With Bobby Thompson (no, not THAT Bobby Thompson) on Hee Haw:

Roy Clark and Buck Trent, "Shuckin' the Corn," Tennessee State Prison, 1977

The Twins had a day off. The Tigers and White Sox each won so that the Twins fell to 8.5 games behind the Tigers and 3 games behind the White Sox.

 Pitch #7 - the captions write themselves.

In one corner, weighing 208 pounds, with an xFIP of 3.67, pitching for the Minnesota Twins, we have Johan "El Presidente" Santana.
In the other corner, weighing 230 pounds, with an xFIP of 3.19, pitching for the Seattle Mariners, we have "King" Felix Hernandez.
This could be a really great pitching matchup between two guy with [...]

Is Baker leaving the ball up? Let's let gameday be the judge of that. Graphics after the jump.

Minnesota Twins (58-59) @ Seattle Mariners (65-50)
The Twins continue their death march road trip with a three game series in Seattle. Thus far they are 1-5 on this trip, and have dipped below the .500 mark for the first time in quite a while. The Mariners on the other hand return home after [...]

Wow, wasn't that a fun weekend of baseball.

Somebody (Jeff A?) recently opined that this site needed more Country content. I'm here to oblige.

Jerry Reed performing "Alabama Jubilee" [editorial substitution for a defunct Roy Clark clip. Damnit! I hate copyright law! --bS]

Brad Radke played savior again, stopping a three game losing streak, pitching seven innings in a 4-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Twins (68-49) were in 3rd place, 8.0 games behind the division leading Detroit Tigers, who had lost five in a row. The White Sox were 2.5 games ahead of the [...]

For any of you who have not yet read part I of the story, I recommend reading it first. I won't bother to reintroduct the two teams here, so you will need to at least look at part I before reading this. I had intended to include slumps in part 2, but in [...]

In case you missed it on Saturday, I have announced the first annual SBG Convention, to be held on Saturday, September 22, 2007. The Convention will be centered around the Twins game, which has a Game Time of 11:10AM. I'll be at Hubert's before the game for some breakfast and I'll be ready [...]

Boof? vs. Jered Weaver
This season is degenerating into the bad old days when everyone would kick the pants off the AL Central. Well, the good days were fun while they lasted, I guess.
I'm guessing there's no way that Kubel's in this lineup since he left the game with an injury last night. I'm sure [...]

I'm an old design engineer at heart. One of the first things I learned is that when designing a product, you get to choose two of the following three things: cheap, fast, and good. When I am working on the look of this site, I always choose cheap and usually I choose [...]

1973. Inspired by davidwatts

The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Twins for the third time in a row and second time by shut out, 4-0. Lucy and I attended this game after going to a reception held by the Game Day guys. We spent the game talking baseball with Twins Geek.
The Twins were in 3rd place, 9.0 [...]

Carlos Silva vs. John Lackey
There's really no reason that the Twins should win this game, except that sometimes crazy things happen, like a lucky Nick Punto home run.
I noticed this comment from Joe Christensen over at his STrib blog:
The Twins aren’t going to win many games when Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau both fail [...]

What's a Nation without a convention? We need to come together, set aside our differences, and work toward a common goal! I say that goal should be to watch, in person, the September 22nd game against the Chicago White Sox. It is an 11:10 AM start to accommodate the Goofer game that [...]

Last night, our buddy Top Jimmy referenced an unnamed source or sources on the Twins roster who said that seeing Nick Punto's name in the lineup is "demoralizing". Just who do you think said that? While you are thinking, thinking, thinking about it, you might want to recall who, over the last [...]

Much has been made lately of whether or not Joe Mauer should be swinging more often at the first pitch. To get kind of a hold on this, I looked at the best hitters for average in the AL and the NL, and I checked how often they swing at the first pitch (thanks [...]

All you Kubel bashers are on notice. It is all Casilla's fault.

