So the Bill Smith bobblehead doll turned out to be the least popular item at Target Field this year it seems nobody is buying it, significant because it's nearly impossible to keep Twins fans away from any bobblehead offered up by the organization. During the Metrodome daze seemingly sane men with families would camp out overnight on the urine-soaked cakes of concrete which hold together the vacant east end of Minneapolis exposing life and liberty in exchange for the knowledge that they would be one of the first 10,000 fans into the stadium an accomplishment by 21st century standards which comes with a free bobblehead. Oh but nobody wants Bill's head anywhere other than the chopping block a sentiment I don't disagree with I'm simply amused how my sworn nemesis Ron Gardenhire escapes unscathed. Gardy has had significant input into most personnel decisions since 2002 that's part of the job description for any manager & since I inhaled far to much ethanol living near West 7th Street I cant help but flashback to 2008 when Gardenhire basically lobbied for Johan Santana to be traded when he "went to team officials in January (2008) and said he was concerned about a repeat of the distractions of a year ago during Torii Hunter's final contract season" (Star Tribune 2/3/08) - Twins president Dave St. Peter confirmed the report saying "there were concerns about distractions, it was on the manager's mind." Poor Gardy he doesn't like to be distracted he prefers his ace be dealt and so the '08 Twins went on to finish 1 game out of first place during a playoff year where we would have avoided the Yankees and been prohibitive favorites to beat Tampa Bay who would go on to represent the A.L. in the world series. That was the Devil Ray team we gave Matt Garza to (ALCS MVP) - remember how Matt didn't seem to get along with Gardenhire do you think it was a coincidence he was traded? Garza got us Delmon Young who got us 100 RBI's then got under Gardy's skin who didn't blink an eye when Delmon departed in exchange for nothing..... Matt Garza....Kyle Lohse....J.C. Romero....Glen Perkins.....funny how the guys with the best stuff, you know with actual movement on their pitches, tend to provoke Gardenhire who apparently can't come to grips with a reality where balls move both in and out of the strike zone. Johan knew the strike zone, that much even Gardy knew, what our fearless field general didn't know was how he was going to handle "a repeat of the distractions" - oh the pressure of being a small market Midwestern manager imagine having to answer 1 - 2 additional questions after every one of Santana's 2008 starts - Gardenhire couldn't even wait until the trade deadline to fold his ace he had reservations about playing it in January (no one was going to ruin his Fort Myers Spring with media inquiries) undoubtedly influencing a personnel decision which directly led to a 2nd place finish. Mercilessly we suffered a worse fate than simply finishing 1 game back as the Twins tied the White Sox for the A.L Central title who then beat us in game 163 by a score of 1 -0 on a homerun by Jim Thome, which by the way Jim is why I would have pocketed your 600th HR ball - that and $20,000 - you don't think I would hand it over to Twins officials to hand over to Thome do you? What, in exchange for an autographed bat, a jersey, and a handshake all because that "would have been the right thing to do"? Says who? whenever i shared my plans for hanging out near the right field plaza in anticipation of the moneyball (a plaza flooded with Twins employees who stepped up their presence in a concerted effort to reduce the chances of that ball going to a fan) I invariably got looks of contempt for saying Jim Thome would never see that ball unless of course he was the highest bidder followed by the same question in which they actually sounded hurt "Don't you have any respect for the game?" - the entire F'n game is based on deception from the moment when the leadoff hitter smears the chalk and stands outside the batter's box, yes even before the first official pitch has been thrown the deception has begun and it never stops. Should I respect something based in deception? Sinister left-handed pitchers who get away with balking on every throw to first base would say yes respect the deception, easy for them to say most face one or two hitters per game, compile a 4.50 ERA, pitch until their 45 and cash massive checks while I'm out here in the field looking to shag a carton of eggs & a loaf of bread - that's $2 a week Jesse Orosco my baseball instincts tell me that survival trumps respect and since Thome's 600 landed in a Detroit bullpen (a makeshift structure created when the fences were moved in at Comerica Park due to repeated complaints from Tiger hitters who couldn't get it up and out under the original stadium configuration) I can only dream of the day when I'll have another opportunity to run a $20,000 deposit slip toward the first solvent bank I can find should one still exist.

