Posts in category Offseason

A Saturday in Winter

Jan21st
2012 Written by Jim Crikket

I know I shouldn’t complain about getting half a foot of snow yesterday here in Cedar Rapids, given that we’ve had remarkably moderate weather this winter. But I’ve never let the fact that I shouldn’t complain about something keep me from doing exactly that, so yeah… I’m complaining about the weather. I just really have come to dislike winter weather.

It does, however, force me to think about how we’re getting closer to spring every day and that means we’re getting closer to baseball.

I really had nothing of any significance to accomplish this weekend, except to get a haircut. For follically challenged men like myself, that task chews up all of about five minutes at the local Cost Cutters, so I still had plenty of time on my hands to kill on this cold, white Saturday.

Einstein

One thing I am doing this weekend, however, is dog-sitting for my son and his wife. This, so far, amounts primarily to watching TV at their home instead of mine. Yes, of course it also involves trying to remember to feed their dog, Einstein, a couple of times a day and letting him outside to deal with nature’s calls.

“Einey” regarded me a bit suspiciously when I first arrived, but within a few minutes, he apparently decided I wasn’t much of a threat, because he found his way to my lap. This did make it a challenge to draft this post, but it turns out he’s plenty happy to simply lay next to me and share the couch.

This is the first time I’ve been trusted to watch Einstein and my goal is to just not screw it up, on the off chance that it turns out this is some kind of test to see if I’m trustworthy enough to be a grandpa at some point.

On the way over to Einstein’s house, I did drive past Veterans Memorial Stadium, the summer home of our Cedar Rapids Kernels, and took a few pictures.

I’ll share some of them here, but I actually took them to send to Craig Wieczorkiewicz , of The Midwest League Traveler blog.  He sent out a Tweet a while back asking for winter pictures of Midwest League stadiums, so I thought today would be a good day to snap a couple and send them to him.

Craig visited all 16 MWL ballparks last season and blogged about it at mwltraveler.com. He’s also writing a book about the experience. It’s a great idea and I’m quite jealous that I didn’t think of it first.

In any event, if you’re interested in minor league baseball at all, you should check out the blog and read back through his posts about his travels last summer. He’s also well worth a “follow” @MWLtraveler on Twitter.

I can’t really decide for myself whether these pictures are depressing, with all the snow on the ballpark, or if they offer a hopeful reminder that there WILL be baseball again, soon. I’ll let you decide that question for yourselves.

- JC

This time of year, there apparently isn't a need to rush to get the parking lot at Veterans Stadium plowed out after several inches of snowfall.

A bit closer look at the home of the Kernels from across the parking lot

I had hoped someone would be in the Kernels office so I could pick up a couple books of tickets for this season and maybe get some decent interior pictures, but no luck. The best I could do was to get a few shots through the external gate.

Yes, this is an exterior picture of Veterans Memorial Stadium, not an excerpt from the movie "Patton"

The tank is actually a part of the Veterans Memorial that gives Veterans Memorial Stadium its name

So long Vets Stadium... I'll be back before you know it.

.
.

General, Minor Leagues, Photos

Making the Off-Season Suck Less

Jan12th
2012 Written by Jim Crikket

Probably one of the most famous baseball quotes ever is the Rogers Hornsby quote concerning the off-season: “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

I think we can all relate to that right now. Winter definitely arrived in Iowa this morning, but I’m not all that excited about staring at it out my window. On the other hand, there is very little going on with the Twins worth discussing. I mean… how many posts can a blogger possibly write on the subject of the Twins’ slashing their payroll? (I believe the count for my posts, personally, on that topic currently sits at 12… but that is unlikely to be the final number.)

All of this snow made me think back to how I managed to survive the off-seasons during the winters of my younger years. Of course, the most obvious answer to that question is that I played basketball… lots of basketball.

