Category: Twins

…and a 2-1 victory against the Royals should probably go in the loss column, but what the hell, we’ll take it. Don’t knock yourselves out trying to score a few runs for your pitchers, though, fellas.

Didn’t you pretty much know that two runs was all it was going to take tonight? I did, right out of the blocks. Two runs should be all it takes most nights against KC, but with Santana on the mound, and Nathan fresh in the pen, it was a done deal the moment Lew Ford’s little bloop dropped into the no man’s land behind second base.

And now Santana has won a whole bunch of games without a defeat (I’ve heard something about it over the last couple weeks, and Dick and Bert might have mentioned the subject at some point tonight, but I was sort of in a no man’s land of my own –what is it? Thirty games? More? Less? Am I even warm?). I do know that he’s now struck out forty-eight batters and walked only three, including the intentional pass tonight. I think the kid’s got a chance to be a halfway decent pitcher.

I see, though, that Chicago is winning again out in Oakland. My God, and I thought Hawk Harrelson was insufferable when the White Sox played like garbage wrapped in skin. Have you subjected yourself to the yammering of that jackass in the last couple weeks? I’m not an advocate of violence, but I wish one of you people who is would please do me a huge favor and rip the guy’s lungs out the next time he’s in town. Seriously, the man is inhumane. He deserves to spend the rest of his life locked in a broadcast booth –or, better yet, a hotel sauna– with Tim McCarver. (Talk about a No Exit scenario. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.)

Ooh, Oakland just tied it up….Anyway, have you looked at the numbers for the White Sox? It’s pretty unreal, quite honestly. They were 16-4 going into tonight, including 10-2 on the road, and they’d won eight straight. They’d scored more runs than the Twins, and allowed fewer. The five pitchers in the White Sox rotation had a combined 2.84 ERA (and none of them was higher than 3.48).

That’s all pretty good. Chicago’s had a remarkable start, no doubt about it, and without Frank Thomas, etc. But here’s where things don’t look so good for the Sox (and exactly where things didn’t look so good for Cleveland last year when they were making like they were going to give the Twins a run for their money): Despite that 2.84 ERA (and a 10-3 record), Chicago’s starters have only 75 strikeouts (versus 40 walks) in 132-and-two-third innings pitched. The whole pitching staff has recorded 126 K/64 BB in 186 IP.

That ratio for the starters would be a borderline survival number for most individual major league starters, and when you compare it with the numbers for Minnesota’s rotation (85 K/11 BB in 118 IP) it’s even more glaring. Chicago’s starters have given up fewer hits than innings pitched (by a considerable margin so far), but I’d expect that number to start to climb as they leave the Central behind. As I said a couple weeks back, I do think they’re a much more balanced team; they’ve got two horses in Buehrle and Garcia, and their bullpen is improved with Hermanson and Marte capable of taking some of the heat off Takatsu. Garland is young and should only get better; Hernandez is Hernandez, and we’ve already seen what he can do when he’s dealing. He could also blow up at any time.

The bottom line is that the White Sox are a better team than they were last year. They’re probably going to be a pretty good team. But, holy shit, 16-4 (maybe, by the time you read this, 17-4)? They’re not that damn good.

What the hell was that? I am sorely in need of some consolation, brothers and sisters. A weekend without baseball, followed by a train wreck in the Motor City, has left me sitting here listening to Skip James with my head in my hands (well, my head was in my hands, but I had to lift it up momentarily to type; as soon as I’m finished it’s going right back down).

It’s bad, you know. Six stinking hits. A couple errors. A shaky afternoon for the bullpen, and, most alarmingly, for J.C. Romero, who seems to have gone feral on us again. Once again the bottom of the order looked like, well, the bottom of the order. Some of these fellas need to be taken out behind the woodshed and given a good ass thrashing.

