What I want from us is empty our minds/We fake the thoughts, and fracture the times

Black armband for Baseball
Today I am hypothetically packing up my Minnesota Twins baseball t-shirts and giant foam finger. I am lovingly folding them whilst wiping the solitary tear away. You may think I am over-reacting but anyone who has spent a millisecond discussing baseball with me will understand. Being neither a “fair weather fan” nor a “part-time fan” this latest blow in off-season trades and rumors is breaking my wee little heart. Well, to the Pohlad’s and Bill Smith’s of this world: You better know what the hell you are doing. Otherwise, my giant foam finger may find a new home (a mild threat, I know.)

The latest trade
Gone: Garza (with his huge potential), Barty, Minor League Pitcher Morlan (instead of Rincon, who Bill Smith says “There is nothing wrong with Juan Rincon, he might pitch Winter Ball. He’s fine.” Oh, Mr. Smith must not have watched the last dozen games he pitched in.)

New: Delmon Young (which should be interesting to watch him interact with the Club. We’ll see if he adds some drama or not, although he says he has matured), Brendan Harris, Jason Pridie

What you think? Is this a “Fair Trade?”

Who is next on the chopping block? Santana? Nathan?Anyone else finding the idea of the new Stadium a little bitter in the mouth?

In conclusion…
Yes, I will continue to watch baseball. Yes, I will continue to go to Twins game. However, I will be watching the front office very closely and thinking of creative new nicknames. Oh, and the office Ass Clown? Well, today we bonded over bitching. I guess one good thing came out of this.


Video Advent Calendar – 26 Days until Christmas
In honor of my shitty baseball mood I chose a song that has swear words in it and you all know how much I love songs with swearing.

Damien Rice – Rootless Tree

Hells bells/Hells bells, you got me ringing/Hells bells, my temperature’s high/Hells bells

Well, hells bells. Just when the getting gets down the Twins stage a classic moment for us to get sucked into again. Last nights game was fun, plain old fashioned fun. Alas, due to obligatory Monday Night Happy Hour I missed the first six innings of the game but I saw the important moments on the highlight reel. Besides, the last few innings were the best!
Lucky Risa (Curlz) was at the game enjoying another fantastic baseball moment. I received a text towards the end of the game. Hey Curlz, did you make it on the Kiss Cam?
With that being said...Did you all see Barty have a great game? What about Cuddy? Oh, anyone else laugh when Gardy reenacted the first base incident with Barty and the Rangers first baseman? And then he was ejected. No one was surprised.

Well, five home games left and then we are in Detroit and Boston. I am going to sit back and enjoy the remaining games whilst obsessively following the Wild Card standings. I am sure you all have a few teams you would like to not make the playoffs.

If you think it’s easy doin’ one night stands / Try playin’ in a rock roll band

It’s a long way to the top / If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll – It’s a long way to the top, AC/DC

Well, last night was my normal Monday Happy Hour event and this time we ventured to Uptown at Figlio’s. Unfortunately, the Uptown drinking establishments do not subscribe to that wonderful thing called Baseball. In fact, at this one place they had on an old episode of Law & Order, muted whilst the other TV wasn’t even on! Oh well, looks like I would have been really pissy if I saw the beginning of the game anyways.

Oh Silva, *shaking head sadly* why must you make it hurt so much? (Stats, anyone? 10-13.) Also, I know it feels like I am picking on you but please…those antics after Gardy pulled your ugly-pitching ass out of the game? Not necessary. (I do like to watch those kind of things because then I can make up stories in my head and such.)

Also, glad to see that on SI.com one of the top stories is “Triple play highlights Indians’ win over Twins.” Yeah…

I do want to give a shout out to Barty who is one of our most consistent players right now. Way to homer, dude!

Well, I will humbly represent the lady-bloggers (which sounds a little dirty) at the groundbreaking. However, I do have a happy hour before the event so my scribings of the happenings may be slightly skewed.

It’s not enough / It’s not enough / Whatever I give / It’ll never be enough

No hysterical scene / You will never play rough / I’m the one who will scream / But it won’t be enough - It’s Not Enough by The Who