But even as a kid, I needed regular baseball fixes as the snow piled up outside my window. How did I survive? There were no blogs. There was no Twitter or Facebook. There was no internet. There were no cell phones. There was no “ESPN Classic” showing old MLB replays because there was no ESPN. There was no Fox Sports North (of course, for most of us in Iowa, there remains no FSN, but I’ll refrain from letting this post devolve in to another blackout rant). There were no DVDs or even VHS tapes of old World Series games… or any other games. There was no cable television.

So what did I do?

I played baseball games, of course. No, not really… but kinda. They were baseball BOARD games.

I had a friend with Cadaco-Ellis All-Star Baseball. The game involved cardboard discs for all of the top players of the day plus a number of “All Time Greats” that dictated the result of each at-bat. The discs slipped over a spinner and each disc had a sort of “pie chart” that was based on the player’s career statistics. I also had a friend with Strat-O-Matic Baseball, but I don’t recall playing that much more famous game a lot. All-Star Baseball allowed us to pit teams of “current” players like Killebrew, Mantle, and Mays against teams with Ruth, Cobb and Hornsby or even mix and match them so that Killer got to play alongside The Babe.

Those are great memories and they got me thinking about all of the other sorts of baseball games I enjoyed over the years. About at the same time we were playing All-Star Baseball, another friend showed me a dice baseball game that you could play by yourself real easily. It was a much simpler game and I don’t even recall that it had a name, though I’m sure it was pirated from some company’s commercial venture.

The next baseball board game I remember playing was Avalon Hill/Sports Illustrated’s Statis-Pro Major League Baseball. It was kind of like Strat-O-Matic on steroids. There really were almost no defensive settings, though, so it was a great game to play solo. This worked out well, since I believe I got this game shortly after moving from Albert Lea MN to Webster City IA. I didn’t really have a lot of friends and even fewer who were as much in to baseball as I was. As a result, I spent a lot of time over the winter in seclusion playing Statis-Pro.

Of course, a short time later, I grew in to the teenage years and became moderately more sociable. That didn’t mean I had to leave baseball behind during the winter, of course. There were always pinball games with a baseball theme and while it didn’t take long for my interests to move from pinball to foosball, I still kept an eye out for the baseball pinball games. In fact, even today, I’ve got a version of “Full Tilt Baseball” as an Android app on my cell phone.

And then it happened. Electronic games. Atari. Nintendo. It was amazing. We could play baseball by hooking game consoles up to our televisions and, eventually, even with handheld game devices.

But, trust me kids, these games bore no resemblance to what you’re accustomed to today.

The first baseball game I remember was little more than an advanced version of the original PONG. Before too long, however, we had Intellivision games that actually involved NINE players on defense! Wow. How much more realistic can you get?

 

Then there were games that involved the names of REAL Major League baseball players! Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean those players played for real MLB TEAMS. One of the first versions of these “real player” games was a Nintendo version that was actually licensed by the MLB Players Association, not MLB itself. So the players were associated with “Boston” and “New York”… not the Red Sox and Yankees. Yeah… the players didn’t exactly LOOK a lot like the real deals either, but we had come a long way from All-Star Baseball!

Of course, the handheld games weren’t that sophisticated. They primarily involved using a couple of buttons and direction keys to make little LED lights move around the basepaths. Realism be damned, those were addictive!

And then I had a son who found baseball video games to be fun, too. Which was great… until he got so good at them that he wiped me off the face of the earth every time we played. I think that he was about seven years old when we got to that point. It may have been sooner than that. I didn’t play a lot of video games after that. My son may tell you it had something to do with me being a bad loser and I realized it would be bad to have to explain why I was beating up a 7 year old. Don’t listen to him, though. He lies.

Today, of course, while we continue to whine about how there’s so little to hold our interest during the off-season, we really have it pretty good. I won’t even spend any time on the advances in video game technology over the past couple of decades, but will just hope that the phrase, “Well played, Mauer,” will soon once again become more than just a catch-phrase from a video game commercial.

