The Rake Magazine

--Illustration by James Dankert

I'm back, but --like the Twins-- just barely.

Zellar's had a muzzle on me ever since I tried to dictate a column to his answering machine in the middle of the night. This, of course, was after I'd had a few beers, and after the Twins had finished kicking the shit out of my kidneys for three hours. Based on that information, of course, you could safely conclude that this incident occurred pretty much any night in the last couple months.

I don't remember, frankly. And I don't much care.

I will tell you this, though: Jumbo's not about to start turning cartwheels just because the Twins have won six straight and pulled within shooting distance of the wild card lead. Big fat whoop. They've got a lot of atoning to do. During that 11-19 slide coming out of the All Star-break I pulled a groin muscle karate-kicking at the television in a screaming fit of rage, and I gained sixteen pounds. You probably wouldn't be able to tell, but I'm sure my doctor --who I see every five years whether I need to or not-- wouldn't be happy about it. I've no doubt he'd tell me (as he tells me each time I visit his office) to "lay off the snack foods." Fat chance of that, I'm afraid. I've also no doubt he'd tell me that if my cholesterol gets any higher I could essentially tap a vein and use my blood as a substitute for cream cheese, something that might one day prove necessary.

We all realize that if the offense on this team had been even slightly better than half-assed for the last several months all these August and September games against the White Sox might have actually meant something. That doesn't get us anywhere, though, and I'm having a hard time getting all fired up about a wild card race. I don't believe in the wild card --never have-- and I think it's an abomination that so many teams that have knee-walked into the playoffs have managed to win World Series titles over the last ten years, or whatever it's been.

I've never been through anything with a baseball team like what I've been through this summer with this team. If my life wasn't already completely ruined, the last five months would have completely ruined my life. I'm prepared to swear on what's left of my broken mother's body that if I had been batting clean-up for the Twins this season they'd have won --at minimum-- a half dozen games that they lost. At minimum. I believe this in my fat, clotted heart.

In my only Whiffleball outing of the summer (at Blooming Void's fifteenth-annual Loose Meat Festival Drungo Hazewood Whiffleball Classic) I dominated the competition, and singlehandedly carried my club (The Jerkwater Herd) to the title. Every year The Herd is essentially me and whatever warm (or even not so warm) bodies I can rustle up at the Lucky Seven Tavern, and every year it doesn't matter, as long as Jumbo gets to pitch and swing the bat.

I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I am the greatest Whiffleball pitcher on the planet. I am unhittable. I'm a lefty, and I'd make Jacque Jones look like...well, actually, I suppose he'd look like Jacque Jones. He wouldn't have a prayer against my hard heat and nasty slider. Not to mention my trademark off-speed pitch, The Egret.

Believe me, you don't ever want to have to see The Egret.

To get back to the Twins for a very brief moment: Can I just say that Carlos Silva is my new hero? I can't imagine he looks all that great without a shirt on (which is one thing all of my heroes have in common), but the man is a warrior. He might be the only guy on that team that I'd like to have over to my house for a barbecue, and after we'd had a few beers I'd even teach him how to throw The Egret.

Finally (or perhaps by the way), I've decided to become a demolition derby driver. My old man wasn't the brightest bulb on the marquee, but I'll always remember when he took me to the demolition derby at the Groat County fairgrounds one year. In the middle of the thing, between pulls on his Grain Belt long neck, he gestured out to the track and said, "Would you look at that? That right there is life in a nutshell. You keep getting up every morning and eating your shit sandwiches and you know what you'll grow up to be? A survivor, my boy, the winner of the freaking demolition derby."

Just you watch: the Twins will now proceed to go on some kind of unholy tear, winning twenty-three of their next thirty games, and they'll still come up short and miss the playoffs.

That would be just my luck. Yes, my luck, because it's clear the mess of this season to date has been purely a personal thing between the Twins and me. They've had my number all year, and it's played out exactly like one of those backyard fights I used to have with my brother all the time; I'd finally get him pinned to the ground, he'd plead peace, and the instant I released the little bastard he'd take another swing at my teeth and we'd end up right back where we started.

