(Key note: NATURAL. This wasn’t Kurt Rambis freaking out over his glowing basketball. This was a real picture – a photo opportunity, sure, but a real picture of a real player playing a real sport for a real team.)

If you were a basketball fan, you wanted this card. It was the only way to get a Michael Jordan card that year. If you were a baseball fan, you wanted this card, much as you’d have wanted Eddie Gaedel’s card: as an oddity, a rare blip on the trading card landscape, a mashup before mashups were even a thing.

It was valuable. It was rare.

Twenty years later, we can see it for what it really was: arrogant.

Because, with the benefit of hindsight, this card freezes a privileged superstar at the peak of his ability, unable to understand failure, confident that he can do anything better than anyone, and completely willing to be paraded around as a novelty for the chance to prove everyone wrong.

Michael Jordan played baseball for a year. He was given a minor league spot by Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of both the White Sox and the Bulls. He was paid by the Chicago Bulls the entire time.

He batted .202 for the Birmingham Barons. He hit three home runs and drove in 51 runs.

He wasn’t perfect. And this card proves it, much to his chagrin.

The accepted story is that Jordan did this for his father. It was all done out of tragedy of his dad’s murder. He retired and went into baseball because his father’s dream was for Jordan to be a MLB star.

Maybe. But he also did it because that’s who he always was: unable to admit that he had flaws. The arrogance in that smirk, the ease with which he wandered onto the baseball field, the knowledge that he hadn’t worked a day to earn his spot on the team, and that, once he felt the heat from his critics, he was able to waltz back onto the Bulls with a simple phrase.

“I’m back.”

And we all embraced him. We had missed him on the floor. So we patted him on the head and let the experiment slide.

The card’s worth about five bucks, now. Funny what hindsight does.

In a vacuum, with no one forcing me to adjust for defense or change my direction, I am a scrappy hitter. I am a freaky consistent jump shooter. I am a Gold Glove defender.

I am Ichiro Suzuki. I am Oscar Robertson. I am Ozzie Smith.

My swing is true. I don’t hit home runs, but I do the little things that win games, despite the fact that I’m not actually playing games, relying only on a glorified batting practice to show off my amazingly consistent wares. My flow is sweet, my follow-through fluid, my confidence at its high; every shot snaps the bottom of the net, every juke and every fake – each one as fake as its name – unstoppable, every twist and turn like a gibbon effortlessly climbing a zoo cage.

Of course, I know the truth. I know what happened the last time I played one-on-one, the “one” itself betraying the number of points I was able to score in two combined games. I know what happened the first three times I saw a slow pitch softball this summer, how the breeze off my bat kept the outfielders cool, how even the mosquitoes kept away from me lest I miss the ball and knock them into the back fence.

It’s such childish bull, really. We’re supposed to grow out of it, right? We’re supposed to understand our place and buck up and admit that we’re not made for sports and that we’d do a lot better if we just stopped playing and started worrying about Brett Favre or some other tabloid sports crap.

That’s not how it is, though. Not for me. Not for any sports fan, regardless of talent.

We all want to imagine that we’re the best. Even if we know, without a doubt, that we have no chance in making it that far.

I don’t play sports to win. I play them to dream. To have fun. To taunt my friends. To imagine that I’m actually on a real field. That I’m actually a real athlete.

Because, on my own, with all of the quirks that come with a home court, or with the guiding hand of a friendly pitcher, I can pretend that the talent is real.

Without defense, I am All World. There is no greater player. No one can match the effort and skill and talent of the sports star I become. In my mind.

Exhibit 1: Underlines = Links

As you can see, the page I’m currently on (page 1) is underlined. One problem: common usage has led to the understanding that underlined text is a link. When you see underlined words – especially in the midst of other non-underlined words – you say to yourself, “HEY THAT IS A LINK. AND I KNOW THIS BECAUSE IT’S UNDERLINED.”

Here, though, it’s the opposite. The actual link – as in, the thing you click to get to page 2 – IS NOT UNDERLINED.

This is confusing in two ways. ONE: I don’t know where to click, and that makes me an angry clicker. TWO: When I land on this page and see the navigation, I assume I’m on page two. BUT I’M NOT, I’M ON PAGE ONE.

Exhibit 2: Completely Different

Of course, that’s not all. The page navigation of the comments section? COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

In fact, this is how the main pages should be navigated. Current page in bold, linkable pages in a different color. Nothing is underlined, no assumptions are made, everyone wins.