Not with a bang but a whimper some dead guy said it Ron Gardenhire lives it, so ends a decade of Twins baseball under the gardentool a cold dirty pile of what might have been. I'm told he never got the chance to manage in 2011 given the laundry list of injuries which rendered us sapless and besides surely he's earned a free pass after 6 division titles in 10 years. Never got a chance? It's when misfortune strikes that one is forced to manage. Anyone could train a chimp to deliver the same lineup card to home plate every day in fact I think someone did it's that same crowd-pleasing chimp who jumps out of the dugout and hops up & down in front of the umpire from time to time. You know the one I'm talking about that stupid-looking primate way in the corner of the exhibit which appears to be in a coma most of the time but then suddenly goes apeshit-for-ejection much to the delight of the paying customers who reward the performance with applause bananas. As for the 6 in 10, sadistic horse trainers everywhere fantasize that just once in their lives they'll have an opportunity to whip some freakish 3 year old all the way into the field of the Kentucky Derby - that's their dream, once, just once to run for the roses. Ron Gardenhire got six shots and each time the horse pulled up progressively lame until what remained after ten years under Gardy resembles some crow-bit nag suffering from stage fright which aimlessly limps about the barn saddled with historic postseason failure vainly crying out for a new jockey......Sorry I momentarily forgot that no one has given a rat's ass about horse racing since the 1950's....How about 1 run games? Does a manager have a chance to make a difference there? This was the year of the one run game in Minnesota particularly early in the season, 50% of April and May games fit that description yet summer arrived with a chalk outline already around the Twins dead by June in a division where all you need is a pulse. Some of us helplessly wasted by the still fresh intoxication of Target Field foolishly refused to stop searching for that pulse an unfortunate delay giving rise to nothing but a bloated corpse, a corpse which sadly remains on display for public viewing until mercifully at long last it can be officially buried on September 28, 2011.

Enjoy 2011 while it lasts Smilin' Bud Selig has all but decreed that this will be the last season of the initial wild card era - we hardly knew thy first bastard - as he remains both living & dead set on ushering in the wild card expansion era yet another pestilence scheduled to arrive in 2012. "Two more teams would give us 10 and 10 out of 30 I still think is a rational mix" (said the man who unleashed the unbalanced schedule). Rational how Commissioner? "It's more fair than 8" offered up Bud declining to cite a fact or figure from the encyclopedia of baseball in defense of his rationality preferring we rely on his well-honed instincts toward fairness which no doubt tell him a fair amount of cash was left on the table in 2010 when the Boston Red Sox were the odd team out....yep another blog another conspiracy theory....what have i become? Perhaps I should apologize to the office of the commissioner (a position which pays around $18 million per year) after all no sordid pattern exists where Bud Selig performed favors for John Henry under the table in the past he's simply a public servant selflessly erasing baseball's traditional inequity in order to give the people what they want - indeed enough already with this Rangers Devil Rays shit we need Red Sox-Yankees and we need it every October those blocks of domestic & international ad time aren't going to sell themselves.

2010? Over and best to be forgotten unless you enjoy recurring nightmares involving evil empires arriving in the middle of the night to deprive you of sleep & dignity a degradation in which to start every morning until the 2011 Twins take the field at which time you can only hope to rid yourself of the memory of Ron Gardenhire's award winning season. I present to you the reigning American League manager of the year and the quotes extracted from him after game 3 of the 2010 ALDS.

"Right now we're in a little rut here"

There are no little ruts Gardy a rut by definition implies established procedure and I'm pretty sure 12 straight playoff losses qualifies as such.

"We clinched early we thought we'd be able to get everybody healthy we had some guys still beat up guys had to sit out 5, 6 days trying to get healthy and I don't think their swings really came back to 'em a couple of guys and uh we battled through that but uh no excuses"

No excuses? you just suggested a couple of players in your lineup let the team down. Mauer and Thome were both rested down the stretch are those the individuals your referring to? If not Mauer or Thome then who? Who else didn't come to play Gardy? but no excuses. Incidentally, the only person we have clear evidence of letting the team down was Gardenhire himself earning an automatic ejection during game 2 for arguing balls & strikes after going out of his way to confront his old nemesis Hunter Wendelstedt (said by Gardy to have a "smart-ass mouth" during their very public 2009 feud) by taking an extended trip to the mound to visit starting pitcher Carl Pavano a trip in Gardenhire's own words "to calm Carl down. Calm everything down" his method for which brought the umpire from behind home plate to a position up close & personal with the agitated pitcher it was then that Gardy calmed everybody down by engaging in a heated exchange with Wendelstedt a nasty back & forth resulting in the Twins manager being thrown out of a playoff game which still hung in the balance.

Responding to a reporter who used the word 'dominated' when describing the Yankees/Twins abusive relationship Gardenhire said "I don't think its called domination I think they find a way to win"..."I think if you look at all the games between us a mistake here a mistake there and the game could be turned the other way"..."but dominate i think is not the right word to use with us, record-wise yeah they've won 9 in a row but that's not dominating us other than wins & losses the games are really close that could go either way"

Your right Gardy other than wins & losses things have gone well enough to get you a postseason participation trophy your reward for exhibiting an uncanny ability to take talented team after talented team all the way to the level of competitive - fine shepherding indeed the October trail you've blazed will remain visible for decades to come a deep dirty rut for future settlers to follow.