Even those of us who no longer play either the board or electronic baseball games during the off-season don’t have to simply go in to hibernation. In addition to all of the real-time coverage by mainstream media, we have more bloggers than we can possibly count, all providing avenues for not only gathering baseball information but discussing and debating it. We have practically minute-by-minute coverage of MLB’s winter meetings. I watched Francisco Liriano pitch two innings in a Winter League game last week. How cool is that?

In two months, I’m hoping to be on my way to Ft. Myers for a week following the Twins and Orioles around the Florida Gulf Coast and I’m already plotting out potential itineraries. But in the mean time, we’ll continue to discuss what the Twins have done, should do, won’t do, and why.

It sure beats just staring out the window and waiting for spring. Rogers Hornsby would be very jealous.

- JC

A Little Bit About a Lotta Things

Jan2nd
2012 Written by Jim Crikket

I took a bit of a break from most things related to baseball over the Holidays. As a result, I haven’t posted much lately. I’d feel more guilty about that if it weren’t for the fact that the Twins front office apparently also took the Holidays off and if they can take a few days off, why shouldn’t I?

It doesn’t mean I’ve hibernated, of course. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world, so I’ll spend a little time today touching on some of those things.

Anthony Slama

Let’s start off by congratulating Twins 3B Danny Valencia P Anthony Slama on getting engaged. At least that’s what we can deduce from the Tweet he posted Sunday, “On a flight home with my fiancé. It feels good to say both of those things!!” (See… this is what I get for trying to be the Knuckleballs’ social secretary. I only pay half attention to stuff and get it wrong. – JC)

In other news, Danny Valencia will be sporting a new number next season… he’s changing his uniform number to #22.

The White Sox apparently didn’t get the same memo that the Twins did about taking a couple of weeks off. Sox GM Kenny Williams dealt relief pitcher Jason Frasor to the Blue Jays and outfielder Carlos Quentin to the Padres over the past few days. I think they got a handful of minor leaguers in return. I’m not sure if Williams is rebuilding the Sox or just wants to have a better AAA team. Then again, I could say just about the same thing about Terry Ryan.

There’s still a fair amount of starting pitching on both the free agent and trade market. Names like Roy Oswalt, Edwin Jackson, Matt Garza, Hiroki Kurda, Hisashi Iwakuma, Paul Maholm, Joe Saunders and Kevin Millwood are all still available (I think… unless there are deals I have missed somewhere). The interesting thing is that we seem to read more about which teams aren’t likely landing spots for many of these guys than we do those where they may end up. It seems that everyone is waiting for Jackson to sign and Garza to get dealt, to set the market for the rest of the signings and trades. But with the Red Sox and Yankees both apparently concerned about taking on salary obligations that would have luxury tax implications, the two teams with the deepest pockets may be out of the bidding. It will be interesting to see which, if any, of these pitchers have to settle for less money and/or fewer guaranteed years than they and their agents expected. Of course, selfishly, I’m still hoping someone useful still falls in to the Twins’ lap before Spring Training gets in to gear.

The Vikings season is over. Thank God. I’m not sure there’s ever a good time to have a season as bad as the one they just wrapped up, but performing that bad at the same time you’re trying to get the locals to cough up a few hundred million dollars for a new stadium is pretty bad timing. Then again, they do get that nice high draft pick. I kind of feel the same way about their high draft pick as I do about the Twins’… that is, I’d be more enthusiastic if I was confident that either team’s front office had an intelligent plan.

The Hawkeyes‘ football season has also mercifully drawn to a close with their loss to the Sooners in the Insight.com Bowl. Between their last game of the season and their bowl game, they lost their top two RBs and a defensive coach (to Nebraska). Norm Parker, their Defensive Coordinator is also retiring. Yes, there is definitely a sense of “rebuilding” going on around here, as well. The good news is that the men’s hoops program seems to be heading in the right direction. Winning on the road at Wisconsin was a big step.

