Good Luck With The Girls, Stay Just The Way You Are, Etc.

From the pages of Matthew LeCroy’s 1993 Belton-Honea Path, South Carolina high school yearbook:

Damn, Dave Gassner was a lot of fun to watch today. He sure looked like one of those cool, crafty lefthanders who could have a nice, long career. Whenever the build-up on a guy places so much emphasis on the fact that he doesn’t have “overpowering stuff,” it always seems like the people doing the building up are trying to downplay expectations. At the very least that phrase is the worst sort of backhanded compliment.

It’s weird to see a guy making his major league debut display such poise and such a relaxed delivery. Weirder still to see him take such an aggressive approach to attacking the strike zone. Gassner already seems to be a pitcher, and I suppose he’s had to learn to pitch his ass off precisely because he doesn’t have that classic overpowering stuff. The beautiful thing about his performance against the Indians today was that he mixed his pitches so well and everything in his arsenal seems to have nice movement. I’d love to see the chart on today’s game to get some idea of the breakdown on what he was throwing. I’d wager, though, that pitching coach Rick Anderson will be going over that chart with guys like Joe Mays and Kyle Lohse.

It sounds like we’ll get one more look at Gassner before Carlos Silva come off the DL, but, holy shit, isn’t it a beautiful thing to know that if somebody else goes down the Twins have guys like Gassner and Scott Baker (and J.D. Durbin, etc.) in the pipeline?

Peter Schilling has another fabulous edition of his Mudville Magazine up online. Peter’s digest has long been one of my favorite things on the internet, and it’s gotten better (and broader) every year since I first discovered it. The great thing about websites is the extent to which they can be a reflection of the obsessions and personalities of their creators, and Mudville is clearly the work of a smart, funny, and fascinating guy whose curiosity runs far beyond the baseball field. It is, though, primarily a baseball site, and Peter always has a nice mix of historical and contemporary essays, rants, and proposals. He also has perhaps the finest and most eclectic collection of links of any site out there.

Check out the latest issue, which contains a modest proposal of sorts regarding Ron Gardenhire and the expectations regarding this year’s team. Also be sure to explore the archives, investigate some of those links, and spend some time with Peter’s other labor of love, Loafer’s Magazine. It’s all good, and Peter’s one of the best people I’ve met in the years I’ve been writing about baseball.

Also, just in case you’ve been living in a hole for the last month or so, go immediately to Batgirl Juggernaut Inc. and watch Oh Five! The Musical. Watch it a dozen times; I have. Better yet, buy the DVD. I’ve been pimping this work of mad inspiration all over town, but I’ve been remiss in not crowing about it here (primarily because I’m still not convinced there’s any here here).