The Future of Twins Baseball and Talkin' Smack

Recently, my friend Czern left a comment to my last post:

This might be a little off topic, but I cant restrain myself. According the official Minnesota Twins website, there will be a "historic announcement regarding a new ballpark development plan" today at 2 CT. Is this "new era" a new ballpark???? I would personally give away a a close friend's or a relative's testicle for such a scenario.

Well, he called it. A new stadium deal was announced today. Hopefully he doesn't try to give away my right testicle. After reading the article, the plan looks quite good. While its easy to become overly cynical of a deal working out for a Twins stadium due to the recent failures they have had, this deal looks amazing. The biggest hurdle, the money, looks like it may be overcome:

Under the proposal, the Twins would contribute $125 million, including a $40 million payment up front, with the balance to be paid prior to completion of construction. Hennepin County would fund its share -- including $235 million in construction costs and approximately $84 million in site development expenses -- through a countywide sales tax increase of .15 percent, or three cents on a $20 purchase.

Wow, can't say I am not impressed. Now for location:

The proposed ballpark would be located at the Rapid Park site behind the Target Center, which is located at the convergence of I-394 and I-94, the Hiawatha Light Rail line and the proposed Northstar Commuter Rail line. In addition to existing parking facilities, the area would benefit from access to existing bars and restaurants and the Downtown Minneapolis business district, as well as future mixed-use development, "Twinsville," which would be modeled after the Wrigleyville neighborhood in Chicago.

Man, I really hope we can get a new ballpark. Outdoor baseball would be amazing to have again. The artist renderings look nice as well.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		R	H	E
MIN (10-8)	0	0	2	0	0	0	2	0	0		4	6	3		Final
DET (8-10)	3	0	0	0	0	0	2	1	X		6	14	0
W: K. Farnsworth (1-0) L: J. Rincon (2-1) S: T. Percival (1)

Now, not to get too excited, I will now think about today's loss to the lowly Detroit Tigers. I did not see the game since my afternoon class came into conflict with it. Oddly enough, conflict is an appropriate word when describing today's game. From ESPN's account:

Seconds later, Ivan Rodriguez, who was on second after the throwing error, started toward Minnesota pitcher J.C. Romeroafter the two had words. Rodriguez was restrained as the benches emptied, but no punches were thrown. Romero was then taken out.Both players said they weren't sure what caused the argument."No idea," Romero said. "Go ask him."Several players said that Rodriguez had been yelling at Romero since being intentionally walked, but he denied that there was any trash talking involved."I'm not like that," Rodriguez said. "I respect every player in baseball, and I expect the same from them. I was trying to support him -- we are both from Puerto Rico -- and I don't know why he reacted like that.

Now, I did not watch the game, but I did see the highlights and the incident. Pudge was talking trash all the way down to first, then at second, then on his way to the pitcher's mound. It's as if J.C. slept with his mother or something. Regardless, it was good to see no one was hurt when the benches cleared. Justin Morneau even held Pudge back! What a team leader!

Speaking of Justin, what did I say about him pulling our offense out of it's funk. In his first game, he hit his homer, but today he was more productive. He had an RBI double with two outs as well as a sac fly earlier in the game. With a 1 for 3 game with 3 RBI's and a save (saving Romero from a rabid Pudge), Justin Morneau is providing what the Twins have needed. Hopefully he keeps this up and becomes our teams most productive hitter. It will be strange to see a Twin pass 30 homers in a season. 18 years is a long time to wait for a player to have that many round-trippers.

The bullpen has now lost two straight games. Well, Gardy blew the first one by keeping Mr. Rubberarm in for an inning too long. Tell me I wasn't the only one yelling at the TV when Mulholland came out for yet another inning. