Minnesota Twins in Poor Hands

If you’re a Twins fan this is hard to take and you have to ask why, why, why? A funeral for the Twins’ season is already being planned!
by Charlie Leck

What am I doing, writing about baseball? I’m not an expert – just another frustrated fan. Yet, today, baseball replaces politics and human behavior (or is this an example of human behavior?). I’ll get back to my senses tomorrow.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Get us a new ball park where we can attract fans and then we’ll have the money to compete.

Well, the people did. We got them a new ball park – a great deal of it paid for by public money and most of that right here in our own county. With the revenue from increased attendance, we expected our Twins management team to get us the kind of ball players we need to, at least, be competitive.

Last year was a skunk year! We lost 99 games and finished in the cellar. In a panic, the Twins brought back a former General Manager who has a great eye for baseball talent. What they didn’t do was give him some money to fill weak spots in the line-up with capable players. As a result we are on our way toward having an even more rotten year than the last one. At this rate we’ll lose more than 100 games and be the embarrassment of baseball again.

I certainly have enjoyed the new ball park as much as any fan. What a wonderful place to watch a baseball game! Now, if we could only watch a good team playing in that fine ball park it would be a much more enjoyable place to visit during a glorious Minnesota summer.

Instead, two of our very best ball players, lured by the big bucks, went elsewhere. We’ve got virtually no pitching (only a couple of hopefuls), serious weaknesses at third base and right field and a first baseman who has medical problems and can only contribute on an occasional basis. Our superstar, mega-million dollar catcher plays like a man depressed and can’t give us any power or consistency at bat and only acceptable performances in the field. Our defense is below average and our offense is extraordinarily weak. We don’t run the bases well and, even if we could, we don’t get on base enough to use speed as a weapon. A former Chicago White Sox manager use to call the Twins players “piranhas.” Now we refer to them as “croppies.”

After the first month of the season, the Twins have won only 6 games and lost 18. That’s the poorest record in baseball.

The stink from our new ball park isn’t coming from the county’s garbage incinerator next door. It’s coming from right down there at field level. The Angels’ pitcher, Liam Hendriks, threw a no-hitter against us last night out there in California. The Twins looked baffled against him. Now, we’re a befuddled team, heading for Seattle and more mistreatment. Turn out the lights! The party is over!

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Metta World Peace

    Sunrise in the Grand Canyon
           Photo by Anne Wakefield-Leck
              22 May 2012

I don’t follow professional basketball and don’t have a lick of interest in it even when its championship game is played; yet, I took notice the other day when I learned one of the more inflammatory and reckless stars of the game is named Metta World Peace.

by Charlie Leck

metta… a Pali term for lovingkindness or for the Buddhist virtue of kindness or maitri

“I ain’t kiddin’ one little bit!” That’s what a young kid, who had fetched my parked car, said to me downtown the other day. He had just told me about a basketball player named Metta World Peace and I had looked at him with squinted eyes and a tilted head. He was wearing a basketball jersey with a number on the back of it and the name World Peace lettered over the number.

“You’re kidding me,” I had said to him in disbelief.

When I got in the car, my luncheon companion said to me: “You aren’t really that stupid are you?”

“What?” I said, keeping my eyes on the busy city traffic. I really didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You ever watch the sports channel?”

“Naw! Not very often. Maybe when it’s carrying a big football game or the World Series or something!”

He directed me to a Starbucks and sat me down while he folded open his iPad and loaded up what had become a famous video of Metta World Peace, formerly known as Ron Artest. I watched the video of a moment in a professional basketball game in which Mr. World Peace threw a vicious, intentional elbow into the neck and head of an opposing basketball player. It was an incredibly violent action that made me gasp. I am not going to make it available for you here (but you can find in scattered across the internet or You Tube if you want to).

I sat and stared at the video as my friend replayed it for me.

“Is this what is wrong with the world?”

“It’s one guy,” my friend replied, “and it’s not the world!”

“But, Christ! In a basketball game? In sports? With kids watching?” I was dumbfounded and just rambling. I wished that I hadn’t just eaten lunch. “This is one reason why I don’t ever watch the NBA (National Basketball Association) or hockey,” I said quietly. The games are stupid. There’s no elegance or innocence left!

For the record, my friend didn’t agree. He told me I “didn’t get it!” Maybe he’s correct. Maybe I don’t. I must be a pansy-ass! I prefer the women’s style of basketball and I can watch those games – either college or professional – and find them terribly enjoyable. There’s something left in the way they play the game that reminds me of the pick-up games I played as a kid. And, I like women’s hockey and I’ve gone over to the arena at the University to watch a game or two.

