On the morning of May 2, I had the pleasure of talking about lost golf courses and “Fore! Gone.” on KTWN-FM, better known as Go 96.3, also known as the Minnesota Twins flagship radio station. Rod Simons, host of a Sunday morning sports show on KTWN, kindly invited me to talk about lost golf courses and my book with him and former Minnesota Twins catcher Tim Laudner, who not so coincidentally happens to be a low single-digit handicap golfer who knows a fair share about the history of the game in the state.
Click on the arrow below to listen in:
We talked about Westwood Hills in St. Louis Park, where Sam Snead Gene Sarazen visited with a couple of McNulty boys, sons of the club’s owner and manager (photo courtesy Jim McNulty) …
… and we talked about Joyner’s in Brooklyn Park, the course Laudner grew up on. This is part of all that’s left of Joyner’s.
Category Archives: MN Twins
Obstruction of justice?
The most vacuous postgame argument from last night’s Game 3 of the World Series might also be the most common — that “no umpire’s call should decide a World Series game.”
Why not? What if an umpire’s call is required on a play that decides the game? Who should make it? Should we, oh, I don’t know, call Pee-Wee Herman on the phone and say, hey, Pee-Wee, whaddya think? Safe or out?
What about a called third strike with two out in the bottom of the ninth? Isn’t that an umpire’s call also deciding a WS game? Isn’t that pretty much the same thing?
I have no stake in this — don’t care which team wins. As I read the rule, umpires Dana Demuth and Jim Joyce got the call absolutely right. Good for them.
Oh-fer
A typical line from the ESPN play-by-play feed of today’s Twins game (for context, this is from the bottom of the eighth inning with one out):
“J. Mauer doubled to deep center. …
“J. Willingham struck out swinging. …
“J. Morneau fouled out to catcher.”
Add ’em up from the rest of the game, and you get an oh-for-10 performance with runners in scoring position for the home team. And 2 for 18 in the past two games. And 6 for 49 in the past four games. That’s a .122 batting average. The Twins scored their only run today by the grace, or lack thereof, of an error by the Mets.
I couldn’t pretend to know why Twins batters choke like Billy Buckner lining up the laces on a ground ball hit right at him. But for as inept as the Twins were a year ago with runners in scoring position (.252, ranking 11th in the American League), they have bridged the gap from inept to putrid a year later.
A few stats:
— Before Monday’s game, the Twins were batting .231 with runners in scoring position, ranking 15th and last in the American League. (Add 10 more oh-fers on Monday, and this might be the only statistical category in which the Twins have a chance to lock up the league title before Labor Day.)
— They were batting .223 with two outs and runners in scoring position, 12th in the league.
— “Situational hitting,” once considered a Twins staple, is situationally awful. With a runner on third and less than two out, the Twins were batting .258 entering Monday’s game, last in the AL by 13 points.
— As reported by Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Twins struck out nine times Monday and now have whiffed 1,044 times this season, on pace to set a team record.
Individually, almost everyone without the initials “J.M.” has been brutal. No, wait. Almost everyone without the initials “J.M.” and without sideburns has been brutal (cutting Brian Dozier a little slack here for looking like a major league hitter since the all-star break):
— Joe Mauer is the only Twin batting over .300, or anywhere near it. He had two hits Monday and raised his average to .324 — though he struck out once to raise his season total to a career-high 89, topping the 88 he had last year. Also, he is batting only .239 with runners in scoring position.
— After Mauer, the batting averages tumble like somebody put the numbers in a pail and dumped them over Gooseberry Falls. Entering Monday, Justin Morneau ranked No. 2 among everyday Twins batters with a .261 average. After that, the averages were .247, .243, .231, .223, .222, .222 and .219.
Miserable numbers of epic proportion.
It’s becoming awfully difficult to say or write anything good about this team. And don’t get me started on pitching.