Yes, we all know I’m prone to wordiness here. 1,000+ word posts are pretty much the norm for me. Normally, I could go on for at least that long about everything there is to despise about the Yankees and their dominance over our Twins. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll do just that. But today, I just don’t have it in me.
So, instead, I thought I would just share my favorite Yankee picture of all time. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but for some reason, this picture represents all that I feel toward the Yankees.
Oh… you came here looking for something more insightful? Sorry… try back tomorrow.
In the mean time, you might check out the “new look” of the Star Tribune’s web site. It looks to be well-designed and makes it pretty easy to find what you’re looking for (though now that I think about it, I haven’t found the list of #stribtwins tweets that they used to have… we got quite a few hits from that so I’m hoping it isn’t gone completely).
It’s time for the Twins to step up against the Evil Empire and establish themselves as being equally competitive. This four game series is the only time the Twins will visit Yankee Stadium (at least until October, anyway), so there’s no point in putting this off… as Cuddy’s spring training t-shirts put it, DON’T BE DENIED… WIN!
On the one hand, in many respects this may have been the cleanest performance of the year for the Twins. Delmon made some nice plays in the outfield (yes… I said Delmon) and the infield turned three pretty nifty double plays (with Nishioka doing the turning of all three at 2B). Kevin Slowey and Dusty Hughes out of the bullpen were very solid. Even Scott Baker, once he got out of the first two innings, stuck around and kept battling. He definitely kept his team in the game and gave them a chance to win.
On the other hand, the Twins have not really had a problem playing the Yankees close. They’ve done that real well the last few years. Very few losses to the Evil Empire are lopsided. But they’re all still losses and that’s getting really… really… old. It was great seeing Jim Thome come through with an RBI double to the warning track… but five more feet or so and it’s a home run and the game is tied. I’m tempted to rant a bit about the disparate strike zones (especially the zone given Rivera… Jason Kubel singled on an 0-2 pitch below his knees and never had a ball thrown to him in the strike zone), but that’s so commonplace that at some point you have to just know that’s going to happen and resolve to overcome it.
It’s the whole “overcoming it” thing that is a problem. I think we saw indications that there are enough of the newer guys who haven’t let the Yankees get in their heads (Thome has never cowered, Nishi didn’t seem phased, Hughes definitely went right after the Yankee hitters, for example). Let’s hope it starts rubbing off on Mauer and some of the others. In any event, we’ll line up and try again Tuesday night!
The first series is in the books and while it didn’t go as well as we would hope, the Sunday afternoon win certainly should make everyone feel a bit better. It wasn’t pretty, but a win is a win.
Honestly, I’m not concerned about getting only one win out of three games in Toronto to start the season. That’s hardly devastating.
I’m really more concerned… perhaps a better word is leery… about the way the Twins played than I am about the results themselves. I have no idea what the reason is… season opening nerves, lack of preparation, lack of Spring Training time for some of the star players, or anything in between… but I just felt there were concentration issues out there among a lot of guys.
Carl Pavano pitched like I’d expect him to pitch in Spring Training… kind of out of sync. He had a great spring statistically, though he, himself, commented several times that he didn’t feel he was pitching all that well. For some reason, I’m not optimistic that he’s going to find himself against the Yankees in his next scheduled start.
Francisco Liriano just wasn’t very good, period. He had some issues in Spring Training, too, so it will be worth watching to see how long it takes him to find a rhythm.
Justin Morneau looks like he’s just started swinging a bat after a long offseason… which is pretty much accurate. His bat looks slow to me, so let’s hope get starts seeing the ball and getting around on it more consistently.
The new middle infield hasn’t gotten off to a very good start. Interestingly, though, while most people were nervous about Alexi Casilla and felt confident of Tsuyoshi Nishioka, it’s actually been Nishioka that’s been the poorer performer, so far. Nishioka has two errors already and he’s struck out five times. Casilla was given Sunday off, but he had the only Twins extra base hit in the first two games (his only hit in five ABs, however). Nishioka frankly not only looked tight in the field, but his right handed plate appearances have been particularly ugly. He steps in the bucket on virtually every pitch.
