Fish Fear Me

Happy Columbus Day

When I was in elementary school I don't think an unkind word was said about Columbus and his arrival in the Americas. The lessons were completely Euro-centric. I do remember the Native American side entering the picture when I took World History in 10th grade. I think kids should be taught a balanced lesson on Columbus, but taking it to the point where fourth-graders judge him is going a bit too far:

In McDonald, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year — charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.

"In their own verbiage, he was a bad guy," teacher Laurie Crawford said.

That, if combined with a romanticized version of Native Americans of the period, is a problem I think. 

In other news, I'm wondering if Al Gore is in town. And if he is, would he please leave? This was the view of my yard as I left home this morning:

Usually the leaves are down before we get our first snow, but it's not unprecedented. At least it was a pretty drive into work this morning.

That's A Wrap

The Yankees made it official tonight with a 4-1 win over the Twins, but the series winner was really Friday night. I'll probably be mulling over that game until spring training next year. Where I end up on that and what moves the team makes this winter will determine just how much I decide to emotionally invest in the Twins next year.

I just watched a TV clip where Joe Nathan talked about how the Twins can hold their heads high. Way to embrace your inner mediocrity, Joe. Yes, it was an amazing game on Tuesday, but if the Twins really do believe that their performance in the ALDS is something to be proud about then we might as well never set our sights higher than AL Central champs. Some things have got to change.

I'll leave players for another post, but I think the most obvious change has to be with Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and pitching coach Rick Anderson. Over the winter they need to get with management and figure out which players they can keep motivated for, you know, the entire season, and which players are either going to stop making stupid mistakes over and over or get jettisoned.

Case in point: Nick Punto tonight. The third head of the Twins' base running Cerberus appeared when Punto blew past the stop sign from the third base coach and got picked off at third. It's the Twins version of Godwin's law: As a week of baseball progresses, the probability of Casilla, Gomez, and Punto all making some kind of boneheaded base running mistake approaches one.

That's not to let the pitchers off the hook. I like Rick Anderson, but this year his young rotation actually went backwards for the most part and the season ends with me baffled as to why he seems to have little control over them. A really Darwinian spring training shakeout should be in the works for all of the Twins pitchers, and Anderson and Gardenhire need to make that clear.

I Think It's Going To Be A Long Winter

I woke up to a dusting of snow yesterday morning and now they are saying we may get an inch or two of it tomorrow. It won't last long, but dang that's early.

Bummer

I'm not even sure where to start about last night's game. The Twins have had their share of tough losses in New York, but last night was the most bitter ever I think. I haven't been this disappointed and angry about a sporting event in a long, long, time. The Twins had a chance to come home for two games tied with the Yankees at 1-1, with the mighty Yankees at least back on their heels a little bit. They blew it, with an assist by Major League Baseball.

I guess we can start with the fourth inning and Carlos Gomez getting caught at second base, ending the inning just before Delmon Young could cross the plate for a run. A run that just maybe would have provided the margin of victory in the ninth. Maybe. Now any player can slip and fall, but Gomez should never have put himself in that position. Why make that turn in the first place? Did he think he was going to make it to third? The last line I wrote in yesterday's post was, "No stupid base running mistakes." There's aggressive base running and then there is stupid base running. Well that was stupid, and it is no surprise to Twins fans that it was Gomez who brain-farted at a critical moment. Again.

The Twins had seventeen left on base last night. Seventeen. Credit three of those to Gomez in the fourth. Umpire Phil Cuzzi can probably be credited with one more in the 11th on what just may be the worst call I've ever seen in a playoff game. The rest are wholly owned by the Twins themselves. I'm not mad about that, just disappointed. And the Yankees deserve credit for playing cool and making pitches and plays when they needed to. The Twins had multiple opportunities to crack the game open though, and couldn't rise to the occasion. That was disappointing.

The crushing blow of course, was Joe Nathan giving up that tying home run in the ninth. It was disappointing, but that's baseball. The man had 47 saves for the Twins this season and he doesn't deserve some of the nasty things that I heard last night. We were counting on him and he didn't come through this time. It just is what it is.

