This Is Supposed To Be Fun, Stupid

That, if I’m not mistaken, is a quote from Rick Stelmaszek, who is arguably the most hardened of the baseball lifers in the Twins clubhouse. This was last year, or maybe the year before that. At any rate, Stelmaszek’s reminder was directed at one youngster or another who was hanging his head at the time over some ultimately inconsequential gaff, or perhaps simply a bad day at the ballpark.

I was reminded of the quote this morning as the Twins worked out in the Dome at what seemed an unreasonably early hour, particularly given that their plane from Seattle had arrived in Minneapolis after 2:30 a.m. and the guys were all dealing with the weirdness of time zone adjustments compounded by whatever the hell it was that happened to the hour we all lost on Sunday morning. Additionally, that Seattle flight had been preceded four or five days earlier by a six-hour charter from Fort Myers to the West coast, the longest flight the team will endure all year.

Stelly was nonetheless in fine, midseason grousing form this morning, and reported with apparent regret that he and roommate Wayne Hattaway had been dining at White Castle less than six hours earlier on the way home to their apartment from the airport.

You certainly could have forgiven the Twins for going through the motions Thursday morning, but the wonderful thing about this group of characters is that they never just go through the motions, even when they seem to be just going through the motions.

It was a beautiful thing to see, really. Here was a team that had just completed the often monotonous rigors of spring training, followed by a successful three-game series against the much-improved Seattle Mariners. And yet there they all were –with the exception of Justin Morneau, who after taking a baseball to the head Wednesday was apparently given the morning off– running around the field, gobbling up ground balls, tracking pop flies, and taking batting practice. Rick Anderson put the pitchers through an extended series of drills in which they fielded bunts and ground balls and covered first base; time and again each of the pitchers toed the rubber, delivered a pitch, and then, with the infielders behind them, executed the 3-1, the 3-6-1, the 1-4-3, 1-6-3, and 1-5, all plays that seemed like nothing if not second nature to every one of them.

For all of the Twins, of course, this was their first time they’d taken the field in the Dome in six months, and some of the younger players like Jason Bartlett have had limited experience with the challenges of the new turf and the always dangerous soiled teflon roof. I’m sure nobody was terribly happy to be there, but once they got rolling they honestly seemed to be having an infectious good time. There was –as there always seems to be around this group– plenty of trash-talking and laughter.

Baseball players are ridiculously compensated for what they do, but the older I get the more I realize that what they do would be impossible for anyone who didn’t essentially love the game. It’s a long stinking season, with all sorts of travel, unimaginable pressures, and more ups and downs than any other sport. Watching the Twins go through this morning’s workout, though, it was obvious that they really were playing. Some of it, I suppose, is working at playing, and sometimes it’s playing at working. Bu when you boil it all down and strip away all the business and the behind-the-scenes nonsense of the sport, it truly is still just a game.