–Illustration by James Dankert
Sunday night –the worst handful of hours in the week– finds me a complete wreck, hoarse, hungover, and ruined by a weekend of stale air and even worse baseball. It doesn’t help matters that my attic apartment is so damn hot that I’ve spent the entire evening sprawled on the floor in my underwear in front of the fan, chasing giant Gary Gaetti souvenir cups full of grape Kool-Aid with Tylenol PM and cans of lukewarm Milwaukee’s Best.
There’s a cat that I inherited when I rented the apartment, and every time the thing creeps near me I have to summon enough energy to bellow and lash out at the creature lest it try to straddle me and lick the sweat from my chest. I’m not cruel enough to throw the cat out into the street or dump it at a shelter, but neither am I enough of a pervert to take any pleasure or consolation from its caresses.
Perhaps, actually, I am perverse enough to take pleasure from its caresses, which is why I am so vigiliant about keeping the animal at bay. I recognize what a slippery slope that could be, but lord knows, at the moment I am a man who is sorely in need of consolation.
Sundays are good for something, at least, and I thank God I don’t have to worry about turning on the radio and hearing the voice of Mike Max, or I’d gouge out my eyes with a soup spoon. Tonight I have no intention of turning on the radio or television, period. I don’t even want to hear a score from the White Sox game.
What I’d really like to do, if I could summon the energy, is horsewhip the entire raggedy-ass crew of imposters that seems to have taken over the Twins clubhouse. I’d like to lash the bastards within an inch of their lives for the pain they’ve inflicted on me in the last week.
Did you ever notice that the Twins seem to climb aboard the crap wagon every year about the time the NBA playoffs comes along? Or maybe it’s just the finals; I’ll have to look. But to me that’s the sign of a team that doesn’t have any focus. There are, of course, a whole lot of signs that this is a team that doesn’t have any focus.
Right now they’re just dicking around, and they look simultaneously desperate and lazy. Ask any reasonably competent psychologist (not that I know any): there’s nothing more dangerous than someone who’s desperate and lazy, other than someone who’s drunk, desperate, and lazy. Take it from someone who knows, and who’s paid a terrible price for that knowledge.
Maybe I’m overreacting, and should try to sleep off the weekend before making this pronouncement, but this is the closest this team’s been to total ruination since the miserable slide late in the 2001 season. Someone should check the handwriting on the line-up card Ron Gardenhire posted today, in fact, because I’d swear it had Tom Kelly’s fingerprints all over it. That was a line-up from 1999, for God’s sake.
Yeah, great, let’s move Cuddyer back over to second, push Rivas to short, and toss the Australian out at third in hopes of at the very least dredging up some sort of feel-good storyline. This guy –whatever his name is– is Dan Masteller with an Aussie accent. This is all a terrible joke, and all those promising young players we were gargling like hyenas about at the beginning of the season are either back spinning their wheels in Rochester or doing absolutely nothing to justify the hype. This team couldn’t hit Wayne Terwilliger right now, the pitching is a shambles, and half the roster has some sort of strain.
Tell me this: what the hell is a strain? A pull, a tear, a fracture, those are all something, but a strain? A strain is the whiny second cousin of a cramp, and neither of them is anything more than an aggravation. Believe me, I’m feeling severely strained at the moment, but I’ll be good and damned if anybody’s going to allow me to use that as an excuse to take the day off tomorrow.
This team better shake the shit out of its shorts in a hurry, because, I swear, it’s not too late for me to take up a real hobby. I’ll even take up fishing before I sit through too much more of this nonsense.
Leave a Reply