More depressing than even this particular loss are my feelings about the state of the league. Last night's game left me wondering if small market teams can ever really compete against the likes of the Yankees or the Angels. Oh, the small market teams can develop some talent and cobble together teams that are competitive once in a while. But eventually the bigger payroll teams are going to vulture up the Torii Hunters and the Johan Santana's and teams like the Twins end up being major league farm clubs for the big boys. Sure, we can have our Mauers and Morneaus for awhile, but we can't assemble a first-rate supporting cast like the Yankees. Can you imagine the Yankees' lineup leaving seventeen stranded last night? I can't.

It's enough to make one wonder if it's all just designed to play fans like me as suckers and keep us just interested enough to keep the carnival going. Then, when the post-season comes, with a pat on the head we are sent on our way. In the end, the big payroll teams are just too talented and too deep to beat no matter how scrappy you play them.

And what's up with the quality of umpires? I'm not going to lay last night on them, but how can the league get to the post-season and have such a shitty crew? Both teams were baffled by Chuck Meriwether's strike zone last night and I think the players were right. The man was a joke behind home plate. I also read this morning that Phil Cuzzi felt bad after the game. Well, if Major League Baseball wanted to show they were serious then Mr. Cuzzi would be feeling bad from his sofa this morning. He doesn't deserve to be umpiring post-season games. Again, I'm not saying he cost the Twins the game. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't blown that call? But that was little league. It's not Major League baseball if you have little league umpires. It's just a cruel joke.

Friday Quick Hits

In a stunning decision, Major League Baseball today awarded both the AL and NL MVP to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary effort in getting the first pitch at this year's All-Star game across the plate. "It did get across the plate. It did! And he's not George Bush," Commissioner Bud Selig said.

I heard yesterday that the "moon bomb" this morning would be visible through a small telescope. The Today show had hyped it up. If it was visible, I missed it. I saw the(one hour delayed here) Today broadcast and yep, it was a dud as far as a spectator event. Oh well, the real big news will be whether they find traces of water or not.

Nick Blackburn goes against A.J. Burnett tonight in Game 2 in New York. Hopefully Blackburn will actually pay attention to and execute pitching coach Rick Anderson's advice and not groove any pitches to the Yankees. Both Duensing and Liriano did that on Wednesday night and were punished by the Yankees. This will be Blackburn's first post-season start, but he has shown he can step up in big games. If he can avoid Duensing's and Liriano's mental mistakes he'll hopefully keep it close. On offense, the exhausted Twins came up just short when they managed to get players in scoring position in Game 1. Now that they have had a day of rest we'll see if they can put some more runs on the board. Once again, patience is in order. Make them throw strikes, get those pitch counts up like Cabrera and Mauer did to Hughes. No stupid base running mistakes.

More: So is it wrong of me to now think of the Nobel as the Special Olympics of peace prizes?

Well That's Annoying

My trusty Ranger is letting me down today. She'll start just fine, but the engine quits after just a second or two. It was running normally when I pulled in the drive last night. The battery and fuses all seem fine. No abnormal lights on the dash. I know it's getting gas because it keeps starting, though maybe the fuel pump is quitting after it starts? I've never had that happen before. It's always been an all or nothing thing. Everything appears normal under the hood.

I've disconnected the battery to reset the computer and we'll see if that does any good. I'm running low on ideas that I have the tools to check.

It's been a good truck so I'm not going to rag on it. I just hate when this stuff comes out of the blue.

Success!: Well this interesting. I disconnected the battery and let it sit for a bit. When I reconnected everything I tried six times but the result was the same: starts but dies in a second or two. I searched the web and saw something about a coolant temperature switch cutting the engine off on a different model vehicle. I hadn't check coolant level before, but found the reservoir empty. I added a little under a liter to refill and tried again. It stayed running on the second try. It seems weird to me that that was the real issue. Could it be it just took a few tries for the computer to get the engine mix right?

Nothing To Lose

So what about the Yankees? Well, clearly they are the favorites. The Twins went 0-7 to them this year, though only one was a blowout. The rest were either one(4) or two(2) run affairs.  Their roster is better and deeper than the Twins roster and they have home field advantage. The NY Post breaks down the teams by position and there's nothing there that I would argue about. They are an impressive team.

Pretty much nobody is giving the Twins a chance against the Yankees and I think that's understandable. I think the Twins can give the Yankees a run for their money though, if they can step it up a notch or two in a couple of areas.

