Tag Archives: MLB
My poor Minnesota Twins are having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season of epic proportion. It famously ain’t over ’til it’s over, but here at the one-third mark, after 54 games, it ain’t lookin’ good.
Put it this way: If the Twins continue to play at the abysmal .296 rate they have for the first two months of the season, they’ll win only 48 games. Which means losing 114! Which beats their previous worst (102 in 1982) by a good long margin.
Suffice to say we Twins fans are all feeling a bit stunned.
Continue reading
8 Comments | tags: baseball season, Jose Berrios, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Pat Dean, Twins 2016 | posted in Baseball
Congrats to the Kansas City Royals, winners of the 2015 World Series!
They beat the New York Mets in just five games and completed the unfinished business from last year when they lost the 2014 WS in the final out of the final inning of the final game.
Go Royals!
Continue reading
6 Comments | tags: baseball post-season, Kansas City Royals, Major League baseball, MLB, MLB Intentional Talk, New York Mets, World Series, World Series 2015 | posted in Baseball
They came so very, very close! After four years of season-long disappointment and mediocrity, my Twins were blessed with, literally, a winning season. Last Sunday they ended the 2015 season with a record of 83-79 (.512) — four games above the .500 mark!
The Post-Season ship left the dock on Tuesday; my Twins were not on board, but they only barely missed having a berth. It wasn’t until the penultimate game last Saturday they knew the ship would sail without them. They were in the hunt that long!
So thanks for a fun season, Twins! (And an even better one next year!)
Continue reading
10 Comments | tags: baseball post-season, Kansas City Royals, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Texas Rangers, Twins 2015 | posted in Baseball
Go Twins!
It’s officially fall, the season named after what the leaves are doing now (at least in places where they came up with the word, “fall”). Did you ever notice how the two seasons of transition both are named after action verbs? Or how appropriate those verbs are to the cycle of life happening in those transitions? Life springs forth to sunny summer and falls asleep to weather winter.
The autumnal equinox was at 08:21 UTC. Here in middle America, by a standard we call “Central,” summer fell at 3:21 AM. I slept through it, so I didn’t hear any noise it might have made. (Sometimes you can hear a distant thud, but that might be a whole bunch of leaves coincidentally all falling at once.)
Today also marks the final dozen (exciting!) games for my Minnesota Twins!
Continue reading
5 Comments | tags: autumnal equinox, baseball post-season, baseball season, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, equinox, fall, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays, Twins 2015, Win Twins | posted in Baseball
If they completely collapsed right now, fans of the Minnesota Twins would still have seen a better season than they have since 2010. If they could somehow continue playing at their current level, they could win 90+ games rather than losing that many as they have every season since then.
If they just win every other game (playing .500 ball), they’ll win 83 games and still end up with a much better record than they’ve seen in four years. They’re currently four games above the .500 mark — something fans haven’t seen since the end of 2010!
Whatever the case, the last few weeks have us jumping for joy!
Continue reading
8 Comments | tags: Brian Dozier, Major League baseball, Minnesota, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Paul Molitor, Target Field, Trevor Plouffe, Twins 2015, Win Twins | posted in Baseball
Minnesota Twins fans have enjoyed a wonderful four-day weekend to begin the merry month of May! After a very rough and disappointing first week, the Twins have been playing increasingly better baseball, and topped it off by sweeping the Chicago White Sox in a four-game home stand.
The icing on the cake was an absolutely gorgeous spring weekend with sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. The Thursday and Friday evening games were a little cooler with temps in the mid-60s, but Minnesotans are hardy people. We wear shorts and tee-shirts in 40-degrees!
The question with the Twins these days is: Can this possibly continue?
Continue reading
13 Comments | tags: Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, White Sox | posted in Baseball
My Minnesota Twins played their first spring training game last night. It was an exhibition game against the University of Minnesota. And, wouldn’t you know it, those professional experienced baseball players managed to beat the college kids. That hasn’t been the case for some other teams (the Philadelphia Phillies lost to the University of Tampa Bay last Sunday, for example).
In about three hours the Twins begin Spring Training games for real by hosting the Boston Red Sox (who beat two different college teams in a double-header Tuesday).
To celebrate, I thought I’d share my MLB Parks Tour plan.
Continue reading
14 Comments | tags: baseball park, baseball season, Boston Red Sox, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, MLB Ballpark Tour, MLB baseball parks, road trip, Spring Training, Twins 2015, University of Minnesota | posted in Baseball
It’s snowing here in Minnesota right now (exactly why we call it “Minnesnowta”). The recent temperatures rival — sometimes excel — the temperature in my freezer (which is to say: zero degrees Fahrenheit). To be clear, by “excel” I mean ‘colder than’ — we would disdain a February that didn’t chill our bones and nip our nose.
But down south, in Florida and Arizona, MLB pitchers and catchers are reporting for Spring Training after having the winter off. (Teachers get summers off, baseball players get winter.) Depending on the team, the report date varies from the 19th to the 22nd. The rest of the players, depending on team, report from February 23rd through the 27th.
So, I thought now would be a good time to talk about pitching.
Continue reading
4 Comments | tags: batters, breaking ball, Cactus League, catchers, curve ball, fast ball, Grapefruit League, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, pitchers, pitching, Spring Training, strike zone | posted in Baseball
Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants, winners of the 2014 World Series! This is the eighth win overall and their third win on consecutive even-numbered years (2010, 2012 & 2014). On the flip side, until 2010 they hadn’t won since 1954 when they were the New York Giants — that’s a 56-year drought!
They did get to the ball in 1962 (lost to the Yankees) and 1989 (swept by their neighbors, the Athletics) and 2002 (lost to the Angels). Given them credit for taking the 1962 and 2002 Series to seven games.
I’ll be honest. I was a lot more thrilled last year when the Boston Red Sox won.
Continue reading
19 Comments | tags: baseball post-season, Boston Red Sox, Kansas City Royals, Madison Bumgarner, Major League baseball, MLB, San Francisco Giants, World Series, World Series 2014 | posted in Baseball
I was tempted to call this Sports Thoughts, which would have been a great title, but which also would have implied a connection to the previous four posts. And there isn’t one. At all.
Instead, this one ties back to a post from last June: Digital & Analog Sports (which, obviously, you should go read now). That one explored how sports can be grouped in terms of continuous (“analog”) versus interrupted (“digital”) play. It also touched on how sports can be viewed in terms of their MacGuffin (often some type of ball, but sometimes a puck or “birdie” or some other object), and it considered their field of play (location, size, configuration).
This time I’ll explore sports in terms of opponents and teams.
Continue reading
5 Comments | tags: board games, card games, computer games, games, George Carlin, Kansas City Royals, Keith Olbermann, Major League baseball, MLB, NASCAR, skydiving, sports, World Series | posted in Baseball
Logos con carne 