Just Because You're Paranoid…

After mercifully disappearing for the first nine games of the season that song was back Saturday night. Lee Greenwood, I guess it is. I’ll take the blame (see this if you need any further explanation), because from here on out I’ve decided that I’ll take the blame for everything that goes wrong this year.

I sure as hell can’t come up with any other explanation for the song’s reemergence that makes a lick of sense. Unless this Lee Greenwood character is somehow related to Hal Greenwood who, though a convicted felon, has old ties to the Twins through his days at the helm of Midwest Federal.

And, look, I’ve got nothing against America, at least as a vague concept governed by a constitution that, though generally excellent, nonetheless failed to provide adequate protection against bad taste. If you’re dead set on turning the seventh-inning stretch into an exercise in patriotic indoctrination, though, there are certainly classier ways to go about it. There are surely better songs about America, songs that aren’t the work of bottom feeders like Lee Greenwood. Someone in the comments below took exception to my criticism of that jingoistic piece of herd trash on the grounds that America is at war. All the more reason, I say, to find offensive the spectacle of a bunch of safe, well-fed yahoos making merry at a sporting event and singing along with a crass ditty that could have been written by a computer program at the Pentagon.

Okay, that’s all I’m going to say about that. Now I’d like to bitch about Bartolo Colon, if I could, a guy I regard as one of the more unsightly specimens ever to squeeze himself into a Major League baseball uniform. I can’t stand to watch the man, who, as he demonstrated today, is capable of pitching performances that are almost as nasty as he looks (or, as he showed against the Yankees in his last start, as ugly). Colon looks like the bastard spawn of Harvey Weinstein and Andre the Giant’s fat little sister.

As much as I might loathe the sight of Colon, I have to admit he was pretty masterful today, painting the corners and getting the Twins to beat the ball into the rug all day long. He had to be masterful, of course, to beat Johan Santana. Santana was pretty damn good himself. Eight innings, two hits, two homeruns. There’s no shame at all in giving up a solo shot to Vladimir Guerrero, but Jose Molina? You’ve got to keep Jose Molina in the yard, and that shouldn’t be a terribly tall order –the guy had five career homers before today, for crying out loud.

Oh well. It was a pretty good game, and a good series. It is, though, a dirty rotten shame that Shrek had to be the guy to put an end to Santana’s streak.