As for Brad Radke, and that three-spot in the first inning, what the hell can I say? I already said it, but maybe it bears repeating:

There’s no rational explanation for the funny business in the first inning so far this year, at least so far as a team-wide phenomenon goes. Where Brad Radke is concerned, however, it goes back a lot further than this year, and is pretty easily explained by the kind of pitcher he is. Radke prides himself on throwing strikes, and isn’t a guy who ever seems comfortable wasting a pitch. He’s a deeply conservative operator, and at this point in his career isn’t going to change much. That said, he’s never had a single truly dominating pitch that allows him to get away with mistakes, and opposing teams know by now what he has, and that he’s pretty much always going to be around the plate. It seems like everybody he’s faced over the last couple years knows the book on Radke backwards and forwards, and they’re clearly being proactive in the early going and taking aggressive cuts. Hitting is incredibly difficult, but you give the other team a huge advantage when they know damn well you’re going to throw it somewhere over the plate and have a fairly limited bag of tricks at your disposal.

Radke’s a smart pitcher, and he generally does a good job of making little adjustments and settling in as the game goes along, but it sure seems like if he’d take a more unpredictable and even erratic approach right out of the gate he’d save himself the trouble of having to make those adjustments in the first place.

Right now I just hope like hell they get those games in in Kansas City, because I need to get this bad taste out of my mouth in a hurry.

The guy who pumps the music through the Metrodome speakers during Twins games is a fellow by the name of Kevin Dutcher. I have no idea how much attention people pay to that sort of thing during baseball games, but I started noticing a few years ago that the selection of tunes at the Dome was surprisingly eclectic and hip compared to any other baseball stadium I’ve visited. I love the ballpark organ as much as anyone, and I’ll admit there are times when I still get nostalgic for the days at the old Met when Ronnie Newman provided the bulk of the musical entertainment.

Newman died a couple years ago, but he still held down his post in the Dome’s organ loft pretty much right to the end, and though it sometimes gets lost in all the other stuff that now goes on during a baseball game the Twins did hire a replacement. These days, though, the bulk of the in-game music comes from Dutcher’s perch above the press box behind home plate.

Whenever I ask people if they notice the music during Twins games all anyone seems to recall is that wretched anthem of peckerwood patriotism that turned the seventh-inning stretch into an interlude of absolute brain-squeezing torture. I don’t even remember the faux-sodbuster’s name who warbles the damn thing (repression can be a wonderful survival tool), but I can assure you that he’s basically ripping off the incomparable C.S. Lewis, Jr. from the late, great Mr. Show.

If you aren’t paying attention, however, you’re missing some wonderful music. In the last year I’ve heard, among others, the Replacements, Outkast, Modest Mouse, the Ramones, Iggy Pop, Kiss, Chuck Berry, The Who, Devo, Weezer, the White Stripes, and Bush. That’s the sort of play list that’s earning MPR’s new The Current so much adoration (and cash). Dutcher, meanwhile, works in almost complete anonymity, and provides his own tunes to boot.

Each member of the Twins has the opportunity to select what Dutcher calls their “walk-up music.” These are the songs that get played when a player’s name is announced in the on-deck circle. Some guys are apparently very picky; others don’t give a rat’s ass. Jacque Jones, for instance, provides Dutcher with a number of selections, and likes to mix things up from time to time. For the players who don’t have any particular preference Dutcher chooses something he thinks seems appropriate. Last season he picked Joe Mauer’s music, alternating Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good” and the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button,” the latter, Dutcher said, because he figured “a twenty-one-year-old kid should like the White Stripes.”

I’ll run down the songs for this year’s starting line-up, and include some selections apparently beloved by former Twins, but first I’d like to make a personal plea to Ron Gardenhire: Gardie, please call your slumping third baseman into your office immediately and discuss with him what strikes me as a hugely inappropriate and emasculating song choice (OutKast’s “Behold A Lady”). This reminds me of the days when Dodger pitcher Robinson Checo’s appearances would be heralded by the playing of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” This, though, seems much, much worse.

Here’s the line-up:

Shannon Stewart: Last year Stewart used Usher’s “Yeah.” This season his walk-up music is an unnamed hip-hop instrumental that he provided to Dutcher.

Jason Bartlett: LCD Soundsystem, “Daft Punk is Playing at My House.” (Dutcher’s selection.)