Denard Span has gotten off to a good start at the plate, but even he got caught losing track of the number of outs when he was a baserunner at 1B early in Sunday’s game.
The bullpen has had mixed results, at best. Sunday saw solid performances by Matt Capps, Jose Mijares and Glen Perkins, but otherwise you have to look pretty hard to find a member of the pen to praise. I know Joe Nathan got a save Sunday, but that was by no means a good performance by Twitchy.
In all, the best thing you can really say about this first series of the season is that it’s over and the Twins managed to salvage one win. That’s one more than the Red Sox or Rays managed to come up with against the Rangers and Orioles, respectively. Those two teams, along with the Brewers and Astros in the National League, could still go 0-162. That’s a joke of course… though if I were an Astros fan, I might feel like it’s not so far-fetched. They could be really bad. Fans in Boston, Tampa Bay and Milwaukee, however, all have some reasonable playoff expectations and I doubt being winless at this point dampens those expectations too much.
Home of the Evil Empire
Monday night, the Twins will start a four-game road series in the Bronx against the Evil Empire. The Twins have the talent to match up with the Yankees, but we all know that doesn’t seem to matter when they go in to New York and routinely seem to play with one hand wrapped around their collective throats. I’d be pretty happy with a split of those four games.
Finally, in case anyone is inclined to put a lot of emphasis on the results of the first series of the season, allow me to just point out that the Kansas City Royals currently lead the AL Central standings after taking three of four games from the Angels in their opening series.
UPDATE: It’s not often I update a post just to link to another blog, but Jon Marthaler over at Twinkie Town posted a beaut over there this morning. Go check it out… he tells us all exactly how the rest of the season is going to play out!
If you haven’t read JC’s weekend rants, you really should – we would like ALL our readers to join in to see if we can’t start raising the discussion about the MLB.tv blackouts – “watch every game” my butt. It’s ridiculous and fans actually should push back.
Bak to Twins baseball, it would be really great if the Twins could actually win one game in Canada this weekend. I would like that.
That was a bit more dramatic than I would have preferred it to be, but at least there will not be a 0-162 season in the Twins’ immediate future.
It’s good to get out of Toronto with at least one win before moving on the take on the Evil Empire tomorrow. It would have been nice to have Nick Blackburn go a bit deeper in the game, but at least he battled his tail off while he was in there and certainly accounted for the best performance by a Twins starting pitcher so far. Jason Kubel, Danny Valencia and even Drew Butera had significant offensive contributions, while Matt Capps put up a shut-down inning in a set up role for Joe Nathan. Twitchy certainly reminded us of his flair for the dramatic, giving up a run and loading the bases before getting the final out for the first save of the year.
But the GameChat’s pick for the first Boyfriend of the Day (that’s BOD, for you newbies around here) is Denard Span. Denard had a couple of big hits, including a home run for insurance that provided what turned out to provide the margin of victory!
Several people have found one way or another to express support for my rant on the subject of the bizarre MLB blackout rules, which prevent those of us in Iowa from watching Twins games (and Royals games… and Brewers games… and Cardinal games… and Cubs games… and even WhiteSox games, for that matter) on mlb.tv.
I want to express my appreciation for all the moral support.
A common theme, however, has been to question what we can do. I’ve given that question some thought. Obviously, a few isolated blog posts and even traditional media articles about the topic haven’t influenced the Twins or MLB to make changes.
I’m pretty discouraged, but your support brought to mind my favorite 18 minute and 34 second song… Arlo Guthrie’s classic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”.
Now, I realize many of you have no idea about Alice’s Restaurant (or even Arlo Guthrie, for that matter… and shame on you for that). It is, after all, a song from the 1960s, years or even decades before a lot of you were born. But it was an important song to a lot of us who grew up in the Vietnam era. If you want to read the lyrics, click here and if you’re really ambitious, you can watch/listen to a 2005 Guthrie performance of the song on YouTube here. But do it when you have some spare time because I wasn’t kidding about it being an 18 minute, 34 second song. They made a movie based on the song. You know how movies based on books often have to cut good stuff out to make it down to a two hour movie? Alice’s Restaurant very nearly had to do the same thing… with a song.