One of my daughters likes professional basketball. I took her to a couple of games when she was a kid. For her birthday, I got us front-row seats right down at court level. You could hear what the players were saying and see the perspiration dripping from them. We could have reached out and touched them. I kept searching for something beautiful about the game. I saw plenty of skill, hued by hours and hours of practice and playing the game; but I didn’t see beauty or wonder – not the kind of thing I see when a centerfielder races away from a batter’s swing and catches up with a baseball soaring above his head and gathers it into his glove just in front of his chest as it comes down over his shoulder (Say hay, Willie Mays!) I like the quietness of a baseball park, a golf course or a sailing lake.

Ron Artest is a vicious character. This, it turns out, is not the first of the violent incidents he’s been involved in during a basketball game. The NBA Commissioner suspended him for seven (7) games for the violently thrown elbow.

“What a joke,” I said to my friend. “He should have been thrown out for the remainder of the season – at the very least!”

World Peace sent a Twitter message out to his followers…

“When two power houses collide (sic) there will be player confrontation… When you get players that are capable of being ejected, that player has to be aware of the opponent trying to get under his skin… This type of competition makes for great entertainment… When two power houses (sic) collide you will be enthralled by its art form.”

“This type of competition makes for great entertainment…”
I expect that those who sat in the Coliseum to watch the gladiators – or the Lions versus the Christians – thought the same thing.

Next week the professional golfers move to the Quail Hollow Club, in Charlotte (NC), and I’ll spend some time in front of the television watching them maneuver the small, white ball around that gorgeous golf course. It will be a beautiful and graceful thing to watch – a sport, I suppose, for pansies.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

HAMMERIN’ HARMON, THE HERO

"

Harmon Killebrew was more than a great baseball player; for he was also a great man!
by Charlie Leck

I’m a Twins fan. I have been since they came up here to Minnesota and started playing baseball in 1961. The Killer, as he was called, came here with the Twins from Washington, D.C., where they had been called the Washington Senators.

So, quite naturally, I sat down with dinner to watch the Twins game last night against the Toronto Blue Jays. Dick Bremer, the team’s TV play-by-play guy, announced with a sad voice that he wanted to read a statement that had been released that day by Harmon Killebrew through the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. With a sad and unsteady voice, he read…

STATEMENT FROM HARMON ILLEBREW
National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 1984

“It is with profound sadness that I share with you that my continued battle with esophageal cancer is coming to an end. With the continued love and support of my wife, Nita. I have exhausted all options with respect to controlling this awful disease. My illness has progressed beyond my doctors’ expectation of cure.

“I have spent the past decade of my life promoting hospice care and educating people on its benefits. I am very comfortable taking this next step and experiencing the compassionate care that hospice provides.

“I am comforted by the fact that I am surrounded by my family and friends. I thank you for the outpouring of concern, prayers and encouragement that you have shown me. I look forward to spending my final days in comfort and peace with Nita by my side. I am comforted by the fact that I am surrounded by my family and friends. I thank you for the outpouring of concern, prayers and encouragement that you have shown me. I look forward to spending my final days in comfort and peace with Nita by my side."

I’m not ashamed to say that tears poured down my face as Bremer read. Harmon Killebrew was a giant of a human being. He wasn’t just a fine, fine baseball player. He is also an extraordinary, kind and caring person.

The NY Times story this morning carried a soft headline: “An ailing Killebrew Simply Says Farewell!”

Jim Kaat, a long-time teammate of Harmon’s and also a Yankee broadcaster is quoted this morning in the NY Daily News: “He's a great man, a great teammate and a guy who was the face of the Twins' franchise. I think he's the main reason why the Twins have had the reputation of being a gentlemanly organization."

Tony Oliva, another great former Twins ballplayer, said it, with his strong Cuban accent, in a very poignant way: “Everybody knows him because he was the home-run king. I know him better, and I think he was a better person than ballplayer. Killer would always go out of his way to help somebody else.”

The current Twins General Manager, Bill Smith, said: “Everyone he’s ever met has a Harmon Killebrew story and they’re all telling those stories today.”

I suppose that’s true. I have my own little story.

I met Harmon in a personal way only once. It was back in 1980 (I think) when Anne and I were in Paris and browsing through the beautiful shops on rue de Faubourg St. Honoré. We were standing in a remarkable china and crystal shop, waiting for the elevator to take us up to the second floor. When the cabinet arrived and slid open its doors, Harmon Killebrew and his wife quietly stepped out. I took a deep, surprised breath and, as is quite usual for me, I couldn’t keep silent. I burst out with something, telling him in a stumbling, stuttering way how thrilling it was to encounter him like this.