Joe Mauer: The Game, “How We Do.” (Never heard of it.)

Justin Morneau: AC/DC, “Back in Black.” (Same as last year.)

Torii Hunter: Bonecrusher, “Never Scared.” (Same as last year.)

Jacque Jones: The Game, “Where I’m From.” Juvenile, “Bounce Back.” T.I., “Bring ‘Em Out.” (Dutcher: “Jacque likes variety and is very specific about his music.”)

Lew Ford: Tree 63, “Treasure.” (A Christian rock song, if I’m not mistaken.)

Michael Cuddyer: OutKast, “Behold A Lady.” (See above. Suggested inappropriate alternates: “Three Times A Lady,” “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” “Pretty Woman,” and “Lady Sings the Blues.”)

Luis Rivas: Petey Pablo, “Freek-A-Leek.” (Dutcher’s selection. Suggested nicknames for Rivas: Petey Pablo and Freek-A-Leek.)

Matthew LeCroy: Charlie Daniels Band, “South’s Gonna Do It Again.”

You might recall that jaunty little Latin number that accompanied Cristian Guzman to the plate during his last several years here. For those who might wish to recreate those wonderful memories in the privacy of their own homes, the song is called “Fiesta Mora,” by Alabina, and is from a CD called “Sexy Latin Beats.”

Corey Koskie’s song was Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” and, sometimes, a tune called “Joy” by a Christian rock group whose name Dutcher did not recall. Eddie Guardado, of course, took the mound to AC/DC’s booming “Thunderstruck.” Joe Nathan’s warm-up music features “Stand Up and Shout,” by the fictional band Steel Dragon (vocals by Sammy Hagar) from the “Rock Star” soundtrack, mashed with Big Head Todd’s version of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.”

There you have it. Somebody please burn me a CD of this schizoid mix so I can drive my wife bananas on road trips. I’d also be delighted to entertain suggestions for alternate selections –perhaps something you think might be more appropriate– for any of the above named players. Or any players, period, I guess. What would Ted Williams’ walk-up music be, I wonder? What was Ron Coomer’s? What should it have been?

Oh, lord, the possibilities are endless.

I’m not even going to bother to try to reconstruct the haywire play-by-play from the last four games. I was intending to go back over the game logs at some point tonight, but the prospect is frankly just too exhausting at the moment. All I know for sure is that I saw more variations of ugly than you’re likely to see this side of the Deliverance wrap party. Somebody out there will know how many times the Twins had the bases loaded over that stretch, and how many runs they managed to get out of those situations. I’ll just take a wild stab for the hell of it: the Twins had the bases loaded twenty-five times and scored one run. I think that’s right.

This I do know, though, because all I have to do is look at the boxscores: Four games, thirty-seven hits, fifteen walks, thirty-eight runners left on base, nine double plays hit into, eleven runs scored, and a 1-3 record. Folks, I know it’s a difficult game, but it’s hard to do what the Twins have been doing (or hard to not do what the Twins haven’t been doing?). Something like that.

Look on the bright side, though. Seriously, have you looked at the pitching numbers for Johan Santana specifically, and the pitching staff in general? Johan has now struck-out thirty-seven batters while walking two. Those are Dennis Eckersley numbers, from when Eckersley was a reliever. It’s unreal. And it’s not just Santana. The entire staff has walked sixteen and struck-out ninety-four. Juan Rincon’s strikeouts to innings pitched ratio has got to be inching up there close to Santana territory. (Okay, I just looked: Rincon’s K/9 –15.00– is actually better than Santana’s –13.50.)

I don’t know how to explain all the home runs Johan’s given up so far, other than just to remember that it’s still early, he was lousy for the first month or so last year, and the league’s got a much better idea of how he operates. There’s also the Joe Mauer factor. Henry Blanco was a very good signal caller, and the pitchers raved about him all last season. I don’t know how long it’ll take Mauer to get a good handle on the batters around the league, and maybe right now they’re calling most of the pitches from the dugout. I don’t think so, though. All I know is that if you could throw back half the homers Twins starters have allowed –and there have been a lot of two- and three-run shots– we wouldn’t even be talking about all those stranded runners and double plays.