I'll give the Twins this much credit the last week: they've at least been watchable again. For awhile there I was reminded of the time in the late nineties when, at the tail end of yet another wretched game in yet another wretched, knee-walking season at the Dome, a visiting scout in the press box turned to me, shook his head, and said, "You've got my sympathy, brother. This team ain't worth free."

But, still, it's been the pitching, stupid. The team hasn't really won one game with the bats. They've just been out-pitching the other guys, and I guess the good news --with Liriano and Baker on the way-- is that I don't think it's going to take much tweaking and twiddling to make this a very good baseball team once again.

I'll tell you what's pissed me off more than anything else this year. The lack of offense has been maddening, no doubt about it, but it's been the mental breakdowns we've seen all season that have really fried my patience. Failure to execute in fundamental situations --advancing runners, laying down bunts, swinging at good pitches in hitter's counts, the inability, with less than two outs, to hit a simple fly ball with a runner at third, or a ground ball to the right side with a runner at second. I mean, really, all we're asking of guys in these situations is that they make a lousy freaking out, and they've all pretty much demonstrated they can at least do that; they just can't do it when it actually might count for something.

There have, of course, been all sorts of other breakdowns and brain farts, the kind of stuff you shouldn't expect to see in Legion ball, let alone in the big leagues: How many times, for instance, have we seen guys at second base get thrown out trying to advance to third on a ground ball hit right in front of them?

Lots of times. Too many times. More times than I care to remember.

And have you noticed how often various Twins have completely lost track of how many outs there are in an inning? There was the infamous Shannon Stewart screw-up, of course, but there have been scads of other instances that, while they may not have been as costly, have nonetheless demonstrated that this team hasn't really had a proper focus all year.

This has been a season of missed signals and missed opportunities. A season of shameful squandering and dashed expectations. It's not over yet, though, and there's no denying it was hugely satisfying to see the Twins beat the White Sox at their own game --the blueprints for which they basically stole from the Twins.

For one night, at least, our disappointing club looked like the Twins of the 2003 stretch, and it was fun to watch.

Would you have believed --could you have believed-- a mere four months ago that we would be sitting where we are today?

"We" in this instance, of course, meaning you, me, the Minnesota Twins, etc.

I do not think we could or would have believed that, no.

I still can't believe it, quite honestly, even though these sorts of unexpected things --disappointments, breakdowns, utter collapses, extended patches of abject futility, etc.-- happen all the time in baseball and in life.

Still, it smarts. It's an unnecessary reminder of what a misguided and misplaced waste of hope a silly little game can be, which in turn is an unnecessary reminder of the misery of childhood, when a complete lack of perspective results in the conversion of so much misguided and misplaced hope in silly little things into traumatic disappointment and psychological scars that can last a lifetime.

The Twins really should establish a 24-hour crisis intervention hotline at the Metrodome, so that despairing fans can hear a friendly and reassuring voice in those dark, lonely hours that follow the conclusion of West Coast games.

There are, of course, a great many people out there in Twins Territory this morning who are suffering, and for a disproportionate number of them a public apology to Kyle Lohse might go a long ways toward assuaging some of their despair and a bit of the guilt they must surely be feeling as they ponder all the ways in which they have been complicit in the collapse of this team.

A lot of teams, I'm sure, would be thrilled to have Lohse right now, and some other team should have him. But he is ours for the moment, and for the foreseeable future, and he is unquestionably not our problem.

Good Lord, people, the young man --so often lambasted through the early months of this season-- is now 7-11 with a 4.21 earned run average (Which would be, by the way, the lowest ERA of his five-year career). His ERA since the All-Star break is 3.68, despite which he is 0-4. He was almost masterful last night against the Mariners. Some might even go so far as to say that Lohse was masterful last night. I'll leave that to others to decide, but I will go out on a limb and say that he was pretty damn good, and certainly good enough to win.

Carlos Silva is now 0-3 with a 3.08 ERA since the break, and the entire staff has a post-break ERA of 3.71.

Someone please explain to me how a team can have a 3.71 ERA and a 9-18 record.

Someone please explain.

Someone, please.

Please.

Someone.

Explain this to me.

Our trained counselors are standing by.

If we ain't bums, we'll certainly do 'til some real bums come along.

--Bugs Baer

If a tree falls in the woods....

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

If you can't say nothin' nice....

God only knows....