But I digress… the point is, your kind expressions of support brought Arlo’s classic to mind.
While my fight with MLB and the Twins over blackouts doesn’t quite rise to the level of seriousness of conscription during the Vietnam conflict (which was the topic of Alice’s Restaurant), I feel much like Arlo.
If just one person (like me for instance) continues to scream at the powers about this issue, they’ll probably think I’m really sick. If two of us do it… in harmony… well, I’m not sure what they’ll think. And if three of us rant on and on about blackouts, they may think it’s an organization. And can you imagine 50 people a day blogging, tweeting and otherwise hassling @TwinsPrez and @MLB about the blackout madness!? Friends, they may think it’s a movement.
And that’s what this is… the JimCrikket Anti-MLBBlackout Movement and to join, all you have to do is sing along.
All you bloggers, tweeters, facebookers, and old fashioned letter writers (you know who you are)… contact @MLB and @TwinsPrez and anyone else you know inside the Twins organization or MLB baseball… or write about this issue in your blogs occasionally… and include this refrain from the song…
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant Walk right in it’s around the back Just a half a mile from the railroad track You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Of course, if you’re tweeting or otherwise limited in terms of character length, just go with…
~You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant~
…and, in any event, link back to my little rants here at Knuckleballs. If you follow @Knuckleballs and/or @JimCrikket on Twitter, you’ll be seeing a tweet you can simply re-tweet to show your support.
If you REALLY want to get in to this and if you who have a voice that doesn’t send dogs and cats in to the river to drown themselves, you might even consider making a phone call to the Twins/MLB offices and singing the Alice’s Restaurant refrain.
… with feeling, of course. Arlo would demand it be done that way.
I’m opening up the GameChat, but I probably won’t be around much, if at all, myself. The MLB Blackout Rules prevent me from seeing the game on mlb.tv, so I’ll be going to a bar to watch the game (and there will be a significant rant forthcoming about the idiotic, moronic, absolutely screwed up to death blackout policy… and I’m seriously considering not attending a single Twins game in Target Field this season). Dave St. Peter may regret opening a Twitter account by the time I’m done with him.
It’s here, it’s here!!! We get real Twins baseball today!!! I’m so excited!!
So let’s see what off-season questions we have our answers too:
Yes, Justin Morneau is officially back and will be in the opening day lineup!
I still think it’s an immensely emotional thing that his first game will be in Toronto where he got hurt but he has been in this kind of situation before – he’ll do it.
Yes, Joe Mauer has recovered, his newly lubricated knees are working and yes, he’ll be catching on opening day.
I also think that Gardenhire will be using him a little more cautiously and with all the bats in the lineup, he’s said he’ll sit Mauer on off-days instead of DH’ing him most of the time.
Lexi is playing Short Stop and Nishi is playing 2B and yes, they seem to have worked that out!
I honestly don’t think that will still be the case by June but we’ll see. Who knows, maybe the effort to stay in communication with Nishi will help keep Lexi more focused during the game? A girl can hope.
Kevin Slowey is the Starter moved to the bullpen and the starting rotation is Pavano, Liriano, Blackburn, Duensing, Baker.
Gotta say this is the one I probably couldn’t have predicted. I’m just happy that the management realized that trading one of our starters would be silly given that we tend to go through starters like candy on this team. It’s only a matter of time until we’re calling on Kev to come back to a starting role for whatever reason for whatever period of time. It’s just how it works.
Yes, Joe Nathan is back!
Considering his age, his ability to come back as quickly as he has is purely amazing. He is a relief pitcher so that decreases his recovery time since he doesn’t have to work up the ability to go extended innings like a starter does but we all saw how difficult the recovery was for Sideshow so nothing is guaranteed.
We have a full bullpen!
