And We'll See You Tomorrow Night

The Twins took three of four from the Tigers (and one from the A’s) and currently find themselves 1 ½ games out in front of the wild card chase and 1 ½ games back for the division lead. The offense has shown signs of life, our pitching staff is still The Best In The Game and Joheezy is suddenly finding himself smack-dab in a Mid-west bias created battle for the MVP. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Despite all this, I’d have to say that the most important recent baseball event is the fact that I am now an official collector of Twins bobbleheads.

Okay…”collector” is a tremendous stretch, as I have no intention of ever doing this again. But there I was, at 3:00 on Saturday (6:10 first pitch) standing in an already amazingly long line waiting for my turn to be handed a child’s knick-nack version of Jack Morris. (Having never done this before, I didn’t know that showing up three hours before gametime is the equivalent of being “fashionably late”)

As one of the 400,000 people that actually attended Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, Jack Morris has always had an odd place in the sports ventricle of my heart. Absolutely hated him when he was with the Tigers…loved him for most of 1991, particularly for 10 innings that October…and then hated him again when he ran to Toronto.

Things that go through your mind while standing in a really long line with other delusional adults waiting for a child’s toy:

“How long have these people with stubble and lawn chairs been here?”
“Why aren’t there any beer vendors?”
“How frightening is it that the two old guys behind me know SO much about high school football. Is there somewhere I should be turning them in to?”
“Ohh…right…THIS is why my wife decided to stay at home.”

In the end, very little of my pessimism seemed to matter.

While watching the Saturday game of the last Yankees series with my dad, we both heard (for the first time) the advertisement for “Jack Morris Bobblehead Day”. As one of the other 400,000 people at that game, he looked at me as soon as the ad ended and, without missing a beat, said, “you’re going to that game”. Please notice the lack of a question mark.

So I find myself in brief possession of recreated plastic glory. Brief, because in less than 24hrs Mr. Morris will find himself in Texas…on the desk of my father, nodding along to the vibrant rythms of the insurance business. Do they make Bobble-Armadillos? They should.


Best of luck to Matty “Please God, Let Me Win ONE!” Guerrier tonight.