Clearly the pitchers have to avoid momentary lapses of reason like Scott Baker's third inning last night. The Yankees are going to get their home runs anyway, but they are absolutely going to murder the Twins if their pitchers can't maintain a little more discipline and make every pitch count. It's something that has plagued the Twins all year. Last year too as a matter of fact. If they can't bring it up a notch against the Yankees then there will be some long games of watching their mistakes sail into the outfield stands. The Yankees are just too good for it to be otherwise.

They also need to be patient when they go to the plate. Mauer, Cuddyer, Kubel, and Young can all hit with power, but they need to remember the small ball that got them here. Make the Yankees throw strikes and see if they can get those pitch counts up. The one area where the Yankees may be vulnerable I think is starting pitching. They have a great bullpen, but even a great bullpen can get tired over a series.

Well, the game starts shortly. We'll see if the Twins have anything left in the tank after the last month, and particularly last night's game. As my friend Rob pointed out, the pressure is all on the Yankees tonight. The Twins are on the bottom of everybody's expectations list and so they have nothing to lose in this series and everything to gain. They are not the same team that lost those seven games back in May and July and for sure they are playing with a hell of a lot of spirit. That doesn't mean that they are better than the Yankees, just perhaps dangerous. That's why they actually play the games.

Go Twins!

More on 163

I'm still trying to absorb last night's Twins-Tigers game. Hell, I haven't even figured out the last month of the season. Labor Day weekend saw the Twins seven games behind Detroit and playing the same uneven baseball with no sense of urgency in sight. A month later and they have won the AL Central for the fifth time in eight years, and did so in a game 163 for the ages.

Now it's into the Lion's Den.

Before that though, one note about last night's game. Two players humbled me last night, and one should be a lesson in humility for some Twins fans.

I groaned when Bobby Keppel entered the game in the 11th. The man does not inspire confidence. He got his out though. I groaned again when the bases were loaded with one out in the 12th. But Nick Punto made a great play to home for an out, and then Keppel reached deep and struck out Gerald Laird. That was big time play under a lot of pressure. Nice job, Bobby.

The second player is Alexi Casilla. When he botched the tag up from third in the 10th I was ready to tear my hair out. That is the kind of mental mistake the Twins have made all too often this year and they are just not good enough to get away with them most of the time. Casilla has real talent, but at times I wonder if he has the head to play at the major league level. When he came to bat in the 12th I desperately wanted Gardenhire to throw someone else in there, anybody else. Casilla at DH? Casilla at DH? Well, there's a reason that Gardy is the manager and I'm not. Casilla came through with the game winning RBI and congrats to him for that. His reward is a spot on the post-season roster and I would say he earned it.

The third player is Miguel Cabrera. I guess some Twins fans chanted Al-co-hol-ic when he came to bat last night. It was a classless thing to do and the inevitable karmic retribution came in the form of a two-run shot to give the Tigers a 3-0 lead. I couldn't hear it watching the game on TV and I was surprised to learn about it. Minnesota fans are not usually that tacky. I don't know how widespread it was, but I'm ashamed of those who took part in it. It was an unsportsmanlike blemish on an otherwise amazing game.

And We'll See You In New York...Tomorrow Night!

Holy cow, what a game. My hat goes off to the Detroit Tigers. I'm sure they will get a lot of heat about losing a 3-game lead with 4 to play, but they rose up tonight and played tough.

What's next? Well, I'm back home and watching the Twins celebrate in the clubhouse on TV and can't help but wonder. This year I expected the Twins of 1991 that won 97 games and eventually the World Series. I was very frustrated when it became obvious that they weren't going to be that team. Somehow over the last month they have become the scrappers that remind me of the 1987 World Champion Twins. The odds are they will get pummeled by the Yankees, but you never know.

Did they leave it all on the carpet of the Metrodome tonight? Or does this give them even more confidence and a nothing to lose insurgent attitude against the Yankees? Is Joe Mauer our version of Luke Skywalker and Michael Cuddyer our Han Solo? Has Dave had a beer too far?

Could be. What the heck, let's see where it goes.

The fork has been dusted off and put back in the drawer.

Oh Goody

Low temperatures will plunge into the 20s, with highs "struggling into the 40s," according to the weather service.

The 10-day prediction by the Weather Channel is even more specific: snow showers on both Saturday and Sunday.

I stand by my prediction that the Twins and us fans will regret not scraping up the cash for a retractable roof on the new stadium.