So, in short: Underlined = links, especially in linkable fields. Make the page number bold, if you need to. Keep navigation consistent. Don’t be dumb.

This is simple stuff, you guys.

And, with that complaint out of the way, I’d suggest reading Matt Zimmer’s Opening Day Twins preview at the Argus Leader Web site.

Hooray for Opening Day, people. Hooray.

To me, Twins season means toting my portable radio around, tuned to 1140 KSOO, bringing Dan Gladden and John Gordon around with me, lamenting the loss of the great Herb Carneal, pouring over every statistic in an old folksy way and learning names before faces, wondering later at how oddly they seemed to be spelled.

I used to listen to the Twins while working at the Parks Department in St. Cloud. I’d sit back in the shelter with the radio tuned to the day’s game, soaking in the stats, reacquiring the taste I once had as an errant Cardinals fan, the sun of someone else’s reception or event warming their heads, the sound of sport warming mine.

In past years, I’ve listened to the Twins while digging gardens, planting flowers and laying stone borders. I’ve listened to the them while cutting sod and cleaning the garage, while rewiring light switches and organizing our basement, during grill-out parties and while completely by myself.

It’s the smell of dirt and mown grass and dust and sunflower seeds, as if a little portion of the game itself was being wafted through the speakers toward me. Hard work. Leisurely rest. A glass of water or a bottle of cold beer.

What’s great about baseball on the radio is that no matter how long the season gets, you never have to stop doing what you’re doing to catch a game.

How much is a nostalgic longing for times? Times I was never old enough to experience? And how much is an actual dedication to great baseball on the radio is?

I’ll never know. Maybe it’s a little bit of old soul that’s been stuck in me. But give me the crackle of the radio any day.

Today the Twins almost nearly probably finalized a trade (pending contract extension and physical) that sends arguably the best pitcher in Twins history – Johan Santana – to the Mets for…well…some people I’ve never heard of.

The Twins couldn’t afford to keep him – he wanted max dollars, and he certainly probably maybe deserved them, and after re-signing The Laughable MVP Justin Morneau. But it’s still too bad to see such a great player go to New York. Again. For a bunch of guys only the scouts have heard of. (New York’s #2, #3, #4 and #7 prospects, reportedly, for what that’s worth).

This is what makes baseball so different from other sports in the offseason – and not for the better. Trades involve future Hall of Famers for no-name AAA prospects; people you’ve never heard of are packaged together, with no frame of reference. Free agents are signed almost randomly to teams that you have no reason to watch. If deals aren’t penned in time, it goes to a lawyer to figure out. It’s as if you need some kind of Bill James encyclopedic mind to understand it.

I don’t like the baseball offseason. Not at all.

See, when the Timberwolves shipped off their greatest player ever to the Boston Celtics, you at least knew who the Timberwolves were getting in return. It wasn’t equal, but it was at least recognizable.

But this? Well, I guess that’s baseball.

Two Cy Young awards. A multiple-time All Star. More wins, better ERA and more strikeouts than anyone – ANYONE – in baseball since 2003. For four unproven guys.

Good luck, Johan. I miss you already.

So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m callous to this year’s Super Bowl. The roles are reversed, but it’s still the same story. New York vs. Boston. New York as scrappy underdog, Boston as steamrolling Goliath.

Does that mean Brady is the game’s Jeter? Who is Manning?

* sigh * Let the hyperbole begin.

(And, let’s see how long it takes the No Fun League to notice my image and order me to remove it.)

Mark McGwire. Revived a league still reeling from the residual hatred that a strike-shortened season brings.

Two straight years of ballotship. Two straight years of coming up short by a wide margin. Two years of wondering if writers were ever going to let up, whether they were going to cast the blame of the steroid era elsewhere.

Two years of being the canary, gasping for air before the rest of the Steroid Superstars had a chance to try the ballot, suffocating from a mass of allegations. A warning to those trailing behind. “There’s no room in here for suspicion, guys. Hold back.”

I don’t blame them. Even though it has never been proven, the evidence is stacked heavily against McGwire – and even more so, Sosa, Palmiero, Bonds. There’s no trust, no confidence whatsoever. He looks like a cheater. Everything he’s said makes him sound like a cheater. He’s skirting the issue, and the voters are skirting his Hall of Fame vote.

