The Minnesota Twins did not have a good 2025 season. They finished their summer with a 70-92 (.432) record — putting them fourth in the AL Central. A record like that normally means last place in the Division, but the White Sox lost 102 games this year.
Losing 92 games puts this season in a four-way tie with three seasons in recent history: 1983, 1998, and 2014. And now 2025. The tie is for the ninth worst season in franchise history.
Which is weird because the team looked pretty good on paper.
From this blog’s beginning in 2011 until the end of the 2019 season, I’ve written about the Minnesota Twins. But not so much since. One post in 2020, about the COVID-shortened season. One more in 2021, about how I seemed to have moved past baseball. That was pretty much it until this year.
A number of things changed this year, and for the first time since 2019, I’ve been watching Twins games.
Unfortunately, they aren’t having a good year.
I find myself (almost) surprised that July of 2025 is nearly over. The year seems to be slipping by quickly. One’s sense of time really does change as one gets older [see Perception of Time].
More to the point, this is the last Friday in July, so if I’m to get a Friday Notes post out this month, today is the day. While my notorious pile is much reduced, I still have two ancient notebooks full of very old notes to get to.
So, let’s get to it, shall we?
It’s starting to feel as if I’m posting only Friday Notes posts (or the related Science Notes posts), but I do have some other things up my sleeve. In fact, some amount of water has been building up behind the dam, and I’m hoping to open the spillways soon. Or soonish, anyway.
In today’s post, I have some news about my Minnesota Twins, a couple of graphs, a bit about Reacher, season three, a whole bunch of pictures, two memes, and a funny thing I hadn’t noticed for a long time.
So, let’s jump right in…
Besides being Tax Day in the USA, for baseball fans April 15th is Jackie Robinson Day (because 4/15 was opening day in 1947 — the first season Jackie Robinson played in the MLB).
To honor him, every MLB player today wears a jersey with his number: #42.
It has been an interesting summer. The actual weather has been on the cool and rainy side; the political weather has been … words fail. What I’m seeing — the apparent final death knell of the original American Dream — makes me speechless. A deeper question, did we lose our way or hit our ceiling, tasks me.
Regardless, there is a looming deadline in November that overhangs my thoughts and makes it hard to find much interest in anything else.
Regardless of that, Friday Notes marches on.
My serious effort lately to reduce my pile of notes has resulted in picking the low-hanging fruit and leaving the ones that demand more effort. (One reason those notes have been notes all this time is not feeling the effort needed to develop them into something.)
The good news is that I’ve dug through most of the new layer — the one that formed when I started blogging again after taking a break all through 2017 (being in shock from 2016). Now I’m tapping into the older much larger — and in many cases now outdated — pile from before 2017. (Notes about politics in 2016 I can now just toss.)
Three of today’s notes are from that old pile. Three obviously aren’t.
My first thought was to call this “Baseball Blues”, but that title didn’t fit, because I’m not particularly blue about it — whether that means depressed, naughty, or playing the. Nor did I intend any reference to an old, often pejoratively used, slang term for baseball umpires. As in, “Hey, Blue! Ya blind?! That pitch was way outside!”
What I am feeling about baseball, though, is decidedly blah, which is weird because after years of being very awful, my Minnesota Twins have had some good seasons and at long last become contenders. After some of the worst seasons in franchise history, that’s rewarding to see.
So why is it that I just don’t care?
Ralph Emerson famously said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” but I also like what Wilde Oscar said: “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” The last two words in both sentences signify something important. Consistency is the enemy of creativity, art, and philosophy, although it’s generally welcomed in other places (one’s airline pilot, surgeon, or government, for instance).
Which is all by way of excusing the dreadful consistency of this so-called Monday Miscellany series. Episodes in 2012, 2014, and then not again until 2020, is barely a series. Another one so soon is definitely suspect.
Chalk it up to “creativity, art, and philosophy.”
Because of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin (the most recent in a horrifying long list of names), the Minnesota Twins postponed yesterday’s game until today, which is designated baseball’s official Jackie Robinson day — the day all the players wear #42 in honor of the great Jackie Robinson (it’s normally April 15th, but baseball didn’t start this year until the end of July).
Today would have involved a double-header, yesterday’s game plus the scheduled one against Detroit today, but the Twins voted to postpone both those games.
Baseball teams across the country are standing down in solidarity and support for Black Lives Matter.
The text reads:
“The Minnesota Twins remain committed to using our platforms to push for racial justice and equality. Therefore, we fully respect our players for their decision to not play tonight’s game versus the Detroit Tigers. The recent shooting of Jacob Blake, a mere three months after the killing of George Floyd, shows again that real change is necessary and far overdue in our country, and it is our responsibility to continue playing a role in efforts to affect meaningful reform. We stand in solidarity with the Black community and, as full partners with others in the Twins Cities and beyond, we are committed to creating the change we want to see in the world — where everyone is protected, safe and welcome. There is no place for racism, inequality or injustice in our society.“
Yes, yes, and yes!
Bravo and kudos to the Minnesota Twins and all those other teams standing up by standing down. I support them 100% in this (apparently not everyone does, which is pathetic).
The Twins also posted this in their Twins Diversity twitter account:
Which I thought was pretty cool.
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Stay committed to racial justice, my friends! Black Lives Matter!
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