Words seriously fail me, but I'm going to try to thrash a few out of the brush this morning regardless.

I'm going to attempt to explain what I think went wrong with this Twins team this season, and I think it's pretty simple, really, when you look at it closely and objectively enough.

I think it's just this simple: uncharacteristically for this organization, the Twins started pushing the panic button too early. After committing to Jason Bartlett as the opening day shortstop coming out of spring training, and going into a season of the highest expectations, Minnesota's coaching staff seemed fidgety from the get-go, and the players clearly picked up on that negative energy.

The Twins sent Bartlett packing to Rochester after barely six weeks, which was a trial that was ridiculously brief considering how much rope they've been willing to extend to equal or lesser players in recent years. It was also ridiculous when you realize that the Twins were 24-16 at the time. Since they sent Bartlett back to Triple A on May 20th they've gone 31-37.

This isn't all about Bartlett, of course, but it's about the message the Twins sent went they made the move so early. To a lesser extent they've also spent the whole season jerking around other players like Michael Cuddyer, Luis Rivas, and Justin Morneau, and they've just flat out done too much tinkering --with the line-up, the batting order, the infield rotation.

What happened to Ron Gardenhire's old mantra about backing his guys and having faith in the players he throws out there? There have been precious few expressions of that faith this year, as evidenced most glaringly when the Twins manager refused to put out the little brush fire that Torii Hunter started in the clubhouse by questioning the toughness of unnamed --but clearly recognizable-- young players on the team. Not only did Gardy make no attempt to extinguish that fire, he actually fanned it with his own comments, which created an obxious cold war situation --at the very least-- in the clubhouse.

You can bitch all you want about Terry Ryan failing to make a move to help the team at the trade deadline, but let's be realistic; there wasn't a move out there that represented an acceptable risk/reward ratio.

And you can bemoan the loss of Corey Koskie, or even --God forbid-- Cristian Guzman and Doug Mientkiewicz. That argument, even allowing for such bunk as clubhouse intangibles, doesn't wash either. None of those guys has done a damn thing this year. Koskie has been --big surprise-- injury prone, and I'd don't recall anyone mentioning that he suffered his most serious injury (against the Twins) on one of the stupidest baserunning plays I've ever seen, attempting to advance from first to second on a routine fly ball to Torii Hunter. To date Koskie's had just 189 at-bats for Toronto, with a .249 batting average, seven homeruns, and eighteen RBI. I'm sure you've had a chance to see what Guzman and Mientkiewicz have done.

If you really want to look at this thing in a cold, clear-eyed manner, you'd see that this year's version, at least on paper, is unquestionable improved at catcher, first base, and second base. I'd call shortstop and third a wash, although the entire team defense has been noticeably sloppier than any time in recent memory.

As I pointed out earlier, Justin Morneau as a bust has been pretty damn good so far as busts go. Barring injury he will, as I also predicted, lead the team in homeruns, RBI, and slugging percentage. He hasn't been Roger Maris, but neither has he been Mientkiewicz.

If you really want culprits --and culpability-- for the failures of this season to date you have to look at the team's core of veteran players, the guys who were deemed so solid that the team could afford to gamble a bit on the unproven players in the line-up. That would be Hunter, Jacque Jones, and Shannon Stewart, most prominently, who have been merely adequate, if not mediocre, at the plate, and have, at least from the available evidence, provided negligible leadership in the clubhouse.

Johan Santana has not come close to being the Santana of 2004, but he, and most of the rest of the pitchers, have more than held up their end of the deal, give or take some of the creaky rollercoaster cars in the bullpen. You could argue pretty convincingly that one-through-five this is the most consistent Twins rotation in the last four years, despite which they have one win among them since the All-Star break. Yesterday Kyle Lohse --who now has a 4.38 ERA-- pitched the team's fifth straight quality start in a stretch in which the Twins are 1-4.

This was a team that was deemed good enough to win the World Series by all manner of experts and idiots, and the responsibilities for its failure lie exclusively behind the clubhouse doors. It's been unseemly the way some of these guys have publicly begged Ryan to go out and get them some help, as if this were the 1998 version of the Twins rather than a team that had won three straight Central Division titles.

Note to the Chicago White Sox: the Twins want their DNA back.