The ground is getting hard beneath my feet, baseball season is over for the Twins, and the season is nearly over for the year.
I have to get one last baseball idea into the mix.
I’ve been meaning, ever since the Twins lost so handily to the Yankees (again), to write about it, and how the newspaper was full of it…but not in the same way it was when the Twins lost to the Yankees (or simply lost) in post-season play in years past.
In years past, the Twins have always been the underdog. The Twins had one of the lowest budgets in baseball…and they had to play in the worst stadium in the majors…the awful Metrodome.
This year that changed. The new outdoor stadium, Target Field opened and came with high expectations. Joe Mauer got the largest contract anyone on the team ever got. Jim Thome was added as a power hitter. It was a great season and we won the division, as we have for several years. And then…went down without a fight.
The guys had no spit, no fire. They seemed to have no drive at the end. It was almost as if they gave up before they played. They were, after all, playing the unbeatable Yankees.
Even for all that being true, I was surprised by what I read. And I was surprised by Tom Powers, a regular sports columnist, that he mentioned A. J. Perzinski. A.J. was replaced by Joe Mauer and now plays for the White Sox. A.J. is a character. I always liked him, but he’s such a character that he’s about the only guy who comes to the plate in Minnesota and gets booed. He gets booed because he’s not always nice. We’ve got a thing in Minnesota called “Minnesota nice.” And the Twins organization has had a thing, for a long time, of getting rid of the characters. Oh, we’ve had a few bigger than life guys, but always in that “nice” way.
But the main thing that surprised me, because it was true and I hadn’t really seen it, was that we’re not the underdogs anymore. The team’s not underpaid and under-housed. The fans aren’t holding low expectations.
I’m finally writing about it because when I was watching the Rangers beat the Yankees one of the commentators said, “You can’t hope a pitch; you’ve got to convict a pitch.”
This all spoke to me, the way baseball often does, creating some kind of a metaphor for my life.
Oh, how I identified with the underdog Twins. Them and me. That’s what we were: the underdogs.
Things change. Times change. And the thing about me is that I’m slow. I’m slow to see the changes that actually happen as they happen. Something has to spark me to notice. Maybe this is true for all of us. Maybe it’s the way it happens. You have some inner change take place and then a month or year later, something calls your attention in that direction and you say, “Gosh, I’m not like that anymore. When did that happen?”
Somewhere in the last year, or maybe the last month – I don’t really know – I quit being the underdog. I quit on the inside anyway. My actions haven’t quite caught up yet. I’m still doing the Minnesota nice thing, and I’m still hoping and not playing with conviction. But now that I’ve seen it, I’m ready for my actions to catch up.
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Hi Mari,
ReplyDeleteThis is Joe from Georgia.
I don't know if I ever told you that I lived in Canada for 22 years. I lived in Montreal before and during the Olympics in 1974. At that time, the expos played in a little park called Jarry Park. Then the Olympics happened and the Expos inherited a huge park. I used to root for the Expos, but they were terrible.
I moved to Toronto and the next year they were Pennant contenders. I then had the Blue Jays to root for. And of course they were terrible too. But I enjoyed going to the games in a park near Lake Ontario.
I then moved to Edmonton Alberta, and of course the next year the Blue Jays had transformed themselves to Pennant contenders and then to American League Champions.
Living out West, I was team-less, so I decided to root for the real underdogs, none other than the Chicago Cubs. This was after meeting and reading W.P. Kinsella who writes great stories about baseball (and Indians), - Shoeless Joe Jackson (Field of Dreams), and a great story about the Cubs possibly winning the World Series – the world would come to an end if that was to happen or so the story goes.
So for the last twenty years or so, I have tied my baseball hopes to the Cubs even though I now live in the a city with the Braves. But, like many Cubs fans, I have been disappointed year after hopeful year.
But there is always a next year. And I just know that next year we will win the World Series – we are due, you know.
So as you say, you are slow to change. Well so am I. And I know inside that I am not the underdog either. But I can still root for the underdog. There is something in our makeup that makes us want the underdog to succeed.
With love,
Joe
Great reflection, Joe. You're so right. It's a different thing to see yourself as an underdog than it is to root for them!
ReplyDeleteIn fact, now I'm thinking that really, the Twins have to be in transition...taking their own slow route to not seeing themselves as underdogs anymore.
It's funny though. For all their long years of winlessness, I never quite saw the White Sox or the Braves as underdogs. Maybe the Cubs and the Blue Jays though. Isn't that a strange thing? That it doesn't always have to do with winning or losing?