There’s still a little time left to cast a vote in our Hall of Fame Poll, over in the right-hand column. As I right this, it looks as though Knuckleballs readers aren’t going to give anyone the 75% of the vote necessary to get in to the HoF. As I’ve written elsewhere, I’m really surprised that Jeff Bagwell doesn’t get more respect. Anyway, you’ve got another week or so before the BBWAA announces their choice(s). We’ll close the poll then.

Over at The Platoon Advantage, The Common Man put up a post explaining why he writes under a pseudonym. Maybe it just struck a chord with me because I have my own reasons for doing the same. Frankly, with employers and potential employers (not to mention government types) all using various ways to check up on our backgrounds, hobbies, friends, political views, relationships and other personal information online, using a pseudonym is just good sense. The only reason I can think of for NOT doing so would be if a blogger is hoping to get a paying gig in the mainstream media. I think that ship has sailed, in my case.

The Iowa Caucuses are Tuesday night. I’ve attended every such caucus, where the Republican Presidential nomination was being contested, since 1980. I’ll also be attending this year’s. Unlike in the past, however, I haven’t chosen a candidate to support long beforehand. I’m not going to get all political here, so suffice to say that if things go as they usually do, I will end up supporting someone who does NOT win the Iowa caucuses, but DOES eventually become the GOP Presidential candidate. 1980 was the last time I supported the winner of Iowa’s caucuses. However, 1980 and 2000 were the only contests where my preferred candidate did not eventually become the GOP candidate.

Since the future of my chosen political party and, perhaps the entire country, relies on me choosing wisely, I’m obviously feeling a lot of pressure. Ah well, I have another day to think about it. No worries… I’ve got it all under control.

I hope you all had a good Holiday. I know I did. As usual, my family went overboard on the Christmas presents. I received some clothes (all of which fit), a number of DVDs (none of which I already had), a custom made mug and calendar (both with various snapshots of my loving family) and a set of the Jacqueline Kennedy interviews with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (great for a history buff like me). In addition, I also received a couple of Twins-related gifts. One was Doug Grow’s excellent book, “We’re Gonna Win Twins” (at least the first few chapters are excellent… still reading the rest) and a new Twins road jersey.

The jersey requires some explanation. I got it from my son and it clearly is intended to be payback for the grief I still give him about how every player whose jersey he buys goes in the tank or gets traded (or both) immediately thereafter. I find his Albert Belle Orioles jersey particularly amusing. Unfortunately, his magic touch seems to be contagious. My daughter-in-law’s favorite Twins player was… yes… Michael Cuddyer.

In any event, next time you’re at a Twins game and you see a middle aged man with a grey beard sporting a XXL sized Twins road jersey with “NISHIOKA” and the number 1 on the back, stop me and say “hi”.

- JC

General, Hall of Fame, Twins baseball, Vikings

Being Rich and Stupid

Feb18th
2011 Written by Jim Crikket

Now that our Boys of Summer are actually on the fields in Fort Myers, there’s plenty of people down there writing about it. I’m not down there yet (25 days and counting before I’m there, though!), so I’ll write about other stuff today.

Albert Pujols

I know I already wrote a full post on the subject a while back, but now that Albert Pujols has reported to the Cardinals’ Spring Training without a contract in place and has reaffirmed that the negotiations won’t resume until November when he hits free agency, it’s hard not continue drawing parallels with the Joe Mauer situation a year ago.

I know some people say one difference is that Mauer certainly would have had both the Yankees and Red Sox bidding for him on an open market, but that those two teams would likely not be bidding up the price on Pujols, since they both will have All-Star first basemen already on board with multi-year contracts. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a moment that, should Pujols actually file for free agency, one, or more likely both, of those teams wouldn’t make a serious play for the best hitter in baseball.

