6 down...
12 to go. The man diaper awaits me.
Go Wild.
But, really, who reads these anonymous posts? Frankly, this blog site is little more than a thinly veiled advertising engine for Bill Marcil and his marketing minions. Rarely do well-written and truly insightful blog entries generate discussions of substance, a predictable result for an audience that purportedly despises traditional media but then turns a blind eye away from dissident literature.
Enjoy your Mike McFeely as he feebly imitates Jim Souhan. Enjoy your Ryan Bakken as he borrows Patrick Reusse's jaded curmudgeon. Enjoy your 75 cents-a-can Mountain Dew, Red River Valley.
You earned it.
Posted by: LarryLetterson on 4/11/2008 at 7:06 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Snowfall
What the hell happened to the body of this entry? Clearly some by-the-hour degenerate scrubbed my diatribe about Dave Hakstol's fraudulence. Nevertheless I shall aspire to urge my amateur tongue onward. To Vegas, most pointedly, where security guards at The Luxor still roam the hallways in search of a dazed pillhead with a penchant for public urination.
Larry 1, Luxor 0.
Posted by: LarryLetterson on 4/11/2008 at 7:05 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Disgust
Well, at least the three Budweisers pushed out the pasta this morning, otherwise my Wild hangover would be insufferable. For reasons both sophomoric and unknown, I get twitchy in the aftermath of losing home-ice advantage. Not take-apart-the-remote control-ten times-consecutively twitchy, just...twitchy. Anxious. Flighty. Unsure. Similar to the way in which Martin Skoula caresses the puck in his own zone.
If nothing else, I'll take repugnant consolation in the knowledge that the game-winner was generated by deflecting off our preeminent degenerate. Is it just me, or is Skoula also innately addicted to imitating the fat kid in gym-class basketball who can't look up from his dribble?
Great hockey game, but I would've rather witnessed Nick Schultz's appendectomy than to have ever suffered Skoula's inexplicably sloppy play again.
Game Two: Wild 4, Avs 2.
Posted by: LarryLetterson on 4/10/2008 at 9:56 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Baptized by "The Show"
MINNEAPOLIS - Blabby banter invariably flowed from my bonhomous baseball buddies during the cramped car rides we shared to American Legion doubleheaders in the summer of 1996. This banter salved the baffling insecurities that would often chafe our collective baseball conscience prior to an umpire's proclamation of "Play Ball!" It also doubled as a time in which we knew each other only by nickname, since referring to a teammate by his legal first name is frowned upon as sacrilege in baseball.
To be sure, every car ride that summer was full of the foregoing. Except, of course, the one we shared July 12, when the radio feed of a press conference more than 300 miles away silenced our banter into a makeshift wake. A wake for the career of our beloved Kirby Puckett, who announced to us that afternoon in hushed tones that the glaucoma in his right away wouldn't go away, and that our everlasting hero wasn't ever coming back.
Barely a month later would many of the same teammates who grieved Puck's retirement in a white Pontiac Bonneville unknowingly play their last game of organized baseball on a windswept diamond in Barnesville, Minn. The emotional finality struck those of us who retired from baseball on that mid-August day hard, but nothing like the lightning bolt of Puck's untimely announcement. Puck was the reason we even played this game in the first place, a roving time capsule of a center fielder in whom all of our childhood memories of baseball were placed.
Maybe more so than a mawkish reminder to the happy days when we'd find a baseball card of him stained bubble-gum pink in a pack of Topps, Puck was our sole link to "The Show," or that traveling circus of baseball excellence from which modestly talented players such as ourselves were forever excluded. We were but a stone's throw from Manitoba, and yet we could still boast that our good buddy Puck from the South Side of Chicago was starring in "The Show."
So when our hero and dear friend, Puck, said goodbye to baseball with a bandaged right eye, the last thing any of us wanted was to follow him into premature retirement only a month later. Most of us outgoing Legion ballplayers who were begrudgingly blown from that Barnesville baseball field did just that, for reasons both practical (college) and forced (75-mph fastballs are best fed through a pitching machine).
With Puck gone, and the rest of us banished to beer-league softball, the ugly question was thus inevitably posed: Was "The Show" as we knew it really over? And if answered in the affirmative, then how would we get back inside? With out solidarity soon to be dissolved by divergent interests, it was clear at least one of the foolhardy among us would have to sneak back inside.
Alone.
Almost 11 years later, just 26 miles northwest of the Barnesville baseball field where my last official at-bat as a ballplayer was recorded but quickly forgotten, I get the call. The call I once wished to receive from Minnesota Twins Director of Minor Leagues Jim Rantz so many summer nights ago, but that never came: That I'd been called up to "The Show."
