It's Not Dark Yet, But It's Getting There: 8-3 Drubbing In Cleveland

I’ve got Little Jimmy Scott crooning from the stereo and that’s never a particularly good sign, at least so far as mood barometers go.

At this point I’m not fool enough to say that’s it, but I nonetheless can’t deny that I’m mighty tempted to say that’s it, even as I’ve been mighty tempted to say that’s it for several months now.

Yet every time I’ve been mighty tempted to say that’s it, this weird, baffling, infuriating team has done something to make me regret, at least momentarily, my lack of faith.

The truth, of course, is that this team really has done very little –at least as a team, and in any kind of a sustained way– to encourage any real investment of faith or hope.

It kills me that the Twins have now lost four times this season to that goofy slop slinger Paul Byrd. It kills me that Carlos Silva reverted to his spring training form at the worst possible time. Nights like this, in fact, with summer waning and the crickets winding down, it all sort of kills me.

That triple play, though, that did not kill me. I don’t care what the circumstances, or which team hits into or turns it, I love a triple play. And that one tonight –a picture-perfect 5-4-3, around-the-horn job– looked so easy that it really makes you wonder why you don’t see one of the damn things all the time. Yet somehow the triple play remains almost as rare as a player hitting for the cycle.