Minnesota Twins, Again Doing What the Yankees Can’t

The Minnesota Twins are the epitome of everything that is beautiful and lovely.  There is nothing like them these days.  They continually grow their own players, and refuse to spend ridiculously enormous amounts of money on players that are basically past their prime.  They grow a player, Torii Hunter for example, and once they realize he is going to be a great player, they sign him for a little more than his current market value, and tack on a couple of extra years.  This is followed by him spending his best years in a Twins uniform, and then once his contract is up they let him go, because they have players like Denard Span (home grown) and Carlos Gomez (acquired in a trade for another player, Johan Santana, that they did this same thing with) to step in and fill his spot even better.

Still, for some reason, every year the baseball “experts” pick the Twins to finish in, or near the cellar of the central division, and every year Minnesota shoves their words down their throats.  Meanwhile, in New York Carl Pavano is about to make his 3rd start since 2005 and has been making ten million dollars a year sitting in “rehab.”

The top 5 highest paid teams are all in very real danger of not making the playoffs, and the two highest, the Yanks and the Tigers, are not even anywhere near a playoff spot.  Not to mention the Mariners, who decided to fix their problems by spending loads of money on wonderful players like, Richie Sexson (.221 for them this year after hitting .205 last year), Carlos Silva (4-14 with a 6.36 ERA before recently going on the DL, a.k.a. he’s trash so they’re faking an injury) and giving Suzuki 17.1 million dollars a year, while trading their top prospects for Eric Bedard, a perennial underachiever who had one good year.

There will come a time when teams like the Twins, Rays, Marlins, D-Backs (all of whom are among the lowest pay rolls and all of whom are within striking distance of the playoffs, Twins and Marlins, or leading their respective divisions, D-backs and Rays) will be what teams strive to be like.  Who needs A-Rod when you have Evan Longoria playing for the league minimum (until they signed him for a long term deal).  Who needs Santana when your pitching rotation combined makes what he makes in a week (slight exaggeration) and yet is still pitching their team to the playoffs.

Someday the media will talk up the Rays and the Twins at the beginning of the season.  Maybe winning 5 division titles in 7 years will finally convince the folks at ESPN and SI that we know what we’re doing here in minor-marketville.  Until that day, I will just continue to sit back and enjoy the victories.

Posted by kingdaved

Potter Fan’s Get the Shaft

In recent news it was announced that the 6th Installment of the Harry Potter movie series was going to be moved back to a summer schedule slot (It was going to be released this winter). Apparently, so many Potter fans wrote in protest that the CEO of Warner Brothers reassured all of them that this was a good thing because the 7th Installment would be closer to the 6th.

Now, doesn’t that make you feel better kids? Go along and play nice now.

Seriously, did this guy actually think that kind of reasoning was going to help the situation? Using some kind of weird “mom” logic on the people who were about to give him lots of money. It doesn’t really matter anyway. He knows he owns them with this series. He knows they will go to the movie even if he moved it back another two years. The only way that that would change is if they protested the film and didn’t go see it at the summer slot.

I’ll be totally honest, if that happened, I would be so happy. Hollywood so takes advantage of the fact that people are lemmings and will follow whatever doom may be at their feet. Sigh.

Posted by Alcamadus