Boston has a ton of money coming off the books after this season (none of it regarding players they should try too hard to keep) and everyone knows the Yankees don’t have a payroll limit. Anyone who thinks that these teams wouldn’t go after Pujols because they already have first basemen under contract apparently hasn’t heard that the American League has adopted this new-fangled thing called a Designated Hitter. David Ortiz’s contract with the Red Sox is up after 2011 and they’d happily let him go to make room for Pujols; and last I heard, the Yankees were looking for Jorge Posada to be their primary DH. Hmmmm… Posada or Pujols… I dunno… that’s a REAL tough choice.

Here’s another thing I don’t understand about the Pujols deal. Why the heck would Pujols’ agent let him do something so stupid as to set a purely artificial “deadline” for reaching an agreement, like the “opening of Spring Training”? In doing so, he’s yielded the high ground to the Cardinals, who get to say, “we are willing to talk whenever Albert wants to talk”. They come off looking like the only reasonable parties while Pujols let’s himself get cast as the greedy jerk who’s trying to blackmail his mid-market ballclub.

The whole “I don’t want it to be a distraction” thing is bull. Does he really think nobody is going to talk about the situation all year just because he’s said he won’t negotiate? When he won’t answer questions about it, reporters will just keep asking his team mates about it (no distraction there, right?). EVERY series with the Cubs is going to be accompanied by sidebar articles written about the likelihood Pujols could be calling Wrigley Field home next season and that will happen whether the two sides are still talking or not. So why not keep talking? By the way, yes, I thought the same thing when Mauer’s side set a deadline of the end of Spring Training for reaching a deal last year. It’s just stupid, to me.

Stupid Owners

Speaking of stupid… I’m not sure whether anyone still is under the misperception that the wealthiest people in the world all got that way because they are inherently smarter than the rest of us, but if so, I think we can now officially put that theory to rest.

Sure, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are examples of people who had brilliant ideas and earned bajillions of dollars by bringing those ideas to the marketplace. But for every Steve Jobs, there’s also a Fred Wilpon. Whenever I even think for a moment about questioning the way the Pohlad family runs the Twins organization, all I have to do to feel better is spend 10 minutes reading pretty much anything written about these owners:

Fred Wilpon – Mets: Just when we thought he couldn’t make ANY decision worse than hiring Steve Phillips and Omar Minaya as GMs, we find out he also find a way to not only get swindled by Bernie Madoff, but also manage to get sued by the other victims (each of them a rich and stupid person in his/her own right, most likely) of Madoff’s scheme… and he could lose his baseball team as a result. By the way… hey, Johan, how’s that decision to force a trade to the Mets looking right now?

Jamie and Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt – Dodgers: Note to all owners… never let your spouse help you run your baseball team… even if she’s actually better at it than you are (in fact, ESPECIALLY if she’s better at it than you are)… and if you’re dumb enough to do that, don’t compound your stupidity by trying to throw her out over something as trivial as a little infidelity. After all, in Los Angeles, isn’t that pretty much expected?

Arte Moreno – Angels: Face it, we knew he was stupid when he gave Torii Hunter a deal that was worth twice what anyone else was offering, but to trade with Toronto for the privilege of taking over their payments to Vernon Wells is an even dumber move. If only the Twins had known they could have given Torii an absurd long term contract and just kept him for one or two productive seasons and then dumped him on the Angels for the last few years!

UPDATE… Miggy: In the comment section, AW appropriately inquires how I could do a “Being Rich and Stupid” post and not mention Tigers’ All-Star Miguel Cabrera. As I responded in the comments, I felt it was a sad situation and was inclined to hold off jumping on him immediately… hoping he’d finally get the help he needs. Then I read this… and this (via Baseball Outsider’s links)… and now, I’m officially ready to say, “Wow are you stupid!” Not so much at Miggy (though clearly he has behaved stupidly), but for now, assigning the label to the Tigers organization. They’re going to pay this guy $106 million over the next five years and despite his past and current behaviors, the first words out of the mouths of their GM and Manager are to reassure the fans that they want their All-Star drunk in camp as soon as possible and that he won’t miss any playing time. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d be more concerned with looking at how to make sure I’m not throwing money down a well for the next five years than whether he’s going to miss any time for the next few weeks. A little tough love might be in order here, but get the man some help, for cryin’ out loud.