It’s a bit remarkable who the bullpen members ARE but at least we have players.. sadly, I still think we are weak in the lefty department because I don’t have a lot of trust for the two I know and don’t know the third. *shrug* And it’s such a weird thing to see Neshek pitching for the Padres now instead of us and I miss him but it sounds like he’s doing very well there. So no Neshek, no Crain (now the WS *shudder*), no Guerrier, no Rauch.. But we have Nathan & Capps to end games for us, and we have Slowey, Manship (both with long inning capability), Glen Perkins & Jose Mijares (lefties we know) and Dusty Hughes (the lefty we don’t know yet). It will be interesting to see how this bullpen gets used.
Hmm… Tolby is our utility infielder. I still miss Punto and I can’t imagine watching a game without him out there.
This is also a situation that I think is fairly “temporary” and I think Hughes will get another shot up here in the bigs at some point.
Thome is still with us and we’ll hopefully get to witness him hit #600 while in a Twins uniform – every game he gets to play for us is a blessing to see.
It will be interesting to see how Gardy manages the lineup to get him AB’s until whoever get’s injured first spends a little time on the bench.
I’m sure there were other off-season questions but I think I have covered enough for now – don’t want to take away from the excitement of the moment!! Honestly, today is the only day that the Twins could run the cast of 90210 out there and I’d be excited to see baseball.. (that would not last more than a few minutes, mind you, but still…)
Of course, I’m looking out the window and realize that baseball will be coming back to Target Field in a week. We got soooooooo lucky with the weather last year that I don’t think there is any way that can be repeated. As the stat kids would say, this year is likely to be a statistical regression to the mean. I just hope we don’t get a dump of snow on the Home Opener.
MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Twins today announced plans for the 2011 Home Opener at Target Field against the Oakland Athletics on Friday, April 8 at 3:10 p.m. All fans in attendance will receive a Twins magnet schedule courtesy of Target. The Twins also plan several special events prior to the start of the game and will open the gates three hours before first pitch to allow fans to get to the ballpark in plenty of time to enjoy the pregame festivities. The Twins will also be accepting donations at the gates on behalf of Feed My Starving Children and UNICEF to aid in the relief efforts in Japan.
Friday, April 8 – Twins vs. Oakland Athletics
11 a.m. – Target and the Minneapolis Downtown Council will host a rally at Peavey Plaza on Nicollet Mall and 11th St., featuring games and activities for the entire family.
11:30 a.m. – The Twins, in conjunction with the Minnesota Ballpark Authority, will unveil the Tony Oliva bronze legend, created by local artist Bill Mack, outside Gate 6
12 p.m. – Gates open – legendary Twins players will ceremonially open their respective gate (Harmon Killebrew at Gate 3, Tony Oliva at Gate 6, Kent Hrbek at Gate 14, Rod Carew at Gate 29 and Kirby Puckett, Jr. and Catherine Puckett at Gate 34)
Other pregame events include, in this order:
Twins batting practice
A’s batting practice
Grounds crew preps the field
A pre-game video, “Twins Timeline,” will feature highlights from 50 seasons of Twins baseball
Jerry White, longtime Twins first base coach, will raise the 2010 AL Central Championship flag
The Twins unveil a “Countdown to Cooperstown” honoring Bert Blyleven, who will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on July 24th
Both teams will be introduced along the foul lines
Military representatives will unfurl a giant replica of the American flag
John Gordon, beginning his final season as the Twins radio play-by-play announcer, will raise the Twins Territory Flag
Jerry Bell, Chairman of the Twins Executive Board, will raise the Hennepin County Flag
General John Vessey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Minnesota native, will raise the American Flag
The National Anthem will be performed by Rick Oliva, son of Twins legend Tony Oliva, and Maria Versalles, daughter of former Twins shortstop and 1965 AL MVP Zoilo Versalles
Military flyover of F-16s performed by the 148th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard located in Duluth with fireworks to follow
Ceremonial first pitch thrown by Twins legend Harmon Killebrew
Twins take the field
Play Ball!
“Take Me out to the Ballgame” in the 7th inning will be performed by a group of Twins Season Ticket Holders. It will be preceded by a performance of “God Bless America” by Sara Pohlad.
