Category: Blog Post
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With Apologies To Jumbo, The Day Off Was Sort Of Nice
I don’t know about you, but I spent the day not watching baseball. I did tune in briefly to the end of the White Sox game tonight, but what I saw was not encouraging. I saw a tough and resiliant team which is, at least at the moment, showing why it’s the best –and certainly the most improved– club in the Central.
The Sox comeback against Anaheim was a classic small-ball rally, and if you’re not already sick of hearing about small ball in connection with the Central, I’m pretty sure you will be –we all will be– before everything’s said and done. The difference between the White Sox and Twins right now is that the strategy involved represents a deliberate organizational approach on Chicago’s part.
Trailing the Angels 4-3 in the ninth (after Ozzie Guillen left Mark Buehrle out there in the top of the inning to cough up a 3-2 lead –with an assist from Damaso Marte), pinch hitter Willie Harris walked and swiped second. Joe Crede followed with another walk, and Scott Podsednik sacrificed the runners. Carl Everett, pinch hitting for Tadahito Iguchi, then struck out against Scott Shields.
Yet with two outs, Timo Perez, who replaced Frank Thomas at DH after Thomas left the game in the seventh with a hip flexor, lined a two-run single to left for the game winner. Thomas, of course, was in the line-up for the first time since last July.
We’ve seen the Twins stage comebacks like this occasionally this year, but after managing just eight hits over the last two games in Toronto, it’s becoming apparent that right now they’re a small-ball team –and not a very good one– out of necessity rather than design. More than half of their line-up is not truly capable of executing fundamentally on a day-to-day basis, but they’ve also so far proved incapable of tossing up crooked numbers with any regularity.
If the 2005 Twins are going to be anything more than a splendid pitching staff and an underperforming offense, they’re going to need the guys in the middle of the order to start delivering some extra base hits and hitting some home runs. If it comes down to scrambling for runs and playing station-to-station baseball, the White Sox –who do also have some guys who can hit the long ball with consistency– will run away with the Central. All those one-run games they’ve won are something of an oddity, but they’re also a sign that they’re doing some things right.
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Not Sleeping
He would get up from his bed each morning in the long hours after midnight, confused, sour with his inability to sleep, insomnia the curse of his life, stretching all the way back to when he was a boy and was still excited to imagine all the wonders and revelations he might miss every night when he closed his eyes. It never once occurred to him then that sleep might offer wonders of its own.
Into his middle years he had no recollection of ever having dreamed. A dream to him was a metaphor for the things people wished for in vain.
He was no longer quite so excited to be up and wandering the dark rooms of his house at three a.m. The wee hours had long since lost whatever charms they might once have offered. Every one of his sleepless nights would follow him into the day like an abusive shadow. He was unfit for anything that the rest of the world might have considered a normal life. That sort of thing –and he could no longer even imagine what ‘that sort of thing’ might entail– was apparently no longer in the cards. He was stuck with Mahler and Schubert and Ben Webster and Schopenhauer and three a.m. Not to mention mornings of blind, stupored misery hunched over the daily newspaper and pouring caffeine down his throat, desperately trying to goad his blood, head, and heart into some passable impersonation of a conscious and functioning human being.
He’d begun to notice a sadness in himself that he was certain hadn’t been there before, this dull, muffled ache that started just behind his eyes and gradually worked its way down into his legs. This represented a fundamental change in the character of his exhaustion. For most of his life his sleeplessness, as well as its hangover effects, had been marked by a confused, agitated buzz, a sort of hyper-consciousness. His body would be worn out, he would feel sluggish and disoriented, but his brain would continue to stir up its usual ceaseless production of static and sparks. It was like being sleepless and exhausted in a great, teeming city, with stimulus above and around him on all sides.
In his mid-thirties things started to change. He supposed that years of nocturnal living and around-the-clock consciousness of one sort or another had done serious damage to his mind. The nights would now pass in a muddled crawl. The analogy was no longer a teeming city, but rather a long, dark road in the country, the city and the old amusements of his insomnia reduced to a distant, impressionistic spectacle on the far horizon. The carnival had gone black, and he was left with the more abstract entertainments of the planetarium, the dark astral clutter of his skull.
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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.
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Every Day, In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better
Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea, too meaningless to be positively false; he has, nevertheless, passionately loved it, has made it his companion by day and by night, and has given to it his strength and his life, leaving all other occupations for its sake, and in short has lived with it and for it, until it has become, as it were, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; and then he has waked up some bright morning to find it gone, clean vanished away like the beautiful Melusina of the fable, and the essence of life gone with it.
—Charles Pierce, Selected Works
It was an evening which, by some mysterious combination of failing light, and the smell of an unrecognized plant brings back to some men a sense of childhood, and of future hope; and to others the sense of something which has been lost and nearly forgotten.
–Graham Greene, The Honorary Counsul
That’s bullshit, and you know it’s bullshit. I put that shovel next to the porch and now it’s gone. I made a special trip to Home Depot to buy that damn shovel, and I think you can well imagine how difficult such an excursion was for me. I hate the very thought of places filled to the rafters with tools and all sorts of other inexplicable nonsense that makes me feel utterly useless as a man.
