 8 earned runs in his last outing, climbs the sacrificial altar in the nightcap. Speaking of nightcaps... you got any beer in your basement? My knees are shot but for the right incentive I can still climb stairs.

I had an irregular heartbeat once. But after I left the strip club it straightened right out... the heartbeat I mean.

Should we consult the Twoth Fairy?

If so I think the new front office has been more focused on outdumbing themselves than actually improving the team. I could be wrong but I don't think there's a World Series for Clever Maneuvering. Sooner or later you have to put a few quality players on the field instead of has-beens and "prospects" on the trading block.

I heard the Portly Panamanian is going to be in town, maybe they're waiting to re-sign him.

David Alan Coe turned me on to country. I'll take that beer. Just don't call me by my name.

Hey! I owned that horse back in my cowboy days! Had a helluva time putting a saddle on him... At least I think it was a him. Could've ben hur. Anyway, the saddle kept sliding off whenever we hit a gallop. So I got this clever idea to use him to pull a wagon. But his back wasn't long enough to hold up the harness so that went nowhere. Which just goes to prove that it's never wise to hitch your wagon to a half-assed idea.

Like I was saying... My brother-in-law, the robot guy... no, he's not a guy robot. He's a guy that builds robots. Anyway, he's pretty anal when it comes to planning stuff, I suppose if you want your robots to work right you have to be anal... the robot guy, not the robots. So he decides to blow insulation into the side walls of his 1950's era house as a do-it-yourself project. So he's outside blowing insulation into the walls, my sister dumping bag after bag of insulation into the hopper when it occurs to him he'd calculated he'd only need three bags to fill each 16" cavity. But my sister has six empty bags laying at her feet and just dumped in a 7th. So the anal robot guy gets down off the ladder, walks around to the front door of the house, walks in to the living room and sees six bags of insulation blown across the room. Apparently he'd neglected to take into consideration the interior wall plaster was cracked and ready to implode. Kind of reminds me of the Twins. We collected a lot of numbers, did a lot of calculating and "improved" the team by drafting a high school shortstop, forgetting the pitching staff is cracked and ready to implode. For some reason Gibby made me think of that.

Gibby's first pitch was a strike. Things are looking up! Whoops! Double! Maybe we should go back to home improvement... Just saying...

Don't worry. If there are, the Twins will find them. I'm going to cry myself to sleep, knowing full well when I awake the Twins world will be a darker place. How 'bout them Vikings!

Your perspicacity speaks volumes. But that muffled thud we hear in the background is the excitement over our new high school shortstop.

Instead we got bupkis?

They'll be into the bullpen by then. Bring your blindfold. Maybe a cigarette... Firing squad optional.

I live 60 miles from the ballpark and there's always a dark cloud over my house.

I'm stunned. Shades of ignoring an immediate need for a long term project. Al la Vikings? Treadwell instead of an O-lineman? Is there something in the Minnesota water?

I'd like to see you stick to that.

Forgive my ignorance, but did you mean Reggae music boxes? Although I suppose the Swiss are more into horns than oil drums... Seriously, very nice! Beats my shot glass collection.

Remodeling is an American wife's hobby, a husband's nightmare and a contractor's gold mine. We once set out to replace an old dishwasher with a new one; cost of new dishwasher, $250. Final cost including installaion; $2,500. We moved shortly after.

Personally I pluck a G&L 1000. It's old, but so am I.

I have pursued many careers over my lifetime, marketing however was never in my sights. But I think I might have one more career in me. If I can just get this thing to snowball... thaw the initial cold shoulder of resistance... break the ice if you will... I might be able to hitch my sleigh to a new star! OOH! I shiver at the possibilities!

Let's modify that. Run the clip with the long homerun, but Bert says "The Sanoman; he's going to frost your balls!" Then the video switches to a closeup of a grinning Sano smearing frosting on a baseball. Run that by the PR office. I've got to to go take my meds.

How about "The Sanoman"? You know, like snowman. Just going with the Minnesota motif. We run a video clip of one of Sano's long homeruns sailing out of sight and Bert's voice comes on says, "The Sanoman; he's going to freeze your balls!" That ought to put the fear of God in Twins opponents. Might even get Bert another fine and suspension.

Along with disappointment, heartbreak and masochism. There's also a downside.