Trade Deadline Passes

Look familiar to you? Perhaps this will jog your memory. Notice the date on there? That's right, it's 2005. AKA the last year that the Twins didn't make the playoffs.

I was all set for (and indeed headlong into writing) a vitriolic rant about how dumb a move this was by TR, what a hopeless message it sends to Twins players and fans about this season and beyond, and how he must be either crazy or out-and-out lying through his teeth to do a thing like trade a consistent veteran bat in a still-manageable playoff hunt and subsequently try and assure everyone that he's not giving up on them. But it's already been done. If you want piss and vinegar and name calling, go read the comments in Joe's blog. The only bit of that you'll find here is that Terry Ryan shall henceforth be known as Teri Ryan, until he grows a pair of balls. Trading Castillo was a sensible, businesslike move that probably won't in itself cost us any wins and will in essence stick a newer, younger, cheaper version of Castillo in his spot a few months earlier than planned. But as a wise man said, Teri, don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. You deserve to do business as you see fit, but we, the fans who have invested in this team's near and distant future, deserve at least a little credit not to be taken for suckers.

Instead, I'd like to take a look for the future's sake at the player OFT acquired in last year's deadline trade, Zach Ward. You may remember this trade better as the one in which the Twins finally scuttled the derelict S.S. Kyle Lohse, but Ward, considered at the time a very solid young pitching prospect but remaining currently in A-ball, nevertheless has in interesting story to tell from his stats (courtesy of Baseball America):

W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	SV	IP	H	R	HR	ER		SO	WP	AVG	WHIP	STR%
2	14	3.03	23	15	0	1	101.0	94	43	3	34		84	7	.242	1.17	.250

The W-L numbers are not a typo; he really is 2-12. Neither is the ERA; it really is 3.03. And of 43 total runs, 9 are unearned. This guy's team must have some sort of wicked vendetta against him; either that or he makes his starts against teams solely comprised of major leaguers on rehab assignments. Prior to a July 12 Fort Myers Miracle Ramblings, post, Ward's teammates scored a whopping 12 runs in 12 starts (8 runs in the previous 11), getting shut out 5 times. Since then he has two more losses and his ERA is 0.11 lower, so I assume the story has gotten no better. The rest of his numbers are fine if not overly impressive for an A-ball pitcher. The most promising stat at this point has to be HR allowed at just 3 in 101 innings; it's at least encouraging to think of a prospect who won't let the ball fly out of the ballpark at a Slowey-esque rate. Hell, at this point we could probably bring him up to the big league club just to give Garza, Baker, Silva and Santana someone to talk to about getting hosed by your offense.

So what happens now? The players will just have to keep playing; hopefully every Twin can bring out his inner Jason Tyner this week, put this front-office unpleasantness behind him and hit the baseball where a fielder can't catch it. The fans will still be rooting for the home team; we don't need some guy at a press conference to tell us we're in a playoff run, do we? And Teri Ryan and the front office had damn well better have a plan in case another one of our players go down. Grow, thumb, grow!

I'll Bet Donaghy Cringes Whenever They Play "Don't Stop Believin'" On The PA

2, 4, 6, 8! What Donaghy did was really great!

...

Great, meaning large or immense! We mean it in the pejorative sense!

Having grown up in an area that didn't even have an NBA franchise until I was 5 or 6, then got one that sucked big time for a decade, choked away a few playoff appearances, then quietly resumed their mediocrity, it's safe to say that I have no affection for professional basketball that runs beyond skin deep, even though it's the sport I grew up playing (and still enjoy doing so). It's hard not to feel for KG for the career he's had and the crappy talent that McHale has rewarded him by surrounding him with, and being the hometown franchise guy I'm obliged to name him as my favorite player, but I honestly can't say he's any more entertaining to watch for follow than a Lebron, Nash, or Arenas, and it's not like I can see much of them outside of the playoffs.

What keeps me interested in the NBA is the great depth of talent that we have devoted to it: Three of my favorite blogs cover the league devotedly as well as the most entertaining sportswriter out there (I know it's trendy to hate on Simmons nowadays, and I've long trained myself to skip over anything Boston-related, but his NBA columns are undoubtedly the best-conceived of the mainstream crew). These, along with the aforelinked Agent Zero, are among my daily stops not because I am a rabid fan of any one player or team, but because of the extremely thoughtful, sometimes even intellectual, culture that surrounds them. I feel that I share this stance with a great number of middling NBA fans, who have to give themselves reasons to watch the remaining teams in May and June when there is literally nothing else interesting going on in professional sports. In 2006, we followed the online antics of Mark Cuban that eventually got him fined. This year, we rooted for the Warriors in their cinematic uprising, howled at the ridiculous enforcement of a post-Malice rule that many thought cost the Suns a trip to the Finals, thanked LeBron for saving us singlehandedly from the dreaded Pistons-Spurs Finals matchup, then bitched after a brutal sweep that Cleveland should've never been there in the first place.