A Couple of Non-stupid Links

I like Brian Wilson (the Giants’ closer, not the Beach Boy… well I like Beach Boys music, too, but that’s a bit off subject). Check out this Q&A with Wilson from Jon Wertheim at si.com. I think the Twins should trade for Wilson. After all, if you’re going to have two closers on your team, why not just go ahead and have three? And Wilson thinks a lot like I do… or at least a lot like I would like to think I would think if I were a Major League pitcher.

Joe Sheehan, also at si.com, might have had the best single line I read this week, in his article on the opt-out clause in Captain Cheeseburger’s contract with the Yankees: “Opt-out clauses are the most player-friendly part of baseball since groupies.” Hmmm… opt-out clauses and groupies… I really should have worked harder to develop a good sinking fastball when I was in high school. Ah well, probably too late to do anything about it now.

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend!

- JC

General    , , ,

Late Night: Joe Mauer & Jimmy Fallon

Feb16th
2011 Written by CapitalBabs

For all those who didn’t stay up late enough to catch Joe’s late night TV debut, I thought I would pass it along. Quite frankly, this kind of thing is just as well watched the next day in my opinion.

But it is nice for the Twins to get a little national attention of the positive variety! And I love that Joe is called Baseball’s Anti-LeBron!

General   

Off-season Photo Farewell

Jan26th
2011 Written by CapitalBabs

With all the off-season signings that took several of our Twins to other teams, we thought we would take a moment to bid a fond farewell with a little photo montage of some of our memories of their time with the Twins.  Obviously, for those that had been with us longer, I had a LOT more time to take pics of them.

Since we won’t get to see their adorable faces (or other features of choice) on the field this spring, here’s an opportunity for you to get one last look of Guerrier, Crain, Fuentes, Rauch, Hardy, Punto, Hudson and Harris in Twins uniforms.  We really do with you all the best with your new teams guys!

Photos, Twins baseball    , , , , , , ,

More Sunday Morning “Goofiness”

Dec5th
2010 Written by CapitalBabs

Since the baseball off-season kind of sucks for those of us who aren’t needing the vacation, I’m watching a lot of football.  Most of us seem to do some of that on Saturdays and Sundays lately.

So even though is a baseball oriented blog, I thought I would share a little entertainment in the vein of our current sports distractions.

General

Twins to sign new TV/radio deal… and Mauer, too?

Mar5th
2010 Written by Jim Crikket

I hadn’t seen or heard anything about this in any of the “usual” online sources for Twins’ news that I read rather religiously (doesn’t mean it wasn’t there… I may have missed it), but Peter Gammons had this little nugget in his mlb.com report on the Twins:

“… regardless of the weather, the Twins will realize a significant bump in revenues with their new park. They’re about to sign a new radio and TV deal.

‘It’s not quite a Seattle deal,’ said one club official, but another says it will put the Twins within ‘the top 8-10 revenue teams,’ giving them a higher payroll than the Dodgers.”

Seriously? Although I guess maybe the whole soap opera revolving around the divorce of the Dodgers’ owner might be inhibiting the Dodgers’ payroll and, if so, maybe it’s not as big a deal as it sounds. I just assumed the Dodgers probably were one of the $100+ million payroll clubs.

I suppose it’s foolish to hope this new TV/radio deal will mean I’ll actually be able to watch/listen to Twins games in Eastern Iowa.

In any event… now that they’ve got this TV/radio contract pretty much ironed out, maybe they can make some progress on another contract issue of significant interest to the fan base.

