Day 1 of 200 in this Minnesota winter colder with the realization that Ron Gardenhire now owns the Twins managerial job for as long as he wants due to his critically acclaimed performance skippering the team through another run at the postseason -that's right turn a 162 game schedule featuring 72 games against KC, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit into 86 wins and you too can earn manager of the year consideration and be mentioned in the same breath as Billy Martin, Gene Mauch, and Tom Kelly. Give him the lifetime contract right now because with Target Field opening in 6 months if your not going to change regimes this off-season in all probability you never will until perhaps a decade from now by which time Gardy and the incinerator adjacent to the new ballpark will have rendered Twins territory uninhabitable just another natural disaster awaiting us while in the present i live in the past stuck in August of '09 when seemingly every day found the Twins 5 games back yet sadly we were being mismanaged by a moron already looking ahead to the 2010 season. It wasn't just Gardenhire even most Twins fans i knew had also given up (i repeat had given up in August 5 games back with an unbalanced schedule laying helplessly before them) and Gardy lent credence to their demeaning surrender giving several media interviews about the poor hand he was dealt and what he needed to succeed in 2010. It was his way of planting an unconscious seed in the listener's head that his tenure should be considered as a given and he fertilized that seed whenever things looked bleakest particularly post August 16th after the Twins went 2 - 4 on a home stand against the Royals and Indians dropping them 5 games below .500 (yet just 6 out of 1st place) prompting the local media to run a "Is it time to fire Ron Gardenhire?" poll and causing Gardy to go into spin mode blaming the front office for not supplying him with enough arms (i can think of 20 teams that would trade pitching staffs with us) going so far as to tell the Star Tribune that during the upcoming off-season management "cant screw around" when it comes to bullpen acquisitions then the next day pleading with the Pioneer Press to sympathize with the unfortunate position the Twins had placed him in by giving him 4 talented outfielders to choose from (Span, Cuddyer, Young, Gomez) telling beat writers "Its not a good situation I didn't like it from the get go"- I imagine that GM's in Pittsburgh, Washington DC and other assorted wastelands were mumbling under their breath for Gardy to F off a feeling i know all to well - a feeling that no doubt will serve as an extra blanket for me as I begin month 1 of 6 in this Minnesota winter made colder when Gardy's chatter proved meaningless after Morneau's injury moved Cuddyer to first base yet didn't change a thing in the outfield if u ask Carlos Gomez. And so i suspect anything Ron Gardenhire told me during August of '09 was unadulterated by-product manufactured by a manager not only motivated by fear but indignant that he would be assigned any responsibility for his team's sub .500 performance and the deeper the team sank in late August the further Gardy shrank into the corner of the dugout failing to give off even a hint of confidence just a mass of nervous energy overfed to us by Fox Sports Net's gardy-cam which provides his reaction to every F'n pitch leaving many viewers jittery and disoriented to the point that they actually accepted Gardenhire's premise that the last month of the season was a good time to lay the blame for 2009 at the feet of others (i.e. the GM, the scouts, the players, umpires with "smart ass mouths", etc.) a fact easily forgotten now that the Twins are heading toward the postseason a reversal of fortune that now sees Gardy bright eyed and bushy tailed even venturing out of his hole long enough to sniff at the salivating lapdogs who will write about his candidacy for manager of the year lapdogs who need to be hit over the head with a rolled up unbalanced schedule then forced to stick their nose in it.