Dear BG-

"0" comments looked, well, so pitiful and so, yes, I will comment. And, gee, BG, you sound so twitchingly sad and disappointed I will send you good thoughts and hopes for next year. Xanax does wonders for those twiches. Single malt scotch will do it too.

there is always another season, no? I bet my sweetie that next year our boys will compete with the big boys in the playoffs and he says we will be having a rebuilding year. The bet is a high class dinner out.

I was kinda hoping the boys would rally today as the Gophers and the Vikings won but, alas, no such luck.

May our last week provide us with those &%$&ing dingers and wins.

May the force be with us all as we wind down to close out the season (sniff).

Thanks again for being you,

cheers, kal

what a day,
oh what a day.
Matthew Lecroy hit into a double play.
and now Jacque Jones swung for his third K.
I'm a loyal fan,
but I'm turning grey.
what a day,
oh what a day.

--Shel Silverstein

3 games, 3 runs, almost 3 bitch sox complete games.

I got to go to the friday night game, and, because, it took longer than expected to get there, arrived to find the twins down 3-0. Not fun. Plus I got made fun of by some 9 or 10 year old girls who kept chanting "tw-ins st-ink". Now THAT was annoying.

Hopefully something can change for the last week. Over .500, we can do that, can't we? please?

I was watching the game Friday or Saturday (they are all turning into a blur at this point) and kept channel flipping between the game and West Side Story. The parallels were too numerous to mention, let's just summerize by saying at this point in the season I feel like Maria kneeling beside Tony's lifeless body railing against those who couldn't care more and try harder to stop the insanity.

Of course, there is always next Spring where hope is eternal.

I'll play the role of math geek for a second here. The Twins would not have been operating at x-K but actually just at x for most of the weekend. x-K would indicate that Johan was always part of the x. As a sidenote, K must be a negative number. Finally, Hollow Men is incredibly underrated. Now I'm taking the geek cap off.

this really seems a job for Bukowski, but I'm not sure the kids could handle it.

I can't WAIT to see what they do with the offense in the offseason.

I think people who know me are quite aware of what I'd like the first move to be. Hopefully as soon as October 3rd.

*sigh*

no help for my Tribe. COME ON, BOYS! This was the Bitch Sox we were talking about! Man up!

BG, that formula looks about right.

It was not a good day for the teams that I wanted to win. All three of them lost.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I hit a pop fly
And that has made all the difference.
-R. Frost

Priceless!!!

Dear Soj,

I was thinking: sure, subtracting Santana when he doesn't pitch doesn't make sense if you add him when he does, but then I realized that Johan could pitch a perfect 'game' and we could still lose in 12. And given what has happened when Johan pitches and when he doesn't, the man clearly transcends modern mathematics . So maybe Batgirl's onto something(?)

Dear BG,
RE: quest for above .500.
So we play KC and Det for 7 games. At home. Usually this would be good, but given the apocalypse is upon us, I'm just not sure things are going to add up: we need 4 wins, and Johan will only pitch 2 games. So... do you think we can borrow the Cardinal's 'O' for the week? They certainly don't need it. And Albert Pujols has a big heart, I hear.

A haiku:

Twins are in a fix
Lost three of four to the Sox?
Time to make "Oh Six!"

:D

-Pander
The "omg maybe our season isn't gone!" White Sox fan.

Excellent analysis of the poets. They really seem to know their baseball!

Looking at Ultimate Plan for Victory, this weekend would've meant one win, one tie (which we'd like to think the boys could score an extra run and win), and one loss.

JustBeth

Torhu-

My guess as to the offseason changes?

Lose a few players.

Get noone new, other than maybe a backup catcher if Redmond can't play.

"Not with a bang but a whimper" is a perfect description of how the Twins are ending the season. I'm not sure they could score more than one run if their lives depended on it.

You have that twitching thing, too?

I paid GOOD MONEY to watch the the Twins get their asses handed to them live and in person on Saturday. Why did I do that? I knew Joe Mays was pitching before I left my apartment.

I did comiserate over beers in the concourse with a fine woman who drove down from Bloomington to witness that. Poor thing. And then my husband and I left. Oh, my, did that suck.

great post BG, special props on the Hunt For Red October quote.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
I watched as my ground ball hit
Went six-four-three.