UPDATE: Those of you who actually live in/near the Twin Cities probably can opine about the reliability of “Common Man”, but Jesse over at TwinkieTown posted a link to Common’s podcast in which he claims to have a source with a “family member with the Twins” who says a Joe Mauer contract agreement will be signed by Sunday. Eight years @ $22 mil per year plus a couple of option years. Sounds a bit like one of those “friend of a friend of a friend who has a sister who dates the janitor” kinda things to me… but who knows? We can hope, anyway.

Twins baseball    , ,

Better than a Good Day Anywhere Else

Mar4th
2010 Written by KL

I’m a baseball fan, particularly of the Minnesota Twins. I’m not a baseball analyst or any kind of expert. Just a fan.

But apparently I’m a fan who’d like to share a few of her thoughts about the Twins with more people than just her baseball-loving friends and coworkers. The first thoughts I’ll be sharing are about our intro topic, the dreaded offseason.

When the offseason first arrives, it’s nice to catch my breath, especially after a whirlwind like what was the last week or so of the Twins’ 2009 season. And sure, when I’m ready to put the season behind me there are plenty of distractions that attempt to fill the void, like football or Christmas or the Winter Olympics, but as much as I might enjoy them at the time, they’re just not the same as sitting at the ballpark with a Dome Dog (*sigh*) in one hand and my scoring notebook in the other (this is not actually a feat I can accomplish — how can I hold a pencil and napkin too?), watching nine blessed innings of my favorite baseball team.

I always have big plans for the offseason because I have a lot of things I still want to learn (remember that part about how I’m not an expert?). Such as, how is it other people I watch games with seem to have some sort of innate ability to be able to tell what type if pitch was just thrown? How have I not picked that up by now? How does everyone but me remember minute details about seemingly every single game that’s ever been played? Sometimes I think that maybe if I can just watch enough replays during the offseason I might be able to have more intelligent baseball discussions, but I always end up too busy to try the experiment.

The one good thing about the offseason is that we have something to look forward to when the long, dark winter is over. Because as the saying goes, a bad day at the ballpark is better than a good day anywhere else. Especially when stuff like in the following photo happens (and pay no mind to the uniform; he’ll always be a Twin to me).

Doug M. 4/11/07

Photos

Rumor Addict!!!!

Mar1st
2010 Written by CapitalBabs

Hey Knuckelballs!

My name is Babs and I’m an addict…  Alright, as baseball fans, why are we so in love with the rumor mill?  I LIVE for hot stove news about my team.  I keep my eye out for news on other teams that might somehow change things in division competition.  I follow every player on my team on Twitter and when we add a new player, I add them.  Does Joe Mauer have a contract yet?  Do we know who is going to play 3B yet?  Did you see how excited Pat Neshek is to throw a ball?  I’m sure that the baseball writers are glad that we are like this because it keeps people coming to websites to keep reading even when there aren’t any games or scores to follow!  So when the Twin Cities rumor mill blows up because a sports reporter gets a little too excited that contracts are under discussion, is that a symptom that we are living with an unhealthy obsession?  Is it contagious???  I don’t know and most of the time I don’t care because I have a ready source of the news drug that fuels my addiction.  Of course, I think the obvious sensitivity to such over-reaction is most definitely a symptom of one thing – the off-season is TOOOOO long.  I’m hanging on by my fingernails until that first pitch is thrown. 

Of course, I don’t promise to watch the rumor mill any LESS once baseball season actually starts!  ;)

Spring Training, Twins baseball
← Older Entries Newer Entries →

Twins News

Other Twins Blogs - Recently Updated

Calendar

May 2013
S M T W T F S
« Apr    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

Archives

Visitors

Site Meter

NetworkedBlogs

MLBTradeRumors

Copyright 2010-2013 Knuckleballs. All Rights Reserved. - Banner graphic by Paul Caputo. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the specific authors and do not reflect the viewpoint of the authors' respective employers. Neither the authors of this site nor any member(s) of their immediate families are employed by any entity affiliated with Major League Baseball or Minor League Baseball.
Back to Top