Uncle Jumbo's Playground

–Illustration by James Dankert

It’s my older brother Rich’s 25th wedding anniversary this weekend, and his wife’s family is throwing a big party for the special occasion. There are almost certainly no two words in tandem that I hate more than “special occasion.”

My brother and his wife may be the only couple on the planet that had a chow mein buffet at their wedding reception, which was, at least from a purely personal standpoint, a recipe for disaster. Thanks to the wonders of videotape I’ll have to relive that night for the rest of my life. That tape gets dragged out at every family gathering, and has been widely and irresponsibly pirated and disseminated. I don’t doubt you could find a copy on eBay right this moment. What you’d see –or what you may already have seen– if you got your hands on that humiliating document is yours truly, shirtless and listing noticeably, playing a tambourine with the world’s worst cover band as it sleepwalks through songs by such execrable outfits as the Little River Band and Pablo Cruise. A little later on in the tape you’ll see me –inexplicably wearing a sombrero– passed out with my face in a plate of chow mein.

I’m sure I’ll get another chance to revisit that otherwise wholly lost night this weekend, provided the Celica can make the trip to Blooming Void without incident, and I’m almost hoping it can’t. I’m sure I’ll also have to accompany my mother to the cemetery to visit the old man’s grave. We’ll have the same argument we have every time we go out there, and my mother will muster an increasingly unconvincing imitation of bereavement. The source of our disagreement is my father’s tombstone, on which my mother had had inscribed beneath his name the word “Papa,” a term that was, I’m absolutely certain, never once uttered in connection with my old man.

I won’t be able to resist pointing out to my mother, as I’ve been pointing out to her for eleven years, “Nobody called him Papa.”

“Everybody called him Papa,” she’ll say, and then we’ll argue a bit about it, and then she’ll have her breakdown. It never fails, and at this point I have to imagine that the old man would get a pretty good kick out of the whole scene.

I’m also pretty sure –weather permitting– that I’ll get a chance to thrash my nephews in Whiffleball, which is something that never fails to give me enjoyment. Even when they were so little they could barely swing the damn bat I never took mercy on them, and by now they’re so scarred by the ass-whippings I’ve administered over the years that my domination is almost purely psychological. Almost. Even if they were chippy, strapping lads I’d still kick their asses. I am unquestionably one of the world’s greatest Whiffleball players.

I should be able to catch at least parts of the next couple Twins games on the radio, and I’ll probably get a little time to camp out on my mother’s couch to take in some of the TV broadcasts. It’s an absolute disgrace that there’s no game on Memorial Day, of course. What the hell’s up with that nonsense? I’ll be back home by Monday, and what am I supposed to do with a day off? Sit around my apartment listening to John Philip Sousa records and doing crossword puzzles? I’ll be good and damned if I know, to be perfectly honest with you. I’m afraid things could get very messy.

I’m sure there are plenty of yahoos who are giddy as school girls about tonight’s 7-2 win in Toronto (not to mention Chicago’s 6-2 loss to Texas). Good for them.

Sure, it’s nice to have shaved a couple games off Chicago’s lead in the last week, but I can’t get too excited about a victory in which the Twins rapped sixteen hits and stranded eleven runners. I also don’t much like to see the leadoff hitter tied for the club lead in home runs, and leading the team in total bases. I will say this: if it wasn’t for Stewart and the bench scrubs on this team right now, the Twins would be in deep shit.

And speaking of bench scrubs, did anyone else hear Dan Gladden say tonight that Nick Punto was going to be “a force on this team for years to come”?

A force? For years to come? Nick Punto? I don’t know, maybe we’re already in deep shit.