Twins Notes

A few things worthy of discussion today, the most prominent being the approval of a new stadium. My impression of the process is that the people most in favor of the stadium behaved like spoiled children, repeatedly insisting on the need for a new toy while increasingly frustrated caretakers denied their request over and over. Eventually, the hassle of “parenting” became too great and the legislature caved to a $522 million present to prove their love to the team, preventing it from packing up its belongings in a knapsack and running away to join the circus.

I have mentioned a few times in this space that I generally oppose public funding for sports venues. As a society, we seem to assume special privilege for athletes: the market sets the high salaries, but the culture lets them get away with crimes (O.J., Kobe, and many lesser examples) and bestows them demigod status. Everybody knows that spending half a billion dollars on a facility that can only be used for 80 baseball games a year- or hopefully more- is not economically tenable, no matter how many creative accountants and economists the supporters dig up. A recent Harvard economics dissertation calculated the real value of properties and lease agreements to give a conclusive net cost of public funded sports venues. Surprisingly, only one stadium built in the last 20 years paid dividends to the city: the Metrodome. Due to the lease deal and parking arrangements that favor the city and the exceptionally low cost (about $88 million in 2006 money), the Metrodome was worth the city’s while, but it has not worked out as well for the teams who occupy the facility. Maybe if the state still had the pre-Ventura budget surplus, capricious spending would be excusable, but giving people millions of dollars to build what is essentially their own office building seems absurd to me.

There are things I will miss about the Metrodome. The stadium housed Kirby Puckett’s entire career, highlighted by Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. It is the stadium where I saw my first baseball game, my first playoff game, my first World Series game and most other notable baseball related occurrences. Presumably, the Vikings will eventually follow the Twins out of the Dome, leaving in their wake the Garry Anderson missed FG, the one event that most completely exemplifies Minnesota football in my lifetime.

On the other hand, it will be fun to make my first quasi-religious pilgrimage back to Minnesota in a few years, and the designs for the stadium look dandy. I have always firmly believed that Minnesota fans are some of the most dedicated and sincere sports fans in the world, and the early April games will test that hypothesis by forcing the tradeoff between watching baseball and being able to feel one’s extremities. In the meantime, let’s soak up as much artificial warmth as possible and appreciate what the Dome still has to offer.


I covered the promotions of Liriano and Bonser pretty extensively last week, but it seems prudent to point out that each had a very successful debut in the starting rotation. Neither made it into the seventh inning, but we can only hope for so much from young starting pitchers, and keeping the young pitchers healthy until the team can contend again is more important for the moment anyhow.

In both instances, the game’s final score does not give the full account of the strong outing from the starting pitcher. On Friday night, Liriano only pitched five innings, efficiently retiring batters by using only 68 pitches, but falling subject to kid gloves anyway since he has spent the season working out of the pen. The 7-1 final score makes it look like a walkover, but Liriano actually pitched in something of a duel with Doug Davis, leaving the game after five with the score tied at one. The Twins added a run in the top of the sixth to give Liriano the win, but the game still hung in the balance until the seventh when Tony Batista’s grand slam sealed the deal. Bonser was less efficient, throwing 97 pitches (only 58 for strikes), but making it through the sixth inning. He gave up only one run on five hits, striking out eight and walking three. One could complain about the walk total or the overall number of pitches, but it would be nitpicking, as Bonser rose to the occasion a day after the bullpen was abused in a 16-10 win. Bonser lost the decision when Jesse Crain got bombed in the seventh inning, raising his season ERA to 7.52, a struggle which I predicted again and again before the start of the season. One start is not enough to draw conclusions, but both pitchers looked good. Hopefully, they did not look good enough to Terry Ryan to think he can make the team contend this year. With good prospects in the system, valuable commodities ripe to trade, and no more pressure to play for stadium votes, the Twins can finally start thinking about winning 90-95 games in 2008 and beyond rather than treading water with 80-85 this season.


It is not Twins news directly, but any Twins fan has to be interested in the A.J. Pierzynski developments. It has never been a secret that A.J. is something of a… shall we say, showman, but he immortalized himself this weekend by somehow baiting Michael Barrett into cold-cocking him after a play at the plate. Some writers have speculated that Barrett was upset that a fellow catcher would charge the plate so aggressively, but I have to believe that A.J. said something or did something characteristically arrogant and irritating that got under Barrett’s skin. Major League players do not just run after one another for making aggressive plays, and they certainly do not usually start fights that can be avoided due to hefty suspensions acting as deterrence.

I was immediately reminded of the 2002 ALDS against the Oakland A’s, perhaps A.J.’s shining moment in a Twins uniform. After hitting a HR off of Mark Mulder in the 8th inning to put the Twins up 3-1 in a game they would eventually win 3-2, Pierzynski famously shouted, “BOO-YEAH!” when stepping on home plate. An angry Ramon Hernandez shouted at Pierzynski as he returned to the dugout and many of the A’s focused on A.J. rather than the game or the end of their season at the post-game press conference. Add to the mix the fact that he alienated himself from his entire team in 2004 with the Giants and it is hardly surprising that he was the one to start the season’s first real bench clearing brawl. He followed his performance by hitting a HR on Sunday, then openly mocking the pitcher, Carlos Zambrano, by executing Zambrano’s personal hit-the-chest-kiss-the-fingers-point-to-the-sky celebration when crossing the plate, sending the intense Zambranon into hysterics on the mound. Nonetheless, the Cubs completed the poetic justice when Barrett’s hit keyed a late rally to win the game.