–Michael Langenstein, “Play Ball”
Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
–Mark, 9.24
Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
–Isaiah, 53.1
And ye shall gird yourself for battle and go forth against that city where the wind blows without rest, and against the unbelievers for whom gold is more precious than blood, and ye shall smite and quench, and flay them in the streets and homes, and where they are at work in their fields and counting towers. When there is not a mouth left moving to utter blasphemies, ye shall offer their fat to the Lord.
–The Additions of Esther, 34.7-10
There is, of course, only one conclusion a reasonable person can make at this point: The Twins are God’s team.
None of us has ever seen anything like the 2006 season, and there isn’t a person on the planet who can offer an explanation for the things we’ve seen.
I’ll confess that my faith had been shaken –shaken by the dispiriting and punchless 2005 season, by the March death of Kirby Puckett, the steroid scandals of the off-season, and by the Twins’ hamstrung break from the gate back in April.
Shame on me. Shame, shame, shame on me.
I have a thing about numbers, though. I like to add them up, isolate them, and basically move them around until they cough up some sort of magic. The day Kirby died I turned to the numbers to distract me from my devastation. March 6 was the date of Puck’s death: 3-6. There was some good Minnesota baseball mojo there; Both three (Harmon Killebrew) and six (Tony Oliva) have been retired by the Twins. Put the three and six together and you have 36, Jim Kaat’s old number, which currently belongs to Joe Nathan. Add them and you have nine, which was worn at one time or another by Larry Hisle, Bombo Rivera, Slick Gardner, Mickey Hatcher, and Gene Larkin.
Stetch it out to 3-6-06 and add it up and the magic starts to fade a bit. Fifteen has sort of a lackluster history with the Twins (Disco Danny Ford, Tim Laudner, Ron Coomer, and Cristian Guzman have all worn it). Make it 3-6-2006, however, and it’s considerably better so far as numerical omens go: 17 was the number of Camilo Pascual, Leo Cardenas, and Rick Aguilera, not to mention Joe Grzenda and Fred Manrique.
There’s some point there, I’m sure, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it. I do know, though, that when I get to monkeying around with numbers it’s almost always a prelude to a fit of religious mania. Numbers inevitably drive me to the Bible, where they tend to make even less sense to me than they do in real life.
As spring rolled into summer, and as the Twins rolled out of a miserable early spring and into history, I was wearing my hairshirt and poring over my dog-eared Bible, all the while keeping at least one ear tuned to the Twins on WCCO. I was alternately muttering imprecations and howling hosannas (from the Hebrew: “Save, we pray”).
I spent the season –the first one in a long time– as just another fan. I listened to the games, went out to the ballpark occasionally, ran through the boxscores every morning, and chatted about the Twins with friends and folks at work. I was tired of the dissecting game, and learning to fall in love all over again with the game of baseball.
It was thrilling.
It was absolutely thrilling.
It is.
It continues to be.
My gratitude for what I –I who am so entirely undeserving– have been given knows no bounds, and so, late on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in autumn, I collapsed in the grass in my backyard and showed my teeth to God.
I also asked him to look out for Wayne Hattaway, one of the greatest characters and human beings it has ever been my privilege to meet.
As a feeble –a so, so feeble– token of my gratitude I’m going to do my damndest to return here to grind out some sort of appreciative or anguished nonsense throughout the playoffs.
I’m going to do what I can.
The Twins, though, are in God’s hands.
