The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

^{(AP Photo/Jim Mone)}

If you haven't been paying attention, you've been missing a strange, maddening, encouraging, teetering-on-the-brink-of-disaster one day, triumphing-over-adversity the next, almost wholly improbable stretch of baseball from the Minnesota Twins.

^{AP Photo/Orlin Wagner}

As I sat staring vacantly at the TV in the ninth inning of last night's Kansas City-Minnesota game, I had another of my brief, increasingly pathetic revelations. My God, I said to my dog, This really is my life.

Which is something I find myself saying to my dog with alarming frequency of late.

Sidney Ponson?

Come on, seriously: Sidney Ponson?

You have to be kidding me.

Truly, there is very, very little that could give me more displeasure than seeing that fat Aruban hump toss a complete game gem in the Metrodome.

My displeasure wouldn't be much diminished even if he had been wearing a Minnesota uniform.

^{AP Photo by Jim Mone}

Francisco Liriano was almost as disappointing as Nelson Liriano. There has been a disquieting wave of injuries—to Michael Cuddyer, Kevin Slowey, Adam Everett, Scott Baker, Nick Punto, and, most depressingly, to Pat Neshek.

^{AP Photo/Hannah Foslien}

I'm not a fair weather fan. Honest to God, I'm not.

Seriously.

I'm not.

^{AP Photo/Jim Mone}

I love baseball stats, love them as least as much or more than the next woman. And like so many others, the explosion of the statistical analysis of baseball was what drew me deeper into the grip of the game at a moment in my life when I was just starting to pull away.

^{AP Photo by Duane Burleson}

Early April baseball in the Midwest can be a flat-out teeth-kicker. Baseball, of course, can kick your teeth in on a regular basis no matter the month, but shit like last night is brutal, even if it (literally) comes with the territory. Couldn't they at least have given us a rain delay, so we could have stretched out the night a little bit?

^{AP Photo, by Paul Battaglia}

^{AP photo by Tom Olmscheid}