Well, we’d probably still be talking about them, or bitching about them, but we’d pretty much be nit-picking. I’m not going to do too much bitching tonight, however, consternated as I am, because I got an earful all night from my pal Jumbo, and I know only too well how tiresome it is to listen to somebody piss and moan. I actually got up and switched seats in the middle innings because I’d had enough of his bellowing. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it on Friday.

Tomorrow I’ll give you the rundown on the tunes that escort each of the Twins from the on-deck circle to home plate, most of them personal selections. I’ll also, finally, assign an artist and a title to that damn song they played for Cristian Guzman the last couple years he was here. I think you know the one. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that you could hum it right now.

Have you noticed over the last several seasons how every time a Central Division foe has tried to talk trash about the Twins in the media it’s seemed to result in an immediate upsurge in the quality of play from Ron Gardenhire’s charges?

Granted, what qualifies as bulletin-board grade trash-talking in baseball is generally pretty innocuous stuff. Detroit’s Dmitri Young’s statements about the Central race essentially being a two team contest between the Tigers and the Indians was certainly foolhardy, particularly coming as it did in the season’s first week; and I suppose the Twins, after pretty much dominating the division over the last few years, are at the very least deserving of a bit of modest respect from their rivals.

Young’s comments likely had little to do with the spanking the Twins administered in sweeping the Tigers, but the timing was nothing if not psychologically convenient. This first month will give the Twins every opportunity to send the strongest of possible messages to the rest of the Central, and the Detroit series will certainly go a long way towards insuring silence from the Tiger clubhouse the rest of the season.

No doubt it’s still way too early to draw any real conclusions, and the Twins aren’t going to break anybody’s backs in April. They can, though, raise the stakes for everybody else, build their own confidence, and clearly establish their right to the respect that has already been given them (and in spades) by the national press. You could persuasively argue that they’ve already earned that respect by virtue of their domination in the division over the last three seasons, but it’s funny how quickly the perception of the Central has changed in so many people’s minds. And you really do have to wonder: on the basis of what? Nine games? Some radically overhauled rosters? Wishful thinking?

I have no idea, to be quite honest with you. And I say this with the full knowledge that I’ve previously proclaimed the division much improved myself. But after watching the Twins dominate the Tigers, I’m as convinced as ever that Minnesota is much better and much more confident than anybody else in the Central, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them run away with the thing once again.

The one team I was discounting almost entirely two weeks ago, the White Sox, actually does seem to be a tighter, better, and more balanced team than last year, but I still don’t think they have enough depth to compete with the Twins over the long haul. My guess is that they’ll spend the summer playing rock ’em, sock ’em robots with the Indians and Tigers while Minnesota just keeps racking up series wins and pulling away from the pack.

There’s no rational explanation for the funny business in the first inning so far this year, at least so far as a team-wide phenomenon goes. Where Brad Radke is concerned, however, it goes back a lot further than this year, and is pretty easily explained by the kind of pitcher he is. Radke prides himself on throwing strikes, and isn’t a guy who ever seems comfortable wasting a pitch. He’s a deeply conservative operator, and at this point in his career isn’t going to change much. That said, he’s never had a single truly dominating pitch that allows him to get away with mistakes, and opposing teams know by now what he has, and that he’s pretty much always going to be around the plate. It seems like everybody he’s faced over the last couple years knows the book on Radke backwards and forwards, and they’re clearly being proactive in the early going and taking aggressive cuts. Hitting is incredibly difficult, but you give the other team a huge advantage when they know damn well you’re going to throw it somewhere over the plate and have a fairly limited bag of tricks at your disposal.

Radke’s a smart pitcher, and he generally does a good job of making little adjustments and settling in as the game goes along, but it sure seems like if he’d take a more unpredictable and even erratic approach right out of the gate he’d save himself the trouble of having to make those adjustments in the first place.