I can’t dig a hole if I don’t have a shovel. And if I don’t dig a hole I have no place to put the words. If I don’t have a hole in which to bury the words I have no reason in the world to produce the words, and so the words have no purpose and just pile up around me until I can’t even get out of bed in the morning.
Jesus, this place is murky. I feel like I’m living in an aquarium, and not a large one, either. No, it’s more like I’m living in a filthy aquarium in a Chinese restaurant, treading water while slimy eels swim lazy laps around me.
I’m not shitting you, people, maybe you live here, maybe you know what I’m talking about: All it ever does is rain. There’s a moment in every day when I feel like I’m going to fall right off the planet and into the darkness beyond the clouds, where the stars are like little farmhouses strung out across the great, empty country of the sky.
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Objects In The Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
The bad news is that the Twins aren’t scoring many runs. The good news is that neither are the White Sox. As I mentioned the other day, the Central race looks increasingly like it’s going to come down to which team’s pitching can carry it the longest.
There is, of course, always the possibility that the offense that everyone –myself included– thought was going to be much improved this year will finally get rolling, but after three seasons (and two months) of this frustrating one-step-forward, two-steps-back routine for virtually every hitter in the Minnesota line-up, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Anybody out there still remember Richard Stanley Such, Tom Kelly’s erstwhile valet/pitching coach? Remember how Twins pitchers during Such’s looooong tenure in Minnesota never seemed to a) develop, or b) be able to sustain any consistency?
I used to waste a lot of time and energy bitching about Dick Such, and puzzling over Kelly’s maddening loyalty to the man. I remember one ex-Twin telling me how Such’s trips to the mound used to consist of such helpful advice as, “Throw strikes. You’re pissing off the manager.”
Such had his defenders, although they were fewer as time went on. Their main argument was generally, “He can’t throw the ball for these guys.” One look at the man’s career numbers as a Major League pitcher made that point all too clear.
Since Rick Anderson has been installed as Such’s replacement, the Twins have demonstrated remarkable pitching improvement almost across the board. Maybe, of course, that has a lot to do with the fact that the organization is simply producing better pitchers for Anderson to work with. Or, just possibly, perhaps Anderson really does know what he’s doing. The reality is probably a combination of those two factors.
I guess I’m just wondering if maybe right now we might be looking at some correlation between the dark ages when Minnesota’s pitching routinely posted team ERAs that were among the worst in the league, and the team’s current extended offensive malaise.
Like I said, I’m just wondering. That’s all.
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Excuses
I’m out the rest of the week, but encourage you to check out the new issue of the magazine, which rocks pretty good, I think.
If you’re especially nuts for silly gossip and local crazy-talk, and you want to know why we’ve been getting so many dirty looks from our so-called competitors lately, look at this and try to imagine how much fun we had putting it together.
Why can’t we use our powers for good? Because there’s so much evil in the world…
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A Vulture With A Wicked Curveball
Tonight Jesse Crain picked up his fourth win of the season out of the bullpen, and it looks like he’s on his way to eventually supplanting Juan Rincon as the main set-up man for Joe Nathan. He’s also looking like pretty good insurance for Nathan in the event that disaster strikes.
I love Crain enough to risk ruining his season (if not his career) by praising him in a (semi-) public forum. The guy throws in the mid-nineties and has a dynamite curveball, and though I expect the strikeouts will eventually start to come for him, so far he’s gotten the job done by getting opposing hitters to swing the bats. He’s also the one Twin most consistently willing to pitch hard up and in and drive batters off the plate, and it’s fun to watch his already crafty approach to each at-bat. I also like his unflappable demeanor. He’s the stone-faced straight man to Nathan, whose wincing, sighing, and lip-fluttering whinnying always makes me sort of nervous. Nathan’s a monster, but I’m not sure there’s a closer in the major leagues who displays such anxious body language on the mound.
It would be nice if the Twins offense could sustain a little consistency from top to bottom, but they’ve been maddening in exactly the same regard in each of the previous three seasons. There never seems to be a time when everybody in the line-up is running hot at the same time, and there have been far too many nights when everybody pretty much looks futile against mediocrities like Scott Elarton. This is still a team that’s going to go as far as its pitching will carry it, and the same seems to be true of both Chicago and Cleveland.
Tonight at least they managed to come through with a bunch of big two-out (and two-strike) hits, and I know that most stat wonks like to pooh-pooh the idea of clutch hitting, but, dammit, I know what I see, and Lew Ford has been clutch in so many key situations already this year that I have a hard time attributing it to nothing but situations and luck. Ford seems to have a knack for bearing down and getting a good swing in the tight spots of games, and I have to think it has something to do with the same curious mental makeup that makes him such a genuine and endearing character in the clubhouse.
I suppose the sort of encouraging thing about the last couple nights is that both teams have pretty much emptied out their bullpens, and if anything Eric Wedge has spent even more bullets. I think any time the Twins can come through the back end of the rotation with a 1-1 record you’ve gotta feel pretty good, although wasting a decent Kyle Lohse performance certainly qualifies as a major waste at this point.