And now, what every fan has thought and muttered under his breath (or screamed, or blogged about, depending on the alcohol level) when a close call went against his team has all of a sudden become a lot more real than anybody would have suspected. No one knows yet how real this is; whether, as Stern insists, this was a bad apple in an isolated case, or if they all get together every Friday night in Salvatore's garage, eat a couple buckets of wings, and discuss the upcoming week's point spreads under green-shaded visors and a cloud of cigar smoke. Nor, however, does anyone really consider it the final death knell for a league that's been barely treading water for virtually the whole post-Jordan era. I strained my link muscle in the last paragraph, but all of those writers and more have all manner of opinions on the issue, my particular favorite being Simmons' cast for the hypothetical movie version. Once again, I sit back all the while as a fly on the wall and take in the pure writing talent that's being thrown around. I hate to say that the game needs an occasional Malice or Kobe's Denver Doldrums or now a Donaghy, but as someone who reads the NBA for the articles, an event with this one's undeniable bigness really shakes the cobwebs off of the current Bonds-era sportswriting with its hybrid character of columnist/moralist injecting each column with a Bayless-esque dose of self-righteousness, and brings to the forefront the brightest minds of the youngest branch of the media. If it takes a handful of serious but nonfatal disgraces to get that branch a wider audience, then by all means: Throw that intentional elbow, follow that nice girl back to her hotel room, and slap down that wad of cash on the over as you fumble for your whistle. These guys will be right here, making sure that no one ever forgets it.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner-Killer

There is something which has been a source of some embarrassment to me for a while now, and I'd like to get it off my chest:

I own a Lew Ford jersey.




I know, I know. I won't even try to defend the awful year he has had, or the awful year he had last year. Wearing the cursed thing in public it felt not like a piece of cloth, but rather a dreadful albatross of shame hung about my neck for the ages to recognize and heap scorn upon my woeful deed. Despite the flattering navy home alternate design, it stinks of the acrid odor of failed dreams and faulty ligaments. That and two and a half summers' worth of spilled beer and pickle relish. Wearing it to games was worse. Lew Ford? Though a favorite to all those fans who think the Wave is the coolest thing about a ballgame and who can easily come up with a creative cheer for anyone whose name rimes with "oooooooooooh", those who followed the game with stats and charts and something about a saber - you may have noticed their inner children hanging around the lost-and-found station outside the gates of the ballpark - saw beyond the goofy smile and the particular brand of hustle that only comes with someone desperately lacking in natural ability or talent. The looked at me the same way as they would at someone with the words MEARES, STAHOVIAK, or RIVAS across their back. Little do they know I was once like them.

To what do I owe this memorabilia of the damned? Way back in 2003, we actually had a pretty decent backup outfielder in No. 20, and in 2004, when Stewart Shannon went down with that pesky plantar fasciitis, he handled the starting left field job for most of the year to the tune of .299/15/72, even garnering two votes for AL MVP (Hartman and Souhan, I'm looking at you) but somehow getting robbed of that award by Vlad Guerrero. Which brings us to 2005. The Soul Patrol remained intact again for a while, limiting Sweet Lew to sporadic DH and outfield duty, where he was still doing a respectable job, until Torii lost a fight with the wall at Fenway and went out for the season with a broken ankle, thrusting our protagonist into the starting center field job. At a weekend game in August against Seattle, I was arguing with a friend of mine about Ford's merits. He had homered in the previous night's game, and I forget exactly how the argument went, but here's how it ended:

"If Lew Ford hits a home run tonight, I'll buy his jersey and wear it to the game tomorrow."


After the Twins gave up six runs in the bottom of the tenth, Lew comes up and puts one in the left field seats before the Mariners closed out the loss. A man of my word, I had to go out and cash the check my big mouth had written. It was not a good sign that it took me trips to three stores before I actually found a Lew Ford jersey, but I was there the next day and he went out and fucking hit another one. That weekend was probably the peak of his career, save for maybe his 2006 walkoff against - naturally - Seattle. Either way, it's been downhill from there, and me and my No. 20 jersey have been there to witness every looking strikeout, basepath rundown, and fly ball route that looks more like evading enemy mortar fire. But still, as the clamors rise daily on blog comments and message boards for Lew's trade, release, or head on a platter, I can't help but hope that he'll stick around. Not just for the sake of my jersey not becoming even more worthless, but I can't help now but think, after all we've been through these last two years, that we share a kind of bond, an alliance against those who think that Terry Ryan will really cobble together some sort of trade that doesn't involve an over-the-hill DH or starting pitcher. Yes, he's not getting any younger nor his numbers any gaudier, but the last couple of weeks seem to have seen our boy put together some impressive clutch hitting, and I can't help but wonder if there can be a resurgence, something to let me wear the blue No. 20 again with pride. Hey, at least he's doing better than Kubel.