After the Twins game, I headed to bed. About 3:30AM, I was awakened by a loud whistling sound. It was as if a basketball referee was calling an infraction. Having only been in bed for a couple of hours, I struggled to awaken and gain my senses. The whistling continued. [...]

Surprise sometime
I'll come around
when you're down

The highly regarded prospect Matt Garza made his major league debut and it was ugly. Garza struck out two of the first three batters he faced, but 9 of the next 15 batters reached and Garza gave up a pair of home runs, leaving after 2 1/3 innings trailing 7-0. The final was [...]

All right, here we go, a series preview from the end of dinner (burgers, corn on the cob, and pineapple straight off the grill) before the end of the game tonight. That way it's still kosher as a preview, right? Thank goodness they're on the west coast so I get the cushion of [...]

Scott "Light Rail" Baker vs. Kelvim Escobar
Escobar is very good, but good in a pretty generic way. Solid across the board, but not really spectacular in strikeouts, walks, or ground balls.
Baker's GB% is back down to 33% right now, and that concerns me because it looks like he's been lucky on home runs lately.
I [...]

Chipper Jones opened up his big mouth and chirped about A-Rod and steroids on Wednesday, setting off a frenzy in the NY Tabloid media. Now Mr. Jones is upset and not talking to NY reporters. You know, Larry, if you had to walk a mile in A-Rod's or Barry's shoes, you wouldn't have [...]

The latest Arbitron ratings indicate that the Twins ratings on radio are up substantially over last year, despite their move from WCCO to KSTP, but that KSTP's ratings are otherwise flat. Very interesting.
First of all, WCCO's claims during negotiations that the Twins needed them -- and Grandpa's prediction that the Twins would really regret [...]

Inspired by AMR's recent comment and the Twins' recent offensive output, I decided to look into 1-0 games. What follows is a table sorted by total number of 1-0 games in 2007. The W column lists 1-0 wins and the L column lists 0-1 losses.

TEAM
W
L
Total

MIN
2
4
6

CLE
2
4
6

SDN
5
0
5

KCA
2
2
4

LAN
0
4
4

SFN
1
3
4

BOS
3
1
4

CIN
3
0
3

ARI
2
1
3

OAK
1
2
3

CHN
1
2
3

TOR
3
0
3

PIT
0
2
2

NYN
2
0
2

DET
2
0
2

FLO
0
1
1

BAL
1
0
1

ANA
0
1
1

HOU
1
0
1

WAS
0
1
1

TBA
0
1
1

PHI
0
1
1

SEA
0
1
1

COL
0
0
0

CHA
0
0
0

SLN
0
0
0

MIL
0
0
0

TEX
0
0
0

ATL
0
0
0

NYA
0
0
0

I certainly didn't expect to see Cleveland in the [...]

SBG Nation pitched well, but was defeated 1-0.

The Twins were shut out 5-0 by the Toronto Blue Jays in the first game of a four game series in Minneapolis.
The Twins fell back into 3rd place, 9 games behind the division leading Detroit Tigers and a 1/2 game behind Chicago.
The Game Log had 234 posts.

I always find it funny when old timers talk about "small ball" and "doing the little things" as an efficient way to win baseball games. I found it even funnier when Ozzie Guillen used to talk about how his hitters needed to stop hitting so many home runs and start doing better situational hitting--as [...]

I just got back from Lollapalooza yesterday night. The two girls who invited me are huge music people, so I wasn't really sure if I would get the same level of enjoyment out of it. I'm a music person, but with my bad knees and ankles I'm not so much of a concert [...]

Nice DH.

Your candidates:
Javier Vazquez
Tim Wakefield
Jose Contreras
Fausto Carmona
Joe Blanton
Jeremy Bonderman
Chien-Ming Wang
Nate Robertson
Dustin McGowan
Paul Byrd
and the incomparable Kyle Davies.
Just remember, sometimes it's not who you face, it's when you face them.