It wasn’t always like this. Mark McGwire was the most popular man in all of baseball. He revitalized the sport after years of idle doldrums – both he and Sammy Sosa – with an electrifying home run chase. He took a quickly dying sport and injected it with a new passion.

No pun intended.

This is the McGwire I remember. And this is the McGwire that’s closer to the truth. Steroids aside, McGwire was a power hitter from the womb. He was an average defender (though he did win a Gold Glove and had a career .993 fielding average at first base) and at times was a poor hitter (though he bat over .280 a few seasons and over .300 sparingly). But what do you expect? His job was to bring the power, just like Ozzie Smith’s job was to get on base safely and steal easy doubles.

McGwire deserves to be in the Hall based on his numbers alone. But we know that numbers don’t tell the whole story. And we know that for as much as he did to bring the sport back to life, he did just as much to bring it to its knees through the steroid scandal. For every peak, a valley opened up under him, swallowing him up in hearsay, rendering his career obsolete, sending him into the depths of the California suburbs, into a life of hiding.

I don’t want to apologize for the steroid issue. In fact, I actually don’t care, despite the hours I spent pouring over the Mitchell Report. Mark McGwire was a good person, for all I know. He broke a record. He juiced – but it wasn’t forbidden at that time. Gambling on baseball is. Throwing games is. Steroids are, now. But not then. So where the 1919 Black Sox and Pete Rose are banned, McGwire wasn’t.

It wasn’t forbidden. It was wrong. Looked down upon. But not forbidden.

Steroids in professional sports cast a wide net. It touches every sport, in every way – from the issue of sports stars as role models to the early deaths of known steroid abusers. It gives what some see as an unfair advantage – an unnatural stamina and an inappropriate power boost.

Mark McGwire may have been the recipient of both. His stats might deserve an asterisk, just as Barry Bonds’s might.

But we’re talking about the Hall of Fame. And for one summer in 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa did all that they could to save baseball. For the length of one glorious race, two men drew the attention of nearly every American. Radios blared. Televisions caught every camera flash. Old fans turned back to the sport they had abandoned, and new fans reveled in the shine of a renewed rivalry. Baseball, so long declining as our national pastime, rose from the ashes like a phoenix.

Or maybe it was more like a Cardinal.

Keep Mark McGwire out of the Hall of Fame as a player. That’s fine with me. If his career seems tainted, if his Andro-lined locker and his non-admission of innocence are convincing enough, if the word of Jose Canseco over the silence of a crowded courtroom serve as all the words you need, keep him out. I’m not apologizing for Mark McGwire. If it’s true, he’s got what’s coming to him. If it’s not, he should have said more.

But don’t forget what else he gave to the game. A new life. A renewed interest. The attention of the entire world. A get out of jail free card, ironically enough. And if we’re talking about the true contributions to the game, that’s probably the biggest thing he could have offered over his career.

It begins to wear on you. It’s true. This Dolphins season has been less than savory. After starting out 0-5, the Dolphins are causing must of us who root for the team – for whatever inexplainable reason – to give up hope.

And not just for this yea. The future looks bleak too. With a defense that averages 52 years of age and one of the worst offenses in the history of football, there’s really nowhere to go but up.

Unfortunately, we can’t help but think “up” is a long ways away. We’re not floating close to the ceiling here, fighting to break through. We’re in the floorboards, a tell-tale heart just scratching to make it above the floor again.

The funny thing is that, after a while, you begin to embrace losing. I’ll forever root for the teal and orange, no matter how outdated their uniforms look and how many quarterbacks it takes to get a win, but I find myself rooting for losses, cheering for the difficulty of defeat instead of screaming for a win. The Dolphins are the only team to go undefeated throughout a season. Could it be that, 36 years later, we could see another unheard of feat – the totally defeated season?

The extremes are easy to root for. There’s a gamers high that is often associated with winning. It permeates all of sports – an aggressive loss of inhibition that causes fans to lose touch with reality and claim their squad the greatest. And at the opposite end, there’s a feeling of release. The games ultimately don’t matter – the stress of backing your team is dropped, and you can be a lovable loser, pitied by your friends and understood by your opponents.

Winning is stressful. It’s hard on fans. Losing, however, is expected. It’s easy. It’s relaxing to settle, so settle we must.

