soup's guest-writer series: part two

For the second installment on expressing different views on the Twins season, we have Private Fitzwilliam Bingley from the 87th Division of the Union Army. Take it away sir.


Playoffs and the Team



Making the playoffs aught not to seem so outlandish a proposition for the Twins of Minnesota.

All is well amongst the perceived to be rebuilding, yet contending, Twins. Thee rotation of pitching has returned to it's former fearsome repute. A left-handed fish, to rival the fabled Leviathan, has swum back into the Major League waters.One, Mr. Liriano, has been added to our staff. A staff, that had previously been only filled with novice reservations, has proven stoic in the poisonous quagmire of the divisional opponents' battery. To date, our beloved team has handled our divisional rivals aplomb. At a record of 34-20, the Central teams hath been hardly formidable foes.



Offensively speaking, there has been an unexpected surplus of equally unexpected timely hits that thus have proven to be greatly prudent to our winning ways. Mr. Span, in time, was moved to the lead off position. This move, however, was far too delayed for the impatient clamoring of dire fans. Naturally, the skipper Gradenhire was blamed for his stubbornness. In thee Gardenhire stubbornness, however, we do trust. I neglect the notion that a man accustomed to not be hasty in his notion to embrace inevitable changes be called a Luddite. Another choice might be simply to describe him as slow in his processes.



The obvious, however, merits utterance. The Twins are mighty green to the playoffs and yet have manifested themselves unexpectedly relevant to the playoff colloquial. Despite the perceived increase in offense, power hitting remains pertinent to efficacious aspects of victory. A thousand times I wish for Delmon Young and a healthy Michael Cuddyer to reach their potential for power from the plate side for thee of right handedness. Despite our most relevant efforts, the hardball enemies remain nigh defeated..



But I've done rambled too much.



Hello, then is goodbye, in this sliver of time. If only I could force my quill to refrain from such profligate descriptors, I could find time to dispense much more baseball relevant information.



Yours now and always,

Private Fitzwillaim Bingley, Company F,
87th Minnesota Division

Ya Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

By Michael Haas

Shoe shopping. I can't stand shoe shopping. Before last night, I hadn't purchased a new pair of shoes in about five years. Because I'm the worst shoe shopper ever. And I think I realized why I hate shoe shopping: New shoes suck.

New shoes are the biggest racket on earth. When you walk into a shoe store, there are probably 500 different pairs from which to choose. Which is a lot, until you realize that all those shoes are ugly. And all those 500 pairs of shoes fall into just three categories:

1. Tennis shoes

Tennis shoes are cool. I'm talking about all those run-of-the-mill Nike, Adidas, New Balance, L.A. Lights, and so on. These shoes are comfortable and everything, but they aren't good casual work shoes. They are often too gaudy and athletic looking. I'm looking for something a bit more professional...

2. Hipster shoes

Wouldn't it be great if someone designed comfortable, fashionable, respectable looking shoes? Amazing! They succeeded by coming up with "sport casual" Oh, except just one thing: they're all ugly. I guess they are OK for hipster doofuses. But I'm just not that cool. They all look like track shoes these days. And half of them don't have laces. Ha! Most of them look like golf shoes.


"If we're ever going to get out of here alive, we're going to need some golf shoes"



3. Skater shoes



I've never really skateboarded in my whole life.


It's hard to believe, but it's true: we don't have many options when it comes to shoes. We're held at the mercy of designers who tell us what's fashionable. Well I'm not buying it. Literally.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what grinds my gears.

Soup's Guest-Writing Series Part 1

To get a different perspective on the Twins this season, I have asked a few different people to write their thoughts on our club. First up is my 7 year old nephew, Aaron.




The Twins are good, but sometimes I like the Red Sox, though.



The Twins have Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer. They are friends. Justin is better because he hits Homers all the time. I can hit homers too, but not as far. One time I did, though. You can ask Tyler. He saw it. It went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the fence, my homer.



Livan is gone. That's good cuz he is sucky. Dad says, "He was the biggest waste of money since your mom's gym membership." But I'm not supposed to tell Mom that.



Liriano is back and he is awesome. He throws so fast! Dad likes it when he "breaks sliders off in their butts." When mom's not around, sometimes he doesn't say "butts," though.



I think we can catch the White Sox. They are sooooooo dumb and stupid. Their whole team is like old. They're all probably going to get hurt or get arthritis like grandpa, but they might not, though. They suck at batting average. And their pitchers have been super lucky cuz really they are all crappy.