Well, color me shocked and awed. The Twins came in to the game and scored 11 f-ing runs! Unfortunately, yours truly went to bed early. I caught the first two runs (which looked like classic Twins scoring) and then tore myself away from the television. It was going on 10:00 p.m. and I still had to bake cookies for an office potluck. (Office Space, anyone?) I heard my phone ringing “I don’t care if Monday’s blue / Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too / Thursday I don’t care about you / It’s Friday I am in love” but I was in a very detailed part of my baking (breaking the perforated dough pieces and placing them on a baking sheet) so I couldn’t grab it. Amy was calling to tell me that Barty hit a homerun. Way to go Barty! In fact, way to go everyone. 11 runs, that’s great. However, not to be Dr. Doom or any other evil characters but I am going to say what most of the other blogs are saying right now. Please, can we space this shit out? Spanking a team every few months whilst struggling to get runs on the board the rest of the time is embarrassing. Not only for you, for me too. Some may call me narcissistic but it’s true. I try to be a good Twins fan. I have a dozen t-shirts, a few hats (that I never wear), bumper stickers, a MN Twins spare tire cover on my Jeep and a freaking Twins antennae topper. I am hardcore. I drink, swear at the television, eat sunflower seeds, keep score (occasionally), jeer, chant, defend, use nicknames, high-five, alienate my non-baseball friends and talk stats. (I do draw the line at spitting.) In other words, I am here to stay. However, I would like to not have to fight in the schoolyard with other people defending you. (Yes, the whole “me” thing again.)

So, to end on a happy note: The Twins beat the Mariners 11 – 4 last night. Today’s game is on at 3:35 p.m. CT so I won’t feel guilty about going to bed and missing a game.

What a fickle weekend of baseball!

Here is a short recap of the events:
Friday’s day game was one part exciting and one part depressing. I mean, we scored 20 runs but the other team scored 14. We won and that is what matters.
Friday’s evening game was a whole different story. Not only did we kick ass and take names, we sure looked good doing it. We won that game 12 – 0.
Saturday I was laying on the sofa in Grantsburg, Wisconsin (my gram’s house) watching us lose 1-3. Normally I dislike the national announcers because they are full of random crap. However during this game they were drooling over Bartlett (it was almost embarrassing how much they praised him), gushing over Boof (which isn’t as deserved as they made it seem) and saying that Gardy is one of the best managers in the league (which I believe too!) In the end it didn’t matter that our fan club was announcing us, we still lost.
Sunday was also painful. I didn’t watch any of the game since I went to a movie with Amy and Foley. The only reason Amy and I agreed to see a movie during game time is because Silva was pitching and he makes our hearts hurt. I guess Amy’s plan of wearing a Santana shirt to trick Silva into pitching great didn’t work. We lost that game 3-6.

I believe the guys over at Nick & Nick’s blog were accurate in quoting Paula Abdul…”Two steps forward and two steps back.”


This is Grandma's House
Well, enough with the scores already! Let’s talk about something funny…my grams. Now, some of you may know that I come from a baseball loving family, baseball is in my blood. It is normally dormant until I brought it out of hibernation. My grams raised her five kids in Bloomington next door to Tony Oliva. Now, the family as a whole doesn’t attend games together or talk the sports-talk. We just quietly carry on with our lives. Again, until I pointed out the elephant in the room. Stacy, contrary to her defensive stance, is hooked on the current Twins. She isn’t a new fan at all; she even skipped school to go to the World Series parade in ’87. However, now that she loses all rights to change the channel at game time, I believe she does enjoy it. My Uncle Larry likes to hunker down with the best of us to watch the game and eat peanuts from the comfort of the living room. Even my Mom and Dennis enjoy watching and attending games. The biggest surprise? My grams! I found out this weekend how much my gram gets into the game and knows about it also. Friday night she was staying at my place and watched the game with me. Not only was she yelling at the pitchers, umpires and defense. She was also telling the pitchers how to throw the “damn ball.” Nothing gives me more pleasure than hearing my grams swear at the television during a baseball game. Saturday we watched the game on an old fashioned television console at her house in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. We got sucked into the game again. This time she had plenty of stuff to yell about.
Ah baseball, you bring my dysfunctional family together!


There are no jockeys in the Homerun Derby!
Well, tonight is the Homerun Derby and I will be watching. I have “seen” them in the past but have not got sucked in like this year. Go Morneausey!!! By the way, I am skipping my normal Monday Night Happy Hour event with friends in order to watch the game. I believe my ears are still burning from all the teasing they are doing. I guess I didn’t do a great job picking drinking friends since they don’t follow baseball. Oh well, I like to think I am diverse in my drinking partners.


Here is a picture I took of my grams. Don't be alarmed. She is just scaring off the squirrels with her b.b. gun. I don't know why but now I am singing "Granny's got a gun" to the tune of Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun."

Quality vs. Quantity

Well, it is a Friday and pay-day along with a great baseball match-up…in my corporate world we call that a Triple Threat.

I would have loved to been at yesterday’s matinee game. Alas, that pesky corporate thing got in the way. However, I did fight “The Man” and followed the game via Gameday. The topic yesterday was the definition of a Quality Start (three earned runs or less in six innings.) This is a new topic for me since I never paid much attention to it before.
There are a few of us (maybe a more than a few) that think the definition needs to be tweaked. In this day and age going six innings and giving up three earned runs is not a good outing. That however does cause a lot of debate amongst the cubicle dwellers around me…especially the members of the Carlos Silva Fan Club. When we pointed out that Silva lost the “Quality Start” in the first inning of yesterday’s game it did not ease the tension. In fact, it brought on new debates of how he was solid the other seven innings. If it wasn’t for the Twins finding their bats and giving a little offense I believe that Silva’s Quality Start would not have been a good thing.
Oh well, c’est la vie, ect, ect. We will mark down the stats and move on to tonight’s match up of Santana and Verlander. It should make for some good baseball. Amy and I believe that Bert Blyleven will say:
It is a pitcher’s duel
Pitchers are the best athletes on the field
Something about doing another bet with Santana in order for him to pitch well.

Ah, Bert, you rascally rabbit!

Random baseball notes:
This is going to be old news but they are bringing Garza up to give him another shot. I can’t wait to see what this year will bring him.

My boy, Barty, hit his second homerun and stole two more bases yesterday. Go Barty Go!

Sources say that the fan who caught The Big Hurt’s 500 ball was wearing a Bartlett jersey…what to give props!

Hell of a weekend for baseball

Here's Lucy!

What a beautiful weekend of baseball. We had a series with the Blue Jays and started a series with our arch-enemies, White Sox. In the three games I went to I had four beers, one brat, one root beer float, one pretzel, one bag of cotton candy (pink) and a giant soda.

Friday night
Since Steve is now a lawyer we used his perks to score the sweet Dorsey & Whitney (law firm) seats. We sat 14 rows up from home plate (close to our “on deck” circle) and it was amazing. After I got over my initial nervousness of being just shy of the safety netting (we could have potentially gotten smacked by a foul ball (and me without my helmet) I settled in to enjoy the running commentary from Steve. Here is a snippet of the conversation:
Steve: Hey, where is Joe Mauer? I wanted to see Joe Mauer squatting in front of us!
Jen: He’s hurt; he has a hamstring injury that is taking the world’s longest time to recover.
Steve: - pouting –
Jen: Wow, the Bat Boy is cute from this angle.
Steve: He has to be at least 18, right?
Jen: Let me text message Amy.
Jen: Oh, Amy says we are pervs for thinking that.
Steve: He looks nice; I think he has potential for hotness (he’s talking about Cirillo)
Jen: Mmm…
Steve: Did you see that? He’s cute? What does that sign mean?
Steve: What’s happening now?
Jen: Mmm…

Yeah, by the fourth inning I was using my “Selective Hearing” to filter Steve. I did have lot so fun at the game with him and I owe him big time for the tickets, beer and root beer float.

Saturday night
I was living the single gal’s nightmare on Saturday evening. I was crammed in the upper deck in the middle of the row between toddlers and a breast feeding mom. We were celebrating Bennett’s second birthday – Happy Birthday Bennett! The game was good (although the end result of losing after 13 innings wasn’t good) and I think Lucy enjoyed the game. I did get Lucy a Morneausey t-shirt that she can now wear with pride.

Sunday afternoon
Amy, her parents and I enjoyed a fun game, which ended with our winning. Still no Baby Jesus in the line-up but Barty (Bartlett) was back at Shortstop. It was Armed Forces Appreciation Day so we had singing, flags, awards and video messaging from overseas. I will admit that I did tear up a time or two.

Monday afternoon
I wasn’t at the game and I only caught the last three innings but I guess they were the best. What an awesome game made sweeter by the Pierzynski drama. Like Ozzie Guillen said “If he’s not on your team, you hate him. If he is on your team, you hate him less.” Pierzynski is the man everyone loves to hate, including me.

Well, before I sign off I would like to make note that I will be gone for a week and unable to update this blog. I hope to follow the game on recaps but I don’t think they will show them on television, especially not where I am going. I will see you next week if all goes well in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.

Mild Weather and Mild Baseball

Cleveland 7, Twins 3 in 12 innings

Today I hurt: my head hurts, my heart hurts and my Twins hurts.

12 innings are summarized with…
Hi Ho Silva did averagely okay
One inning of great offense
Barty is struggling for his SS groove
Morneausey is having a bad streak
One grape martini, one blueberry vodka mix, one Philly sushi roll, edamame and three hours of gossip all prevented me from catching the first four innings
Jesse Crain (or Crainadian by Pulling a Blyleven) did not do so well (understatement of the year?)
When Torii hit his homerun they played the StarWars theme song.