We've waited 'til next year

Good sweet Lord above. Miz Susan and I put up with this godawful winter which we've barely survived to see the Twins break out of the gate like this? To trail 10-3 after 6 1/2 to the frickin' Blue Jays? What the hell!?!

In all fairness, I've been predicting for the past few days (and I hope I'm wrong) that the locals will open at Target Field sporting a less than gawdy 2-4 record. To the unfamiliar, that's two wins against four losses. The Twinks stunk against the Jays last year. They even singlehandedly, in a manner of speaking, prolonged by a couple of seasons the major league career of no-talent bum Edward Encarnacion by serving up 7 of his season's 21 homers. Take away those 7 homers and you're left with a poor man's Casey Blake. And with a worse beard to boot. And the Twins recent lack of success against the hated Yankees (boooo, hissss!!) is well documented. In short, a bad way to have to start the season and I think they'll pay for it.

During the pre-game, Miz Susan had wondered about some of her unenlightened friends at work who'd bad-mouthed baseball for a dull, slow-moving coma inducer. She knew they were wrong and told them so and told them why. But, by about the 4th inning of this nonsense, she was bouncing coarse expletives off the wall and heading back to the kitchen for another hot dog.

Just like any single game of baseball, any single season of baseball has to be relished for what it is. American tradition at its best, a symbolic playing out of Acts I through III of the theater of seasons, a reason to get up in the morning and check the box scores over coffee and to stay up late at night to watch the 8th inning of the game against the Mariners.

Games like tonight's will have me bouncing coarse expletives off the walls by July, probably even by June. But you gotta take the long view. So f'---in' what if the Blues Jays are on pace to hit 36 homers in 9 games (someone please tell me that we don't have to play these guys 9 times this year) as opposed to the measly 25 they managed to hit against us last season. Yeah, the Twins in the first inning looked like the JV tryouts for an 8-man high school baseball team.

But for right now, I'm as happy as can be that we've got baseball back in our lives for the next 7 months. Play ball. It is next year.