Brief Note from Twins Caravan

I drove to Northfield on Monday to catch Nick Blackburn, Scott Baker and Dan Gladden do their thing as part of Twins Caravan 2009: Screams of Passion. TC Bear warmed up the crowd (occasionally literally) by high-fiving kids and doing silly poses. He was a big hit with the young crowd - I think I was the only adult there without any kids with me. Of course, I was there with my parents, so I'm a pretty sorry excuse for an adult. And I gotta say, T.C. Bear was the highlight for me too. We were so lucky that he chose to join our leg of the caravan.


- Blackburn and Baker, or as I like to call them, 'the B and B boys,' were introduced by Dan Gladden. They talked vaguely about their how last seasons pennant race gives the young team valuable experience for the upcoming year. Of course, they both expect the Twins to be division champs.

- Gladden did a good job as the Master of Ceremonies. He was out in the audience, taking questions from kids and relaying them to the pitchers on the stage. One kid sitting behind us asked Gladden how long a game is. Dazzle started telling the kid that there isn't a clock, it's nine innings. The kid didn't understand. So instead of relaying that stupid question, he said, "Yeah this kid wants to know how young you were when you started playing ball."

- This even was much better than the time I saw Torii Hunter and Doug Mientkiewicz at Twins Caravan '02: Take a look at me now. One of my buddies, Bizmarkie507, asked the two sluggers if they could hit a baseball through the window near the top of the gymnasium. They didn't know how to respond. So Bert tried to cover by saying something like, "I think what this gentleman is trying to say is, how often do you try to pull the ball, rather than hitting to the opposite field?" Bizmarkie corrected him, "No, I mean like, right now. Let's get a bat and ball then see if you can hit that window."

- When asked who's their favorite player on the Twins, Blackburn's answer was Joe Mauer. He said he rarely shakes Mauer off, and when he does, Mauer comes out to the mound and tells him he's wrong. The story doesn't sound believable to me. I doubt Mauer has ever told anyone that they're wrong about anything, ever.