Last night’s terrific 5-4 comeback victory against the Tigers had no shortage of dramatic plot lines, from the return of Joe Mays and his $17 million arm to Shannon Stewart’s walk-off game-winner off the Rheumatoid Terminator, Troy Percival. Almost lost in all the hullabaloo was rookie Jason Bartlett’s first major league homerun, for which he was apparently rewarded with a stinging eyeful of tobacco juice courtesy of a sloppy high-five.

“We don’t have a lot of guys who chew tobacco on this team anymore,” Ron Gardenhire said afterwards. “But somebody must have had some on their hands and Bartlett got it in his eye. I don’t know who the culprit was, but I looked down there and Bartlett was sitting on the bench getting his eyes rinsed out. I guess that’s a pretty memorable reception for your first homerun.”

There were a couple other encouraging developments that were eclipsed by last night’s dramatic finish. The first –Jacque Jones’ plate appearance in the second against lefty Mike Maroth– wasn’t game-changing in any way and didn’t even result in a run, but it was one of those small, eye-opening incidents in a baseball game that reward the attentive. Jones still hasn’t shown real consistency against lefthanders, but he has demonstrated steady progress over the last couple seasons, and has looked particularly sharp thus far in 2005. Against Maroth he fell behind 0-2 and battled back, fouling off a couple pitches and working the count full before eventually coaxing a walk. His next at-bat he slapped a single to the opposite field on the first pitch.

“Jacque’s improvement against lefties is the result of a combination of things,” hitting coach Scott Ullger said. “He’s put in a lot of hard work and I think his confidence just keeps building the more he gets a chance to hit against these guys. I know people have said some things in the past, but it never entered my mind that Jacque was going to be a platoon player. We’re a lot better team when he’s in the lineup than when he’s not.”

The other obvious positive for the Twins last night was J.C. Romero’s appearance out of the pen, in which he struck out three batters and gave up just one hit in his inning-and-a-third on the mound. After rollercoaster seasons in ’03 and ’04, and a shaky spring this year, Romero is once again looking like the reliable left-handed set-up man who was so valuable to the team in 2002.

Last night in the clubhouse Lew Ford expressed confidence that, with the departure of Cristian Guzman to Washington, he now possesses the best set of wheels on the Twins. “Bartlett keeps telling me he’s faster than I am,” Ford said. “But I don’t think so.”

Across the room Ullger and Jerry White both tossed out Nick Punto’s name. “Lew gets out of the box in a hurry,” White said, “but Punto might be quicker around the bases. We’ve got a lot of guys who can run on this team. Bartlett and Rivas have got some good wheels, and Torii and Jacque can also move pretty good.”

As I started to walk away, White added Joe Mauer’s name to the mix.

“Really?” I said. “Mauer’s got speed?”

“Mauer can really run,” White said. “I probably shouldn’t let this get out, but, shit yeah, Joe’s got wheels.”

To really appreciate what an amazing accomplishment it is for Joe Mays to be making his first start in a year-and-a-half you almost have to have spent some time around the guy.

I honestly have no idea what to expect, but I will say that I seriously never thought he’d make it back. Mays is one of the most high-strung, hyper-analytical players ever to wear a Twins uniform, which is really just a longhand way of saying that he’s a first-rate head case and a bit of a flake. He’s a worry wart, a nervous nellie, one of those guys whose mind always seems to be running a hundred miles an hour. His tongue might actually run faster than his mind, and sometimes, it seems, in entirely different directions; I’d for damn sure bet my money on the tongue in an endurance race.

Mays talks in rambling torrents, often with a faraway look in his eyes. I have a tape from one of his postgame starts a few years ago where he talked for almost twenty minutes without the slightest prompt or interuption for a question. It’s both fascinating and entertaining. I’ve often seen reporters drift away from his locker while he’s still in the middle of a monologue.

I can’t even begin to imagine how arduous and mentally taxing his long rehab must have been for a character with so much energy and such a natural inclination to doubt himself. Maybe the whole experience has made him somehow tougher and more patient. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how he holds up tonight. This is, after all, a man who cheerfully admitted to reporters the other night that he felt like he was going to piss his pants as he warmed up in the bullpen for his first appearance since 2003.