The voice on the other end of the line that arranges my long-awaited trip to "The Show" does not belong to Rantz. Nor does it belong to former Twins manager Tom Kelly, who, despite hard evidence to the contrary, once played a part in shortening my swing in the fantasy sandlot of my youth.
The voice on the other end belongs not to a baseball lifer, but rather to a man whose conception of a shortened swing might otherwise include erudite instructions on how best to employ an economy of words. Improbably, it belongs to Minnesota State University Moorhead Mass Communications Chairman Mark Strand. Like "The Voice" from the classic baseball flick, "Field of Dreams," Strand deadpans the good news: "April 26, Kansas City."
Three days later, on a cloudy spring morning in downtown Minneapolis, my body shakes. Like the bat of Carney Lansford, it shakes in front of the Minnesota Twins executive offices at 34 Kirby Puckett Place. I shake while Strand shrewdly negotiates the terms of my deal to "The Show" with people who, when informed of Strand's intent, quickly ask, "What?"
Strand's playful haggling secures an invitation to the Twins' baseball communications office, which is located down a Metrodome corridor that does little more than invite claustrophobia back into my life. Once inside, a young lady named Molly Gallatin confirms that the Twins are awaiting me, if only by uttering a name she's doubtless never heard from a red slip of paper I prayed the night before wouldn't prove pink.
Gallatin then graciously hands the red slip to Strand, who then places it in my perspiring left hand.
"Here you go," says Strand with a hint of anxiety that comes out with a shrill. "Good luck." And with that, the first and last big-league scout to ever sign a journalism student to a one-day contract walks out of the Metrodome. I stare in disbelief behind him: cleatless, gloveless, and with nowhere else to go but "The Show."
Except none of it matters, since the now-soaked red slip in my left hand promises nary a chance to stare down a big-league pitcher. In fact, it "expressly prohibits" such an encounter. Rather, it offers me the chance to observe, to reflect, to report, all from inside the bowels of a Metrodome stadium which, prior to this moment, I'd experienced solely from a periphery of concourses and hardened blue seats.
The little red slip reads: "Media Credential." In other words, my ticket to "The Show" demands that I tell. So I head down the corridor to find my story, passing murals and portraits of famous Twins along the way. Both nervous and famished, I slip into the press room to catch the breakfast spread of longtime club chef Phillip Wells.
One bite of biscuits-and-gravy later proves unequivocally that the pancakes my mother once made prior to summer rec. games had finally been bested. A recovering bartender to the core, I drop a dollar of gratitude into the chef's tip cup on my way out, not knowing whether I took to the rest of my spread as Marlon Brando once did quarts of ice cream.
Fully nourished and accessorized with a limited-access press pass, my body is now free to roam. It takes an insentient right from the press room and down a tunnel, where a genteel fellow presumably disguised as security sits a table. Seated to this fellow's left is lifelong Twins minor-league clubbie Wayne Hattaway, himself just a recent addition to big-league baseball.
"Hi, big fella," says Hattaway through a prodigious mustache which all but devours his upper lip. I then respond to his greeting by asking about the availability of injured Twins second baseman Luis Castillo. To which Hattaway, who's seen it all before, promptly replies: "Just one of those things. He'll be ready by Cleveland. No, Tampa! Nice seein' ya, big fella."
Naming Wayne Hattaway as my first official big-league interview is not just one of those things; it's a godsend.
My conversation with Hattaway complete, I eyeball the endless stairway that descends to the Metrodome playing field. The nameless emotion that visited the fictional Terrence Mann as he sauntered into that Iowa cornfield in "Field of Dreams" now visits me on my way down.
But save for the handiwork of the grounds crew, the Metrodome playing field remains devoid of ballplayers for 20 minutes until, at 9:56 a.m., Twins outfielder Jason Tyner staggers from the tunnel of the right-field batting cage. He holds a taped bat in one hand and a coffee in the other.
Ten minutes later and Twins righthander Carlos Silva is snapping off crisp sinkers during an off-day bullpen session, while teammate Josh Rabe endures a maddening morning of wind sprints in the outfield.
By 10:30 a.m., Twins utility infielder Jeff Cirillo is making throws from the air at third base to the bag at first, ostensibly to hasten his departure from the disabled list. Seven minutes later and Twins centerfielder Torii Hunter explains Cirillo's condition. "Nah, he's just rehabbin'," says Hunter on the fly, appropriately enough.
Just as soon as Hunter disappears, two-time Cy Young award winner Johan Santana supplants Silva in the bullpen. For the next five minutes, Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson monitors Santana's mastery of the strike zone. Eventually, Anderson, sans batting helmet and possibly even the brain it was designed to protect, hops in the bullpen batter's box to skeleton a live at-bat for Santana. For a man who was credited with just nine big-league decisions in a career of long relief, Anderson seems eager to make a foolish one now.