No – the real difficulty is being right in the middle – the .500 club, the win one, lose one (or even worse – win six, lose six) territory. This the territory of the Minnesota Twins. And this is the territory of my beloved Pacers – a team that has settled into mediocrity after several years of contending. Now, they’re an also ran – too good to get a decent lottery pick, but too bad to ever even sniff the playoffs.

So it’s odd to find myself torn between rooting for wins and rooting for losses. The Pacers are as vanilla as you can get – a boring team with a new coach in a lame division. They’re already matched up against two Eastern Conference powerhouses – the only two remaining, actually: Detroit and Cleveland. They have little chance of making a splash.

And I’m trying hard not to give up, already, before the season starts. But, even though they won their first preseason game tonight, I can’t help it. I’m already expecting the worst.

It all started with Michael Jordan. Being a Chicago Bulls fan was easy. As a kid, I picked a team that had a chance to win the championship. And just like that, they won it. I was spoiled, thinking my team always had a chance, fooling myself that the opponents held some sort of spell over my team when I knew they had no shot.

And, when I realized what I had, I gave it away. I stopped watching sports and found myself drawn back into different teams – new favorites; no more Cardinals – now it’s the Twins; no more Bulls – now it’s the Pacers.

Those decisions have brought me heartbreak. The Pacers were very close for a while. Very close – several Conference Championships and a Finals appearance. And the Twins, well, they’ve created some amazing second half heroics in recent years.

But regardless of the surges they’d make, they would ultimately came up short, leaving me exhausted and somewhat betrayed. My lucky card never came in; my wishes never came true. The photo finish I always dreamed of is still just that – a dream.

So you’ll have to forgive me. It might be hard to watch a loser. But it beats going through the tulmultous ups and downs that accompany a mediocre team’s season – the maybes and the could haves and the almosts.

It’s easier to just accept loss. At least the only place my expectations can go is straight up.

Straight from the basement to the floor.

Then, a clash with the first place Cleveland Indians. Win the series, gain at least a game in the hunt for the playoffs. Sweep the series, gain three games, a rush of confidence, and narrowly dodge the proverbial nail in the coffin that’s been haunting the Twins these past few weeks.

They could dodge no longer, it seemed. A loss Monday. And Tuesday. And finally again tonight.

A sweep.
Another loss for Santana. 0-4 against Cleveland this year.
A slowly shrinking deficit in the standings turned into a massive deficit of 8.5 games. And a 7 game deficit in the Wild Card race.
Hopes, dashed.

If this wasn’t the nail, it’s at least been marked and placed, ready for the hammer to swing down upon its season ending head.

They’re not technically eliminated, no. But a sweep like this does wonders in advancing a hang dog attitude. The Twins didn’t just need these wins for the standings – they needed them for their psyche, for their confidence, for something to rally around, a final push toward the playoffs with a whoop and a cry and a stomping of midwestern, small market feet.

The Twins are 67-66. There’s still a month of baseball left. And last year showed that even a team barely over .500 could win the World Series with a little bit of luck, a strong set of pairings and a hot streak near the end of the season.

Of course, you have to make the playoffs first. And with these crushing losses, I’m not sure the Twins have the heart left in them to even try.

It’s getting close to the MLB All Star Weekend – one of the best sets of All Star festivities in all of sports. And with the Twins currently embroiled in a battle for their Central Division crown, and with Tori Hunter, Justin Morneau and The Best Pitcher in the League Johan Santana set to don their American League All Star jerseys, there’s just one question we all have to ask ourselves.

Have you voted for Pat Neshek yet?

You know – Pat Neshek. The half-sidearm, half-submariner righty Twins reliever that is currently up for the final American League roster spot?

The guy who has 47 strike-outs in just 39 innings? The deceivingly talented pitcher who is carrying a 1.37 ERA into the All Star Break?

Seriously. Go vote. It’s simple – you can even vote multiple times (and it saves your choices, so it’s easy to vote up to 20 times in a sitting. I know. I have.)

He’s fun to watch. And, we need another player on the team – after all, Joe Nathan and Joe Mauer were both left off for only having a 2.20 ERA with 16 saves and only batting .302 this season, respectively. And he’s got his own blog, so he’s one of us. He’s currently in third place. He needs your help.

You have until 6 PM ET on Thursday.

Well, what are you waiting for? VOTE!