Matt Garza vs. Kyle Davies
Davies appears to have control problems and doesn't get that many ground balls. He's also right-handed, which will prevent Gardy from making some of his more infuriating lineup decisions. Davies also doesn't get a ton of strikeouts (5.9 K/G while pitching in the NL.) This would appear [...]

Chipper Jones says that steroid questions will dog Alex Rodriguez. Bud, this is what you have wrought, you stupid idiot. You could have done something 15 years ago, you could have stemmed the tide with a focus on your new testing policy, but you were lily-livered and equivocating. Now, we're going to [...]

Name: Herr Ubelmann von Ubel
Hometown: Lake Crystal, MN
Town I Currently Live In: Seattle, WA
Profession: Physics Grad Student
Bats: Right
Throws: Right
Positions: Super-futility
Greatest Career Achievement in Baseball/Softball/T-ball: Certainly nothing special. I think the play I remember most fondly is playing catcher in a slowpitch rec league and tagging two [...]

I expect that, with just 43 to go to 800, he'll keep playing.

The Twins are somehow* hanging in this race.
*Everyone is falling back to them.

[contributed by: Rhubarb_Runner]

Baseball Digest magazine cover - June 1992
"Who Says Baseball is a Game for Softies?"

File under: lower east-side jazz. John Lurie leads this incarnation of the band in Berlin - 1989.

Justin Morneau hit a two run home run in the eighth inning to lead the Twins to a 4-3, come from behind victory over the Detroit Tigers. Morneau turned on a 101 MPH from Joel Zumaya and notched his 100th and 101st RBIs of the season. The Twins won the series two games [...]

I posted this in the Game Log on Wednesday night, but I thought it was worth a little front page exposure. This is video from center field of Barry Bonds's 756th home run.

Johan Santana vs. Odalis Perez
Post-ASB:
.252/.309/.381 -- Twins
.289/.333/.419 -- Royals
3.0 R/G -- Twins
5.0 R/G -- Royals
Two more runs per game for the Royals since the All-Star break? Ugh. If you want to see a team absolutely steamrolling through pitchers, though:
.328/.401/.556 -- Yankees
7.8 R/G -- Yankees
The Twins' best hitter since the All-Star break has [...]

Right after Aaron profiled Buscher, he lands on the DL with an infected leg.
Brian Buscher’s right leg infection worsened on Wednesday, so he’s been sent to the Twin Cities to be hospitalized. He’ll be hooked up to an i.v. so he can get medicine in him to attack the infection.
I'm no doctor, but that doesn't [...]

Last Saturday night was the opening night for the Seattle Opera's production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. Student rush tickets go on sale for $20 two hours before the performance, which is basically the only way opera fits my budget. Standing in the ticket line with my friend, a lull in the conversation [...]

Subtitle on Strib article about the players received from the C's in the KG trade: "Chemistry was on their side as members of the latest five-man band out of Boston stepped forward as the newest Timberwolves." If I was a snarky fellow, I'd ask if that chemistry is the same type that Mr. Bonds [...]

The Twins defeated the Detroit Tigers 4-2 behind seven strong innings from Brad Radke to pull within 9.5 games of the Tigers. The Twins also passed the Boston Red Sox and stayed .5 games behind the Chicago White Sox in the Wild Card chase. The first sentence of the game recap? "Don't [...]

I wonder if the current roster of the Twins as a team have 756 home runs, career.

The Minnesota Twins 1987 World Series Collector's Edition DVD Set

For Rhu-Ru. 1979.

Bonds does it on a laser shot to right center field. Hank Aaron offers a video congratulations.

I noticed last night that the Twins' offense had some trouble getting started. Maybe they need some of these?

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from a long time reader of this site concerning an article in Editor and Publisher, which theorized that Barry Bond's elbow guard had contributed as many as 75 to 100 home runs to his total. I put a link to the article in CoC, but I did not put [...]

