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.

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.

Kerrie and I sat in an Old Chicago in Sioux Falls, surrounded by Timberwolves fans, blasted out by cheers and pummeled by the sound of thunder sticks. The Timberwolves won the crucial game, 83-80. The score sounds ugly. The game was exciting.

The Wolves went on to lose to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. That same year, the Pacers lost out to the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals, thus barring my team’s entrance to the Finals for the first time since 2000. It was a summer of near misses in NBA basketball. High expectations, crushed.

The real significance of the game, however, is personal. That night, sitting there in front of a television that was hung from the ceiling, nursing several beers and inching closer to my goal of World Beer Tour completion, I watched a sports contest all the way through, from start to finish, uninterrupted, with my full, unbridled attention.

I haven’t done it since them.

I’m a sports fan poseur.

I don’t watch sports. But I’m a sports fan.

I’m attached to the words and numbers that create the bare bones of a sports contest. I’m latched on to the box score that serves as a numerical blueprint for reproduction of the game. I know names, not people; stats, not performances. I’m ashamed, but yet, I’m comfortable with it.

I don’t watch sports with an attentive eye. I have them on, sure, and I watch them for the most part, but I’m always focusing on something else. And, realistically, even those times are rare, what with the low level of television time I afford myself. I find that I don’t need to watch an entire game to get the gist of the contest. I listen to sports radio and get the blanks all filled in.

I’m a sports fan dedicated to the standings. I celebrate wins without seeing a pitch, a throw, or a single basket. I receive text messages and lament losses without even knowing how the loss transpired or if it was even a good game.

I live my sports life through newspapers, much like those years before Sportscenter lived, listening only to snippets on the radio, yet knowing enough that Pat Neshek should have been voted into the All Star game.

I’ve seen only two highlights from the Dolphins this year. I’ve watched only about 20 complete innings all Twins season. I’ve been known to go until the first nationally televised game without even knowing the play by play of the Pacers’ wins and losses.

I love sports. But I don’t know why I don’t take the trouble of watching them. I mean, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at work and someone has come up to me to talk about a previous night’s game. I know all of the key plays. I know who won. I know who scored, and what it means, and how the standings are lined up and how the playoffs are falling into place. But when he says “Did you see that play?” I simply shake my head and avert my eyes.

“No,” I have to admit. “I didn’t see the game.”

I don’t know why – I’m fine with it any other time. I simply don’t make time to watch the games; they take too long and are riddled with boredom and long winded commercial breaks. To me, seeing sports live has ruined the feel of a television game. I’m so easily distracted while watching it on the small screen. I don’t get the same feeling I do when in the Metrodome or at the Arena.

So I live my sports life through stats, scouring the standings and adding up home runs and comparing scoring averages instead of watching the subtle footwork and guile and teamwork that makes sports fun.

I haven’t watched a single television game straight through. For over three years. I’m a poseur. A fraud. A fake. A sports fan with no sports, a paper champion, a slave to the reporters and a cause for worry.

But to me, I’m okay with it. The 1910 baseball season wasn’t televised. Only your local team was heard on the radio. And sports were still as rich as they are today.

It makes me think – what is it about sports that’s important? Is it the physical act, the actual movement of sport and the visual aspect that encompasses nearly every television at some point in time? Or is it the underlying story, the results and the hard facts and the relationships that aren’t even brought out during the live event. Is it the act or the result that’s important?

And if the act’s what matters, why is so much focus placed on the results?

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!

And he’s created a blog about it. (Which makes blog #4? Not including Misc. Asst.?)

Letters to Keith Law. One letter every weekday until spring training starts. If you have ideas, post them below or comment on his site. It’s going to be awesome.

The MVP this year was supposed to be between Derek Jeter of the Yankees and David Ortiz of the Red Sox.

The two Minnesota Twins candidates – Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau – were supposed to split the votes, causing both to lose out.