You obviously shouldn’t draw too many conclusions based on the first six games of the season, especially since so far it’s been a case of perceptions not exactly measuring up to reality.

Or at least some perceptions. I’ve seen all six games, and without looking closely at the numbers I’d say that, with the exception of the bullpen, the Twins have been pretty disappointing all around; despite which, of course, they’re 3-3.

People have justifiably pointed out the struggles of the team defensively, as they adjust to a new left side of the infield and have had to make do with Matthew LeCroy at first base. LeCroy’s been one of the Twins better hitters so far, but he’s also made all last year’s talk about Justin Morneau’s defensive liabilities seem like so much Chicken Little nonsense. Everything’s relative, I suppose, but it’ll sure be nice to have Morneau back out there on the field.

All in all I think Jason Bartlett’s looked pretty confident, both in the field and at the plate. He made a rookie mistake on a double play ball against Chicago, but otherwise seemed fine. Michael Cuddyer’s been another story at third, and I’m going to guess that some of his bad reads on balls have something to do with adjusting to the Dome’s turf, which still seems to be playing awfully soft and slow. On the positive front, Cuddyer’s demonstrated that he has enough of a cannon to compensate for any number of mistakes in judgement.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Shannon Stewart’s play in left field becomes an issue sooner rather than later. Because most of his deficiencies as a fielder result in his inability to get to balls a decent left fielder should be able to get to, they may not be as glaringly obvious to the average fan as the infield gaffs; but he’s increasingly a liability in left, can’t throw, and puts added pressure on Torii Hunter to get to balls in the gap. There was talk in spring training that now that Stewart’s foot injury was behind him we might see a return of some of the speed that once made him a legitimate threat on the basepaths, but so far I’ve seen no evidence of that.

If you throw out Carlos Silva’s first start and Johan’s dominating performance last night, the team’s starting pitching has been frustrating. Or at least that’s the way it’s seemed. The team ERA is a more than respectable 3.74 and the Twins have given up only 25 runs, third fewest in the league. The bullpen’s ERA of 1.17 (five of the seven relievers have yet to give up a run) pads that number, of course, but if you tossed out the six homeruns that Brad Radke and Kyle Lohse have served up (four of them by Radke) and consider the staff’s overall strikeout to walk ratio (36 Ks/6 BB) the pitching has been pretty much as advertised. The Twins actually have fewer walks than homeruns allowed (six to eight).

The real disappointment so far has been the offense, which should really be no surprise, even though so many of us have inflated hopes for this year’s lineup. You do have to factor in the absence of Morneau in the middle of the order, although it has been an awful long time since the Canadian has shown any flashes of power. Still, when he was in the lineup he was at least getting on base (.333 BA, .385 OBP), which is more than you can say for most of his teammates.

The guys who have done all right so far are almost all at least modest surprises: Bartlett, LeCroy, Luis Rivas, and Jacque Jones. Despite the fact that Hunter leads the team with two homers and eight RBI, he has a miserable .200 OBP. Joe Mauer, who struck out just 14 times in 107 at-bats last year, leads the team in that category so far this year with seven, and he’s looked tentative at the plate in most of his appearances. It’s too Mauer’s credit that he’s a patient hitter and likes to wait for a pitch he can handle, but so far he seems to be guessing wrong much of the time.

Stewart has a .259 OBP at the top of the order, and Cuddyer and Lew Ford have looked helpless.

Still, the Twins have only been outscored 25-to-24, and hapless as they’ve looked on offense they’ve actually out-hit their opponents. And despite a miserable team on base percentage of .308, the Twins pitching has held opposing teams to a ridiculous .269 OBP.

What does any of this mean? Nothing, of course, other than that the Twins are going to have to pick up their production in what looks increasingly like a radically improved Central Division. I think they’ll do that, and I also think they’re in for more of a battle than in years past. With all the hullaballoo and on- and off-the-field distractions during the opening homestand, though, I’m not going to place much stock in the team’s performance so far.

By the end of April, though, by which time they’ll have seen every one of the other teams in the division at least once (and three of them twice), we should have a little bit better idea of what kind of summer we’re in for.

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.