Harmon, as always, was completely a gentleman and shook hands with both of us and chatted for a few moments about Paris, the weather and the lovely shop we were in.

When he walked on, I was as giddy as a child.

“There,” I said to my wife, “is a great man!”

I said exactly the same thing last night when I heard Harmon’s statement and official goodbye to baseball and to all his fans. What a gentle way to slip easily and gracefully into the good night! How touched I was by this statement. How I hope I can be so courageous myself.

Sleep well, dear Harmon, and be at peace throughout eternity!

"They are the only dead who did not love."
[Dylan Thomas]

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Our National Trinity

Baseball, Apple Pie, the Flag and, oh yes, Motherhood!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve been writing a bit about baseball lately. One of my old friends is a faithful reader of my blog, but he really wants me to stop writing about baseball. Basically, he asks: Who cares? Or to put it a bit more profanely: Who gives a damn?

He writes: “I know baseball is supposed to be somewhat intellectual by its nature...but the people who play it are often thugish fools...while most of the people in the stands are foolish thugs...”

Now this is a guy who has criticized (now publically) one of the elements of the great American trinity! Next he will be telling me that he doesn’t like apple pie either!

As Forest Gump used to say: “Let me say this about that!”

Baseball is grand, especially when it’s played properly, with enthusiasm and on green, green grass under God’s magnificent sky.

We’ve got a professional ball team up here in Minnesota and its last couple of managers (over more than20 years now) have made a point of teaching our ball players the true fundamentals of the game. In years past we’ve had some enormous success with our teams even though we weren’t the most talented team in the major leagues. We won the World Series in both 1987 and 1991 by understanding and playing fundamentally sound baseball.

Now, in 2010, I am here to tell you that the baseball world had better watch the Minnesota Twins because we not only have a team drilled in the proper fundamentals, but we are also a damned good team with a lot of talent both offensively and defensively. The great caveat, of course, is that we need our guys to stay health and be lucky enough to avoid serious injuries. If we do, we’ll see you in the playoffs folks and we’ll be there to win. We will not be satisfied with consolation prizes.

A couple of days ago one of the Boston Red Sox players striped a line drive base hit to right field. Now, the generally accepted etiquette of baseball is that, when I guy like that gets a bang-bang solid hit, the other team gently retrieves the ball and returns it to the pitcher. Yet, on this afternoon the Red Sox player sort of sauntered up toward first base after nailing the line drive. The Twins right fielder saw the touch of casualness on the part of the opponent and raced to retrieve the ball that had hit the turf in front of him and fired a strike, as if he were a second baseman, right into the waiting mitt of the first baseman. At the very last second, the Red Sox player saw the embarrassing situation and raced like hell to the bag, just beating the throw from the outfield by a fraction. Notice I have not used the opposing players name here because I don’t want to embarrass him.

From the time we are little kids, we are taught to hustle up the line when we get a base hit because anything can happen to the ball and any defender is capable of screwing up and allowing you to make more out of it than seemed at first obvious. We were also taught that we were never to be thrown out at first base on a ball we hit safely into the outfield. Nothing in baseball, I think, would be more embarrassing.

Now, take the opposite example from the game I attended today. One of the Twins’ players, Nick Punto, lined a drive into the outfield. Punto race up to first base and, as he approached the bag, he saw that the Red Sox outfielder was being very casual about getting to the ball, to field it. Punto turned on the jets, rounded the bag and raced down to second, stretching a simple single into a surprising double.

After the game, the Red Sox outfielder expressed some anger about being shown up by Punto even when the Twins were already ahead by eight runs in the game. It is something ball players are not supposed to do. Sorry sir, when a team is trained to react to certain situations in certain ways, they do so more like a machine than as a thinking human being who doesn’t want to embarrass the player on the other side.

Watch out, baseball! The Twins are cranking it up a notch!

This is information for my friend who was mentioned in the opening of this blog. When a team is strong up the middle – and you, of course, know that that means in center field, at short stop and second base, and at catcher – they are a team to fear. The Twins are damned strong up the middle.

I had a fabulous time at the Twins game today. Parked my car miles and miles from the stadium, boarded an express bus that dropped me across the street from the main entrance plaza and the sun was shining brightly and the place was packed with adoring fans and peanuts and crackerjacks were flowing abundantly.

I was a delighted, little kid again – watching kids play the game the right way.