Rather than delete my previous post in which I foreswore my desire to see Ron Gardenhire terminated I leave it up as a reminder of my weakness wrought from one to many starry Target Field nights awash in cold beer, fresh air, polish sausage w/onions and the greenest of green grass opiates powerful enough to sway me to actually put in print that I had learned to accept Gardenhire a mistake for which I apologize to my friends, my family, my God and most importantly the 10% of Twins fans who would still want Gardy fired after a world series appearance - its that ten percent I let down and believe me after examining Gardenhire's body language during the 2010 ALDS it will never happen again as I've been permanently scarred by his catatonic game 3 performance burying his hang-dog head into his hands folded on the dugout rail spending the last hour of an elimination game inviting viewers to feel sorry for the predicament in which he found himself that of a field-manager presiding over his 12th straight playoff loss a gutless display for which he will be rewarded with a contract extension enabling him to set a 2011 bar so low that the 90% will be pacified by just one postseason win.

Faithless reader: as of September 22, 2010 I no longer publicly endorse the firing of Ron Gardenhire. Perhaps I've made the transition to lapdog like so many others but maybe it was the work of the 2010 Minnesota Twins a scrappy bunch capable of anything even driving excess hate from my heart then carving out a spot in whats left of it right next to the 2002 squad still my personal favorite just one or two stratego moves from taking over the world but there I go again living in the past - whether it be 2002 or 2009 when two of the three ALDS games versus New York were decided by base running mistakes (Gomez game 2 Punto game 3) mistakes well-managed little league world series teams never make - when I should be basking in that which lies before us a postseason future yet untold bound to be brighter now that I've learned to accept not only our manager (even when we have a runner on 2nd base with nobody out and fail to score a league-wide epidemic I cant hold Gardy solely accountable for) but the universal truth that things could indeed be far worse.... Mike Hargrove comes to mind.

* the preceding statement should not in any shape, manner or form be construed as approval of Gardenhire's choice for 3rd base coach who has the baseball instincts of a squirrel.

Long rumored to have been built on an unmarked hobo graveyard the Metrodome like the vacant east side it occupies wont completely rest in peace as the agoraphobic in our fare city continue to clamor for April and September dates with Hubert H. Humphrey. And before u shrug off my concerns with a "oh that's just the sentiment of a small % of the mentally ill and/or enfeebled population" just know as the 2009 season drew closer to an end sales of dome tribute t-shirts emblazoned with '2,268 games without a rain out' skyrocketed and those i saw wearing them were in the 30 - 50 year old demographic admittedly not a large enough sample to write off an entire generation but damn close. #2 in the 1-2 punch to my kidneys is provided by the media both national and local - u cant swing a dead metrodome rat without hitting any number of talking heads on ESPN still aghast that Minnesotans would build a new stadium without a retractable roof yet they would never consider such an affront to the baseball gods at their frigid shrines in New York and Boston - when the wind off the lake is cutting you in half on a cold April night in Chicago just try to find one F'n Illinois bastard demanding that which is somehow expected of us - there's no talk of growing ivy anywhere but their seedy backyard lest they be locked up by the mayor for even suggesting an alternative but damn those Minnesotans they bent over for every other tax why not one more to finance a lid capable of sealing everyone in. In time i guess they'll get their wish but for now i can stand the debate no longer disconnecting my 30 year relationship with ESPN saving me 50 bucks in the process which pays for 2 seats in the sun per month. And while in slash and burn mode why not pocket another 10 by abandoning the local newspaper which is no less afflicted by journalists pining to retain the option of scurrying back to the dome in the event of inclement weather. A "writer" for the St. Paul Pioneer Press who shall remain nameless...o.k. a hint...lacking the ability to string together sentences he simply begins every assignment with "Itemizing a few things" then presents an "Item": _____ followed by "I think": ____ (aside to the reader: i was paying money for this to be left on my doorstep) posed this question to Twins president Dave St. Peter on the eve of TwinsFest 2010 - "You could have a cold and wet April and bad weather in September. Have there been any discussions about playing a few games at the Metrodome if weather is an issue at Target Field?" (Pioneer Press 1/28/10 page 2d). Get the F out of my office would have been the appropriate response i didn't wait for the official answer i was busy adding ten dollars a month to my disposable income cancelling my subscription yet again and i can truly say the only thing i miss are the Las Vegas lines printed daily in the sports section a public service provided by every major U.S. newspaper interested in aiding and abetting addiction to an activity illegal in 49 states an unfortunate editorial oversight different than the gross negligence of printing state sponsored lottery numbers a distinction i could ponder for hours should i have time to kill in Target Field during an upcoming snow day, rain delay or rolling blackout.