The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys

So last night in my drunken sleep-deprived stupor I forgot to mention which team the baseball-themed section of this here Webslog will be aligned with. Though I consider myself a fan of the entire sport (see, my liberal arts education really does apply to the real world!), a quick stroll down the links to your right shows that we'll be talking about the Twins a lot around here, starting...now.

Ah, for those heady days of 2005. I finished my sophomore year of college, went to Norway for a month, and spent the rest of the summer watching the best pitching staff in the league, anchored by Johan Santana in his bid for a second straight Cy Young award great season, with supporting roles in seasoned veteran Brad Radke and sinkerball wizard Carlos Silva. Silva was particularly impressive in throwing sub-80-pitch complete games, coaxing groundout after groundout even from the streaking White Sox batters. Why, I don't remember but a handful of games where we gave up more than 2 or 3 runs...

If everything in baseball was pitching and defense, we would have won the title that year. And in 2003, 2004, and 2006. But there's a little thing in baseball called hitting, and though our pitching staff seldom let more than 3 runs score, a painful amount of games ended with 3-2, 2-1, or the especially maddening 1-0 finals. Sweet-swinging Joe was coming off a serious knee injury and not up to his batting champion form. Yukon Justin was, after being beaned in the head in the first series of the year, still just a slugging prospect who could hit the snot out of the ball on seldom occasion, but had yet to find a consistent stroke. Torii Hunter, still hacking like Sweeney Todd. And so forth. The reason for this trip in the way-back machine is the feeling I got from last night's slugfest with the A's, which had me acting something like this (without the unfortunate but hilarious twist of an unwanted pregnancy). Silva pitches a 1-run, complete game gem where the one run comes on a double-play groundout for chrissake, and gets one-upped by junker lefty righty Joe Blanton. Two hits for Castillo. One for Morneau. 0-for-everyone else. It was so bad, I turned off the radio in favor of Gamecast and watched Ocean's 12 on CBS (CBS!) instead. Real clever, making Julia Roberts look like Julia Roberts. Congratulations on finding a way to give yourself a blowjob without removing a rib.

In conclusion, how about we reward poor Carlos for his improved season by maybe plating a run or two? I know that Joe will be back soon to calm our fears and ease our pain, but when only three guys on the team can hit it over the fence, the secret is to get more than one hit an inning, guys.