Now, of course, the series comes down to which team’s starters can do the most to give their bullpens a breather in the next couple games. Which gives me an opportunity to say how much I like the revamped batting order Gardenhire has cobbled together. Between Stewart, Mauer, and Ford, you’ve got your three most selective guys getting guaranteed at-bats in the first inning, which gives the Twins a chance to force opposing pitchers to work deep counts and throw a lot of pitches. I wish I felt like some of the guys in the middle of the order were actually paying close attention to these at-bats, but most of the time lately it sure as hell doesn’t look like they are.
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The Opposite of Right is Not Always Left
It took us three days to get through Michael Sokolove’s provocative piece in the New York Times magazine about Sen. Rick Santorum—partly because we couldn’t stop talking about it before reading to the end. (A long, loud discussion over beers at Pizza Luce on Sunday night was especially energetic.) Of course, we can’t plan these things, but we’ve had a remarkable run of good luck in our timing lately. We call it “planned serendipity.”
Sokolove’s piece on the rise of religion in national politics compliments our new cover story nicely. But where he keeps the frame tightly on Sen. Santorum, and does not wander off to compare him to any larger trends of increasingly noisy Christians in national politics, our story looked at a possible Democratic alternative, at least as it presents itself in the Minnesota state legislature—a Christian Left, as it were.
Is there an equivalent counterpart on the left, an equal and opposite religious impulse coming from the DFL? Not really, and here’s why: The left is not comfortable dealing in high moral or religious language for one simple reason—Democrats value diversity, and recognize that statements of confessional faith are inherently exclusionary and judgmental. It is not possible to speak of simple Christian morality without alienating non-christians, whether they are Jews, Muslims, atheists, or free-thinkers. Plenty of Christians are not comfortable with Christianity’s ascendency in American politics because they understand this. This country was founded in religious dissent, not religious consensus. Sen. Santorum and his many colleagues have made it pretty clear just how they feel about dissent of any kind, but they are particularly blind to the possibility that a person can be moral without being pretentious or self-righteous or even Christian about it.
As our cover story makes clear, a person like Sen. Dean Johnson recognizes as a key value the understanding that there are intractable differences when it comes to certain moral issues and positions. You can not legislate faith-based morality for the simple reason that there are hundreds of differenct faiths that cannot, should not, and will not agree.
It is time to put this literalist approach to scripture and religion out of its misery. We will no longer argue with anyone about what the Bible says or means (even when it simply “means what it says”) until our petitioner can read in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek—the languages in which most of the books of the present-day “bible” were actually composed. (Come to think of it, we’ll spot you the English translation, and you tell us which bible is it that ought to be interpreted literally? The Catholic or Protestant bible? KJ, NIV, RSV, INIV? Vulgate or Pentateuch as source document? Answers! We want answers!)
More to the point, we feel good about one thing, especially for our friends who are obsessed with Google: Finally, Rick Santorum’s search engine results will reflect something other than Dan Savage’s definition, which has slowly been inching its way toward Webster’s, and is one of the most euphonious coinages we’ve ever heard.
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Everyone's A Meta-Critic
On Friday, Timothy Noah published the results of his online survey which asked the question, “If you had to pay to read each New York Times columnist, how much would you pay?” Apropos of the Times announcing that they were going to place their columnists in a premium subscription-only area of the Times website, Noah was asking readers to rank the Times columnists according to relative value. Krugman won, Friedman came in a close second, Dowd finished middle of the pack, Brooks and Tierney finished dead last.
Several interesting things to say about this. First, Noah dismisses the polarized partisan results as a liberal bias among Slate’s readers, but we’d bet dollars to donuts that Slate’s demographic profile is virtually the same as the Times (especially the Times online). Now that the Washington Post owns Slate, in fact, it will be interesting to see whether the Times continues to be allowed to poach Slate staffers, no matter what Jack Shafer may say about it.
Second, Noah admits that he was floored by the response he got to his little poll. (Again, what did he expect? That no one who reads the Times reads Slate?) Idiotically, he conducted the poll by email, and was therefore unprepared for the one thousand ballots he received in the four hours of voting. He threw in the towel, and decided to hand count only the last half-hour of votes.
Finally, we see a clear and crucial difference in the way the Post will run Slate, versus how Microsoft would have done it. It’s the programming, dummy!
It will be interesting to watch the gauges at NYTimes.com after the premium subscription goes into effect. Doubtless the columnists will suddenly disappear forever from the “most emailed” or “most read” queues or whatever it is that tells you who is winning the daily popularity contest at the Times. But maybe not. Anyone who has ever tried to hide premium content from the masses has not succeeded, at least not 100 percent. We continue to think of it as a reward for those with the time, energy, and perseverance to find it free at any cost.
FOLLOWUPS: As we predicted here, this has come to pass. How do you think she did? We are conducting an anonymous email poll as to who our readers like better as a Strib ombud, Lou Gelfand or Kate Parry, each with a letter grade, please. Although we are not a Microsoft property, we are confident in our ability to do simple math, and we will report the results tomorrow.