Can we just start the All Star break now? Seriously, let’s go ahead and forfeit tomorrow’s game and give the boys an extra day’s rest. Go on and send Joe Nathan to Detroit, but keep Johan home. He needs some quiet time, maybe one of those spirit retreats the New Age hippies used to talk about. Maybe they still talk about them, the goofy bastards. Nothing good can come of letting Johan go to Detroit, though. It would be tantamount, in fact, to handing a suicidally depressed man a straight razor.
For God’s sake, people, have you been to Detroit lately?
I doubt that you have, but if the answer is ‘yes,’ would you care to explain yourself?
Tonight’s performance was disgraceful. The sixth inning was as wretched as any single inning in the last ten years. I can’t think of a more miserable game in recent memory. This is, after all, the Kansas City Royals, and the Twins are being administered a stinging high colonic with barbecue sauce. Let’s all hope like hell it has some sort of long-term therapeutic effect, although I certainly don’t know why it would. I can assure you that it’s never worked for me.
Everything about that game sucked, other than the fact that poor Luis Rivas had his first extra base hit of the season. And his second. And his third. Luis put the Twins on his back and carried them…he carried them…he, uh, oh, shit, that’s right, he didn’t carry them anywhere, because right now this team is just too damn heavy for anyone to carry, let alone Luis Rivas. Or Mike Redmond.
Need I remind anyone that it’s Saturday night, by the way? What the hell was I doing sitting home on a Saturday night watching a demolition derby on television? I could have cleaned my garage. Or torn it down. Or given myself a tattoo. Or even gone over to Uptown to gawk at the aliens.
There’s not a damn thing, really, that any of us can say about that game, but I will tell you what I’d be happy to live without. I’d be happy to live without Dick and Bert constantly singing the praises of Shannon Stewart’s virtues as a sparkplug at the top of the order.
Because right now Stewart has an on base percentage of .338. That’s two points higher than Michael Cuddyer’s OBP, and there are nine guys on the roster who have higher on base percentages, including such famously patient hitters as Torii Hunter and Jacque Jones. Stewart has drawn 22 walks. Five guys have more walks. He has five stolen bases. He is, in short, not a leadoff hitter anymore. I’m sorry about that, but it’s time to face the facts, particularly since one of the problems for this team all year has been that all sorts of guys have been playing (and pitching) out of position.
I hope the game’s not on TV tomorrow, even though I like to think I have the good sense to avoid it entirely if it is. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to even think about it. I want to go down to the Dome next Thursday with a brand new scorebook and pretend that tonight –and all the other nights too much like tonight– never happened.
Come Thursday I intend to start the season all over with a clean slate. And I expect that the Twins are going to do the same.
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