Our pitching is freaking awesome. They never ever do walks. We have good batters too. Cuddyer will come back. He's good. We should have four outfielders like my softball team, Scott's Lumber. We were really good. We almost won the championship, but the ump wrecked it. He was so fat and stupid. We still got a huge trophy and a pizza party at Godfathers, though.

Besides Justin, our infield isn't very good, but they try really hard. Sometimes they're good, though. Nick Punto is my favorite player, but Dad told me he wasn't my favorite player.



Most of our team is really fast like my friend Ryan. They can run the bases fast and play good defense, like Gomez. I called him Go-Go, but Dad said to stop cuz it's "unoriginal and overdone, it's like the Soja Boy of nicknames." Ryan won the Presidential Fitness award in Gym. His parents are divorced, though.



We didn't make any trades, Dad said we made, "addition by subtraction." So that's good.

In conclusion, The Twins will win it because Justin and Joe are friends, we are fast, play defense, can do batting average, and try really hard. The White Sox will lose because they're sucky and like 100 years old and will all get hurt, but they might not though.

View From The Top

By Michael Haas

I'm trying not to over-react to the Twins place in the standings. After all, it's just a half game, and they could be in second place once again on Tuesday. But I feel very very happy that our squad is on top. It's August and the Twins are in first.

It was a great afternoon at the dome yesterday. It seemed almost scripted: Francisco Liriano delivered the team to the top of the division. Amazing. Which got me to thinking: Everything is gravy for us Twins fans right now. We've spent most of our time bitching about Livan, Boof, Punto, Rincon, Carlos Gomez and Delmon Young.

The club has made the proper adjustments. Livan and Rincon were shipped out. Punto is hitting. Boof has been vanquished to middle relief purgatory. Carlos Gomez was dropped to the nine spot after much hand-wringing. And Delmon Young is....well, the hype has worn off and he's hitting a little bit.

Mike Lamb now resides on the bench, salt and pepper beard and all. When he came to bat on Sunday afternoon, I began to wonder why he wasn't thrown out with the Livan/Monroe trash. But wouldn't ya know it, he connects for an RBI triple. A guy with gray whiskers hits a triple. Imagine that.

But that's just how well things are going for the Twins these days.

The trade deadline worked out alright too. They didn't have to give up any of our young pitchers for any lazy, overpaid hacks. And the White Sox traded away some players for an aging centerfielder, spurring one Sox blog to opine: The Day The White Sox Lost The Central

But there's a long road ahead. Literally. The experts say our club has a tough schedule, what with a bunch of road games. For some reason, the Republican National Convention - to be held in St. Paul in early September - is forcing the Twins on the road.

I just have two questions:
Why do the Twins have to leave Minneapolis for a bunch of politicians in St. Paul?
And, Why is everyone making such a big deal of all these road games?

I have no clue about the answer to the first question. If I asked someone who knew, they would probably mumble something about transportation and security and hotels and no child left behind.

The question about the road games is answerable: The Twins record is much better at home. They're 23 and 28 away from the dome. Thank god for the dome, right?

A lot of season left. But right now, it's all gravy.

The End of an Era

Title might be a little over dramatic. But on this hungover Saturday morning it's how I feel.

I first want to apologize to the people that associate themselves with Alright Hamilton! From the frequent to the occasional writers, none of you had anything to do with my mini-rant the other day. Even Haas felt he needed to do damage control (scroll to the bottom). That let me know I have become a burden on the good people at AH! I needed to move on.

The worst part about it? I was somewhat wrong, well mostly wrong. Not for putting different blogs in different categories. You are kidding yourself if you don't see a pretty distinct difference between the two. Not guys vs girls women. But just the two different kinds of blogs. Granted there is some overlap but don't think it's that outrageous to see the difference, not disparity, but a diference (And to those of you that are not paying attention, AH! is in the second group).

Where I was wrong, was that I took out my frustration with one blog out on a lot of really good ones. (Sincere and deep apologies to Lipgloss, OMG and Twin Sisters.) Clearly I have an issue with the Those Girls. If you don't get the link, read this (an actual link, I swear).

Here are a couple things I learned from Those Girls.

She is an excellent debater. I know this for two reasons. A) she said it herself B) she disabled comments section on her post.

She links to Bat-Girl even though the blog was defunct about 7 months before they started theirs. This increases their reputation or "rep" as the kids say, with the twins blogosphere.