Fearful that an errant pitch might befall Anderson, I flee the scene. To the press box that's nestled more than 30 rows behind home plate where, like Howard Beale in "Network," "I must make my witness."
But before heading back up the stairs, I stop. I stop and soak in this privileged moment, acutely aware that newspaper beats of high-school sports and city council meetings await me after graduation. If this proves to be my one and only glimpse of "The Show," then into my brain will I let this memory burn. The imagery retained, I scrub my shoes on the Metrodome's FieldTurf one last time, and then head back up the stairs from which I came.
On my way to the press box door, I again pass Hattaway and the genteel fellow who sits alongside him. I nod. Curiously, this prompts Hattaway to repeat himself. "Nice seein' ya, big fella," he says, as if we've never met.
Unfazed, I plod along unconsciously before waking up to scale yet another flight of stairs up to the press box. At 11: 18 a.m., I take a seat in the press box's fourth and final row. A scant three rows in front of me sits Star Tribune sports columnist Jim Souhan, who on this morning appears to be penning three stories at once.
Ten minutes later and dignified Twins scorekeeper Tom Mee walks by to give guff to a lady who's hovering over a crossword puzzle. The lady acknowledges Mee with a tip of an eraser that's clearly been busier than the lead on the other end.
Shortly after this exchange, chalk is applied to the batter's box. Over at the left-field line, Twins righthanded starter Boof Bonser mimics a helicopter at takeoff by twisting his torso under outstretched arms. Both above and below the press box, most of today's 18,520 Metrodome fans begin scampering to their seats, all of them blind to the fact that they're about to watch nearly four hours of scoreless baseball.
Finally, at 12:11 p.m., Bonser tosses the game's first pitch. He'd labor to throw 107 more over a five-inning stint in which he walked seven Royals hitters who, by way of either futility or outright refusal, ultimately could not score. Kansas City's plight notwithstanding, a 4-6-3 double play rescues Bonser in the top half of the first.
Twins utilityman Alexi Casilla now leads off the inning's bottom half. To my left, former Twin-turned-radio color man Jack Morris relishes a press-box hot dog as much as Twins fans did his Game Seven gem in the 1991 World Series. True to form, Morris makes quick work of the stadium delicacy before hurrying back to the booth upstairs.
The game remains punchless until Royals righthander Zack Greinke delivers the first blow: a second-inning fastball to the mouth of Torii Hunter, who then briefly charges his assailant before collapsing in pain halfway to the mound. Though unintentional, this beaning stirs the partisan emotions of the Metrodome faithful, who cheer madly when Hunter slowly walks off the field under his power.
But in the press box, Hunter's battered walk is met not with the courtesy of applause, but with the silence of indifference. Except, of course, in the fourth and final row, where I alone clap audibly for a man whose mouth just bled before my very eyes. The fan in me exposed, a few writers look back for the source of the clap, presumably to ascertain whether I'm the offspring of Sid Hartman.
But these non-clappers cannot be faulted for failing to bid Hunter well. Hunter's injury, however horrific, is merely a morsel in the bakery of game-day information which equally informs and inundates these baseball writers as they cobble together stories. Besieged by deadline pressure, it's a small miracle most of them even bothered to watch Hunter walk away.
And while the age-old baseball tradition of scorekeeping remains ubiquitous in this press box, it is clear that wireless technology has got it on the run. From cell phone conversations to text messaging, laptops to zipped folders, even MySpace to Facebook, distractions abound.
Just as suddenly as paper is sure to become passe, the game is in the bottom of the 11th, and Twins catcher Mike Redmond steps in with two runners on. And whenever a poorly executed baseball game such as this one threatens my sanity (combined game totals: 14 BB, 25 LOB), I immediately pray for its swift conclusion.
Impossibly, Redmond, he of both "Smell 'Em" and "Naked Walk" fame, heeds my call by slapping a single to right, scoring first baseman Justin Morneau amid an exasperated Metrodome din.
Twins 1, Royals 0.
My time in "The Show" complete, I head back to Moorhead with Mark Strand. Our long slog back passes by the prairie town of Barnesville, where I thought my baseball career had ended nearly 11 years ago. Turns out I was wrong.
Reincarnated as a writer, baptized by "The Show," I am born-again in baseball.
Posted by: Letterson on 4/08/2008 at 2:00 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink
"And then I got in the car..."
Dutifully, I submit my first title as an homage to Creed's blog from "The Office." Oh, and if anyone out there would like to hire a broke and gambling-addicted scribe with little skill and less ambition, then please don't hesitate in avoiding this blog.
Posted by: Letterson on 6/07/2007 at 10:22 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink