Ahhh, like the first day of spring, it’s finally here — opening day. (Okay, technically it was yesterday, but as I am neither a Mets nor a Cardinals fan, it was really today.) I caught the very end of the Tigers loss to the Blue Jays, and noted that ESPN was covering the Red Sox-Royals game so I changed the channel quickly expecting to rekindle my love affair with the Sox after last year’s end of season break. But, uh, Curt? While it’s awesome that you have a blog now, you’re not going to win me back by losing 7-1 to the Royals. It was so disappointing that I actually left after the fourth inning to go to the gym and work out. And I never work out.
But it’s okay, because those games were just warm ups anyway. At 7:10 pm was the nationally televised game featuring the reigning AL Cy Young, MVP, and batting champ and I would be plopped on my futon watching it. Santana came out of the gate firing rockets, giving me a good feeling about how the game might go. Joe Mauer, the starting catcher of my fantasy league, started completely in character by getting a hit in the middle of an inning in which none of the other Twins did anything interesting. Oh, Joe, I love you and you earned me two points tonight, but I really hope you get hits in bigger innings soon.
Then in the second, my starting first baseman, the reigning MVP, came up to the plate. I looked at the TV and, just because I felt like it, I said, “Just jack one out, Justin”… and then he did, on his first pitch of the season. Four points for me — one for the hit, one for the RBI, one for the run, and one for the homer. I jumped up and let out a squeal, realized I was alone in my room with no one to celebrate with, and picked up the phone to call my dad. And then, not two minutes later, while I was on the phone explaining how I had called Morneau’s shot, Torii Hunter decided to remind us that he had 30 homeruns last season too and he jacked his first pitch over the right field wall. He’s not on my fantasy team, but I didn’t particularly care at that moment.
Then came a dilemma: Monday is trivia night at our local watering hole and people wanted me to go. I looked at the game, I looked at them. I watched Santana strike out Melvin Mora to end the third and decided that with Johan on the mound and the Twins up by 2, the game was well in hand — and that I would try to convince the bar to tune to ESPN2.
Upon arriving at the bar, I realized that I wasn’t going to get my television choice in the main room… something about some basketball game. But as luck would have it, we went to check out the non-smoking back to find it empty with the TV remote just sitting unattended at one of the tables. I flipped to the game to find that the Orioles had gone ahead 3-2. I mildly panicked, but relaxed when I realized that the Twins had the bases loaded with only one out. They only scored one run that inning, but they picked up three more in the next (and three more points for me) and never looked back, eventually winning 7-4. In the fantasy league, I picked up 11 points from this game alone, 7 of them from Morneau.
No one else ever came to sit in the back room, so the waiter let us keep the remote and I was able to finish the game while also spouting out the occassional trivia factoid. Most popular first name in the world? Mohammad. Most homeruns for the Detroit Tigers in 2006? Brandon Inge. Best team in the American League Central? Minnesota Twins.
Okay, that last one wasn’t actually question — but that’s the right answer.
Apr3
Colossus of Rhode 
This is all well and good, handsomely written even, but then the truth will out and with you, an avowed unable to keep a secreter, your opening exposed you once again as to your true loyalties.
A true Twins fan cares not for the wonks of the east coast, the dead enders so afeared of their own shadows they were unable to climb the Appalachia’s and enter God’s country, nor do we give much shrift to the neophytes so unaware of God’s own Eden, they trod unkemptly across its face destroying all until stopped once again by an interminable ocean. We of the heartland know when to start and when to quit, aware of enough is enough, rejoicing in our Twins as we look both ways before crossing the street, first right then left then right again mirroring our belove Mauer, Cuddyer, Morneau batting order.
Our allegiance never wavers or crumbles in front of swamp-infesting braggarts. Though we are not Yankee lovers neither do we think much of Red Sox, or White for that matter.
Nay, we are not provincial, we leave that to the Canadians, but neither are we xenophobes, piously made certain of our pecadilloes, ignoring the best of us, as do the crippled huddled masses of the meglomania that is the east coast.
Still, we can never rekindle our love affair with the tea spoilers as we never kindled. Not a true Twins fan, it’s not in our blood to be carpetbaggers, we leave that for the damned Yankees and their New England brethren.
One can not serve two masters, it is said. Thus, you can’t love the Twins and rekindle a love affair with the Red Sox. To do is a blasphemy, a Jezebelian act unworthy of one who still renews her car license in the land of the North Star.
Thus, I am hard pressed to recognize you. It is time that you renounce the devil within and cast the demon aside, much in the manner that Dougie M. was cast aside. (Ok, maybe Papi was a mistake, but a mistake that begat Morneau, hardly a mistake in the end.) If you want to be considered a Twins fan, then you must as in the biblical injunction : when you were a child, you acted like a child and thought like a child, but now it is time to cast aside childish things. And a love affair with an East Division team can only be considered a childish thing.