--E. Dickinson

k-bro

Some feeble-bat batku:

It doesn't matter
Who pitches for Sheeee-caw-go*
We'll score one damn run

*"Chicago" -- Blylevenian pronounciation

Joe Mays on the mound
The outcome is preordained
RD ate sushi

WHEN eighty losses shall wrinkle thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy plastic field,
Thy teams's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered rag of small worth held:
Then, being asked where all thy hitting lies,
Where all the treasure of thy champion days,
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy cheering's use
If thou couldst answer, 'This fair team of mine
Shall hit that ball and make no more excuse,'
Proving their worth by lofting dingers fine.
This were to be new made from seasons old
And make thy blood warm when thou feel'st cold.
--Shakespeare, Sonnet on an Ass-Bat

Dear Ron Gardenhire,

Thanks for nothing.

Love,
Eric Wedge.

Dearest Ms. Infield,

Bravo.

Love,
Batgirl

Dear BG: Yeats? Elliot? Frost? Auden? I think you had to be one of those girls who paid attention in school to learn all this. I didn't, and so that's why I am a regular reader of Sid's column, but I prefer yours because it makes me smarter.

suppose
LeCroy is an old man carrying pine tar on his helmet.

young Darth sits in a cafe
smiling, a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger

(i say "will he hit dinegrs" to you
and "Darth is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters, life has a beard" i

say to you who are silent.--"Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 9 innings
asleep, on his head
dinegrs, always crying
to nobody something about les
frapper les gagner
yes,
will He buy?
Les double jeu--oh hear
, pas copain")

and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else

there is a lady, whose name is BatGirl
she is sitting beside young Darth, is slender;
likes homeruns.

-with apologies to e e cummings

Wow!! on all the reinterpreted poetry! I've always known this was a place to expand my horizons and learning. Almost makes the current suffering worthwhile........

Do not go gentle into that off night,
Ex-champs should hit home runs at close of game;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their bats had banged no dingers they
Do not go gentle into that off night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green field,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the ball in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that off night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my skipper, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that off night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

Smitty:

Makes me want to have Diane "straighten out my Longfellow."

Classic.
YankeeFan

Tremendous, tremendous sonnet, Infield. That Shakespeare knew from baseball was also the subject of a celebrated letter to the New York Times almost fifteen years ago. Linked at my name.

There's a line early in Don DeLillo's novel "Underworld" that reads like the best of American poetry, crooked rhyme and all.

It's from the first chapter, which takes place at the Polo Grounds during the deciding third game of the 1951 playoff between the Giants and the Dodgers. As the crowd finishes filing into the stadium, a loose gathering of ticketless fans -- young men mostly, of every ethnicity, Americans -- recognizes each other as fellows unwilling to be denied entry. If they crash the gates together, some of them are bound to escape to see the baseball game of their lifetimes.

Here's the paragraph. The final line kills me.
--

They are at the curbstone, waiting. Their eyes are going grim, sending out less light. Somebody takes his hands out of his pockets. They are waiting and then they go, one of them goes, a mick who shouts Geronimo.

--
More of DeLillo's "Pafko at the Wall" section of "Underworld" here:
www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1998/March/Sa17474.htm

Did I forget to write about the Twins? Back later, then, with "Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Ass-Bat."

I think Yeats had a vision of the White Sox, too. The last line of the Things Fall Apart poem BG quoted at the opening of today's treatise is:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Oh, Flitcraft, please do -- one of my very favorite poems!

Here's a start:

Among thirteen striving ballclubs
The only clinching team
was the one called the Redbirds.

Edit:

Among thirteen worthy ballclubs
the only clinching team
Was the one called the Redbirds.

More parallel. Wrote it too fast the first time.

Props to YankeeFan for the Rodney Dangerfield "Back to School" reference.

Two by Charles Henry Ross-

Juan, Doc, and Ron:

Juan was a bad boy, and swung a poor bat;
Doc pops a fly, could be caught in a hat;
Ron fills the lineup with weak-hitting players;
They're all losing ugly, and nobody cares.

Jacque:

That's Jacque!
Lay a stick on his back!
What's he done? Big swinging K.
And once more tomorrow,
so let's beat him today.

Breathe deep in the gathering gloom
Watch rallyes fade at every noon
Baserunning people look back and lament
Another day's pitching energy's spent

Impassioned outfielders wrestle as one
Johan cries for runs and has none
Gardenhire picks up and strangles his son
Senior citizens wish they had Young

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the ass-bats from our sight
Red is gray and sox are white
And we decide which is right
And which is an illusion?