Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Naysayer, The Frontrunner and The Critic - an intro

Allow myself to introduce myself as the newest, insider-outsiderest member of the TWT staff. Though I have great affection for the Twins, having spent ten of my formative years in the Mini-apple, my true allegiances lay with the team of my father and his father before him, and so on and so forth. Which is a roundabout way of saying PAPELBON!

Essentially, I see my role here as three-ply. First, as this is a 'literary baseball' blog (or has at least 3 authors counting myself with enough pretentiousness to claim to be 'literary') and I read baseball books, lots of them, I'll pass on my thoughts. I joyfully take recomendations, though my interests tend to run more towards the workings of the game than the biographical. This is not to say everything will be Bill Jamesian (one of my favorite works of all time is Roger Kahn's The Head Game, which is about as far from SABREmetric as one gets. But it did teach me how to properly grip a slider, a curveball or a circle-change.

Secondly, it seems that the romantacism of the Twins adulation needs to be moderated with small doses of large-market realism. Now it's not going to be all Sawx, all the time, (I'll try to keep my daily mood swings, largely matching the swings in the standings vis-a-vis the M-F'in Yankees [hereafter simply MFY's] to my own place) but consider me the resident cranky skeptic.

Finally, at least once a month, I'm here to thank the Twins:


4 comments:

bill said...

You want baseball books? You've probably read them, but my list starts and stops with the entire catalog of WP Kinsella. Box Socials maybe being his most brilliant.

I'd like to say Shoeless Joe, but Kevin Costner's piece of shit movie, Field of Dreams, pretty much ruined that book.

Hops said...

Sure, sure...we'd all like to run through Big Papi's wicked gahden, but using "large market" and "realism" in the same sentence makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Kaiser said...

A hidden camera in Terry Ryan's living room which only turns on during Red Sox games or Sportscenter highlights of Red Sox games, particularly in the late innings. Now THAT'S a reality TV show I'd watch. Get on it FOX broadcasting.

Smitty said...

Isnt' it great that the large market teams can't generate their own talent. Thank you for paying too much for mediocer guys so that Kyle Lohse can win arbitration. Realism my ass.