East Coast Bias®™ was supposed to render a small-market American League player hopeless, constantly overlooked by reporters and slotted as lower in talent than New York and Boston stars.

I guess that’s why they vote, isn’t it?

Congratulations to Justin Morneau – the man that led the Minnesota Twins to an improbable regular season comeback; who hit .321, had 34 homers and 130 RBI; and who made only $385,000 last season. Yeah. $385 thousand gets you an MVP these days. In the National League, where MVP Ryan Howard’s salary is $355 thousand, you’d even have 30K left to spend on concessions.

Some people call it a bad choice. Well, you know what? The votes are all that mattered. Derek Jeter probably deserved to win the MVP this year. In fact, I’m almost certain he did. I’d have voted for Joe Mauer, myself. I don’t even think Morneau is the best player on his TEAM.

But, you see, sometimes the votes fall in favor of a guy with more emotion behind him – the guy who can get his team to play better and can charge up a clubhouse like no other – instead of the player with better stats, more marketability, and sheer popularity.

Ask Steve Nash. It happened to him twice. And there’s no denying it. The baseball writers of the nation have spoken. The sports writers around the world have spoken. This year, at least, they’ve voted en masse for Canadians – Nash, NHL MVP Joe Thornton, and now Morneau. Which is pretty sweet, actually.

But it’s even sweeter that a Minnesota Twin is the Most Valuable Player of the American League for the first time since Rod Carew won it in 1977.

The Minnesota Twins had the best pitcher (Cy Young winner Johan Santana, which wasn’t a surprise and therefore didn’t make it to BMOWP’s front page) and the best hitter. And they still lost in the first round. Is this what it’s like to be a Twins fan?

If so; God help me.

I admit, it’s kind of weird. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. That’s my team – my old team, actually; the first professional sports team I ever felt attached to. I could have been celebrating a World Series win today. Instead, I’m watching it from afar.

Before everything – before the Michael Jordan-era Bulls and the Miami Dolphins, and way before the Twins and Pacers, I was a Cardinals fan. My grandparents, who lived south of Cincinnati, took me to Reds games, often when the Cardinals were playing. So at the age of four, I saw Ozzie Smith. I saw Willie McGee. I didn’t comprehend a single thing that was going on, but I was there. And I always remembered that. I connected to them. They were my team.

The Cardinals were an easily identifiable franchise with a deep history and one of the top stars in the game – Ozzie Smith. He did back flips, and his name was “The Wizard,” and those two things made it impossible for me to like anyone else. I stuck by them for a long time.

I fostered a hatred for the Minnesota Twins for a long time after 1987, the year they bumped the Cardinals out of the World Series. I was too young to remember the 1982 Series win, so I figured they’d never win. It was my first sports heartbreak.

My teams have won championships before. In fact, I was spoiled by the Chicago Bulls for three years. But as time went on, the Cardinals became an afterthought, and through the strike years of baseball, they became a negligent part of my life.

So it’s weird that this year – the year I stopped sitting on the fence and embraced the Minnesota Twins after years of restraint and common sense – would be the Cardinals’ year. They were my first team. And now they’ve won a championship. It’s like losing track of a good grade school friend. You find yourself hearing about them from time to time through your parents’ friends, and then you discover that they have signed to a huge movie deal, becoming wealthy beyond anything you could have imagined in grade school.

You know that, if you were still close friends, you’d be right there with him. You’d be shaking his hand and celebrating his good fortune, and you would be set up for life yourself, because you’d been such a great friend. Such a confidant. He couldn’t imagine doing it with you. But instead, you can only watch from afar, thinking about what it would be like to be celebrating.

Sure, I’m happy for them. But I can’t celebrate for them. I lost that right when I made the choice to be a Twins fan.

Congratulations, St. Louis.

*sigh*

If you asked me the chances of this Twins team being swept, I’d have given you a big zero.

But now? Well, looks like I’m back to “simply rooting against the Yankees.”

Fandom can be a bitter mistress, can’t it?

There’s always next year. Etc.