#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -2). These are the times in the WMNSS where the pickings are slim. It makes me hella easy for me to do this -- there are many times in the winter and spring where I go, "Should I even do this anymore?" -- but with this being the fallow season, where Gopher baseball will slowly cede its place to the Lynx before the winter season cranks up again, I'm left to fill space for two teams that are going to go nowhere. That means there's a dangerous amount of time for me to ruminate, almost nauseatingly so, about how the teams I cover for the survey are so terrible.
This isn't exactly one of those times. But it must be said again: The Big Ten in baseball is a mid-major conference, therefore the path to any success, let alone the College World Series, is that much tougher for the Goofs. And yet, somehow, they swept Michigan last week with the last two games being a combined score of 17-12 to, if I'm correct, get back into second place in the conference. I swear they were third from the bottom last week. Nick O'Shea was named Co-Big Ten Player Of The Week for hitting .636, hitting three home runs and driving in six in the U.'s first sweep of the Wolverines in six years.
Unfortunately they started their series at Penn St. last (Friday) night with a 7-0 turd. Believe it or not, they finish their regular season this week. Minnesota plays two more afternoon games against the Nittany Lions this weekend, then host their final nonconference game Tuesday against North Dakota St. (at Siebert), then for some reason (maybe the high school baseball tournaments?) cram a three-game series at Target against Ohio St. in two weekdays, including a doubleheader on Thursday. Thursday?
#-Infinity: Twins (Last Week: -1). I rarely give the -Infinity to any team unless their season is over short of a championship. But the Twinks' week has been so awful, both on the field and off, that, deserved and undeserved, I'm putting the fork in 'em. At least this week.
These fuckers lost every single game this week -- 0-6. Joe Mauer's still out. Jim Thome's still out. Delmon Young's just starting to get back in the lineup. Justin Morneau still doesn't look like a decent major-league player, let alone one fully healed from a concussion. And the pitching blows. I am seeing the same storyline from Brett Favre in Carl Pavano; increasing stretches of mediocrity, threatening to bring down the team he's expected to lead.
This losing streak includes a two-game sweep at home of Detroit. A friend had an extra ticket to the Tuesday game. It's the first Twins game I saw purely as a spectator. And it sucked. Oh yeah, the $545 million ballpark is awesome and stuff, but the sellout streak was over early this season -- we're totally getting our money back on this investment, huh? It was Francisco Liriano's first game since his no-hitter; I knew he was going to get shelled early and often, but five runs in the first three innings? He had so much trouble pitching he almost airmailed two throws in an intentional walk. Then he got pulled because he got hurt. Trade him.
Oh, and this was the game that got delayed an hour because of rain and hail. I don't care about tradition, and I don't give a damn if I was spoiled because of the Metrodome; rain delays suck. They waste our time. I had a job to go to in the morning, and since they probably weren't going to make the game competitive, me and the three other friends I was with took off after the fifth inning. We made a mockery of the game -- well, actually the Twins made a mockery of the game by playing so shittily -- but we had no choice. We have lives to live. You put a retractable roof on that sucker and there'd be no delays ever. We're already paying $550 million for this son-of-a-bitch, what's another $100 million? Told ya.
This team right now is as bad as those teams in the mid-'90's, when we were all speculating that they were going to leave Minnesota. No we only want them to. Because this team was supposed to win the American League Central Division -- not compete, but win. And not to say that a new stadium guarantees that every year, but Twins management said, explicitly, that a new ballpark would mean they would be competitive forever. Well, where the fuck are you people now? We give you $360+ million and you give us the worst record in the league, featuring a bunch of minor-leaguers that show just how fallow our system really is?
I know how this story's going to end. We're going to take this season, only the second in this brand-new ballpark, because we have to. We're going to take the first-overall draft pick and shed Morneau and Young and Michael Cuddyer to start a "youth movement," then sometime in the next two years the Pohlads are going to sell the team because they have finally wringed as much profit out of this team. They got their goddamn stadium, but we don't have our championship team. People of Minnesota, we've been had. And I knew this was fucking going to happen, all along.
They finish at home against the Blue Jays and then have two more two-game series (what the fuck is with all these two-game series? That's five now!!) at Seattle and at Oakland, then begin interleague play at another shitty team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Just what this team needs: A weeklong roadtrip through three cities out west without a day off.
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