Name: Ian
SBG Moniker: BeenAroundAwhile Guy
Hometown: Minneapolis, MN
Town I Currently Live In: Tacoma, WA in a few weeks
Profession: Creative Writing major
Bats: Right
Throws: Right
Positions: Third base, outfield
Greatest Career Achievement in Baseball/Sofball/T-ball: I hit 1.000 for almost an entire season of coach-pitch... I think I went 0-3 in the last game. Struck out the side in my only [...]

Minnesota Twins (57-54) @ Kansas City Royals (48-62)
The Twins finished their 7 game homestand at 4-3 with a series split against the Indians, they begin a road trip that starts in KC, and goes through LA and Seattle, totaling nine games. Since their demolition of the White Sox in a doubleheader in Chicago, the [...]

That would have been a lot better series had it ended after three games.

Tough little trio from Cincy, led by big-voiced Erika Wannestram. Live in Lawrence, KS. Feb 2007. The production values are lacking.

The band's video for the same number. Love the Grant Wood bit at the end. For New Guy.

The Twins traveled to Detroit and lost the opening game of a three game series 9-3. Francisco Liriano started and went four innings, allowing four runs on ten hits. Liriano would leave with soreness.
"It's a muscular problem -- as the game was going on, he started to feel it," Gardenhire said. "We had [...]

With Alex Rodriguez hitting his 500th home run over the weekend, he became the second new member of the 500 Club, joining Frank Thomas who hit number 500 at the Metrodome on June 28th. I wondered what year had the most new members of the club. It turns out that two people have [...]

Paul "Death To Bartlett" Byrd vs. Carlos Silva
Silva's been putting together a campaign not unlike his 2004 season. He's had some rough starts lately, but he could just as easily have a string of decent outings, too.
From Joe Christensen (who is presumably relaying the reasoning behind today's lineup):
Nick Punto replaces Jason Bartlett at shortstop [...]

Bud "I Turned a Blind Eye to the Whole Steroid Situation for at Least a Decade and Now I Want to Pin All the Blame On the Best Player of His Era As If No One Else Ever Used (Assuming He Did)" Selig is "likely" to miss the Giants' next three games.

The Twins scored a run in the seventh and five in the eighth to pull away from the Kansas City Royals 11-5, earning a sweep of the Royals on the road. Mike Smith started (his only appearance as a Twin) and gave up four runs in three innings to put the Twins in an [...]

The Light Rail thinks he can.

[contributed by: Rhubarb_Runner]

Sports Illustrated cover - April 8, 1963
"BASEBALL ISSUE"
"The Crash and Color of the Game"

Ed Sullivan Show. 1959(?) As well as having an incredible voice, Jackie could dance a little bit, too. Van Morrison sang his praises.

I read with delight ubelmann's recent post in which Earl Weaver mocked the idea that an offense of piranhas could be an effective, long-term way to win baseball games. Weaver, of course, controlled his roster as the field manager, and was a great one at that.
On the other hand, Bill Veeck is considered a [...]

SBG: GH introduces himself below, but I wanted to say that I always enjoyed his Timberwolves blog. I'm glad to have him come aboard.
Hi all! I figure I should introduce myself for those of you who aren't familiar with me. I am GH (short for Greek House) of the now defunct [...]

Fausto Carmona vs. Scott "Light Rail" Baker
Fausto Carmona is good. Not 3.27 ERA good, but his xFIP ranks him 9th in the AL. By xFIP, though, Baker is not very far behind.
As of now (2:25AM PDT), espn.com shows the Twins with 67 runs after the All-Star Break. That's last in all of [...]

With the Twins dumping Jeff Cirillo on the Arizona Diamondbacks right after the trading deadline for no return, I thought back to how the Yankees inadvertently ended up with Jose Canseco in 2000 when they claimed Canseco on waivers and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays stuck the Yankees with him. The other memorable move [...]

Justin Morneau hit his 29th home run of the season and the Twins crushed the Royals 14-3. It was the second straight win for the Twins over the Royals. The Twins (64-45) remained 9.5 games behind the Tigers and pulled to within one game of the Boston Red Sox and remained 1.5 games [...]