Call me bitter if you want. It's true. I just got pissed when I tried to make (what I thought to be) some poignant comment(s) on another Twins blogs to then be met with some (again, what I thought to be) snotty responses from "Those Girls."

And with that I will take my ball and go home.

Series Review, Preview and other notes

By Michael Haas

My room mate refused to attend the game on Wednesday because Livan Hernandez was the Twins starting pitcher. But the 42,000 fans who found a seat that night may have witnessed the start of Something Beautiful. What went down in the record books as a Loss, the game could result in many wins, as Livan's bad start probably convinced the Twins to finally replace him in the rotation. With Francisco Liriano.

Even though the Twins failed to make a deadline move, they are sitting pretty at just a half game out of first place. The only problem now is that we have too many outfielders and not enough infielders.

Souhan thought that Smith should have traded Liriano for an infielder like Adrian Beltre. I thought that was funny.

"What? Trade Liriano? In our moment of triumph?"

So if Livan has truly made his last start as a Twin, we'll have a very forward-looking starting 5:

Nick Blackburn -26 years old
Scott Baker - 26 years old
Kevin Slowey - 24 years old
Glen Perkins - 25 years old
Francisco Liriano - 24 years old

I challenge anyone to find a younger, more stable rotation than that. For years to come? cross your fingers.


So what's next? The Indians? Yes.

Friday: Blackburn v. Sowers - The Twins just faced Jeremy Sowers last weekend in Cleveland. The lefty shut em down before they finally got to him in, like, the 6th or something. The Twins can hit lefties OK now, eventually. Twins Win.

Saturday: Slowey v. Byrd - What is there to say about Paul Byrd? He's a soft tossing righty with a 5 ERA, but he usually has some whiskers on his face. Twins should be able to get to him.

Sunday: Perkins v. something called Ginter - This will be just his fourth start of the year, but he pitched alright against the Rays last week. Twins win this game too.

Daymonster correctly predicted the outcome of the White Sox series last week, which was very cool, and hopefully my picks are spot-on as well. Daymonster also managed to piss off 95% of the Twins blogosphere with his post the other day, which was not so cool. But I think (I think) what he was trying to say is that we're all Twins fans. We're all Twins fans. And that's all I have to say about that.

And finally:

So long, Livan.

Not Making Friends Today

This opinion is mine and mine alone. This opinion in no way reflects the opinions of the other people that contribute to AH!

It seems there are two types of Twins blogs these days. There are ones like Gleeman, SethSpeaks, TwinkieTown and Nick and Nick. They tend to use statistics and other (some times) conventional wisdom to discuss the current issues the ball club is facing. Gleeman sometimes adds his love for crappy pop music and the women that grace Maxim and FHM covers. But whatever.

Then there are the blogs that focus on the cuteness and rear ends of the Minnesota nine. It's Those Girls, Lipgloss, OMG and Twin Sisters tend to fall into this category.

Now many of you are probably wondering what my point is. Well, I am glad you asked. Here is the point: These two types of blogs have been at odds for most of the season. Maybe not overtly but believe me it's been going on for a while.

The first group (both writers and commenters) tend to write about ideas and moves that they think would help the Twins. While, the second group of blogs have been saying all of the first group's posts and comments are all doom and gloom. Both groups like the Minnesota Twins, I would even go as far as say they are fans of the Minnesota Twins. But they're two distinct groups, one looksat statistics, history and other factors and hypothesizing as to how to improve the Twins chances of succeeding in the future. The other likes to talk about the Twins in the past, or at least the present for the most part.

Typical responses to the same issues:
First Group: Livan Hernandez should be out of the rotation. His ERA is 5.31 and his WHIP is 1.60.
Second Group: But he has 10 wins.

First Group: Carlos Gomez is not a good lead off hitter when gets on base less than 29% of the time.
Second Group: But he is so fast.

First Group: (Before he learned to hit) Punto shouldn't be an everyday starter.
Second Group: But he is so good at defense.

My point isn't that either group is right or wrong and I find both types of blogs to be entertaining and I read all of them daily (or as often as they post). But my issue is of late, that the second group of blogs and people like them often complain that the first group aren't Twins Fans. Because they don't agree/like everything the Twins do, that means they are not true fans. Part of being a fan (even though it's not directly expressed in any definition) is always thinking you could do a better job at running the team. Some of the best fans live and die by the decisions their team makes and they always have an opinion. And that's what makes being a.... ah, shit. I should probably stop before I piss off any more people.

If you are wondering, this is what inspired me to write this.

Any complaints or compliments in the comments section would be appreciated.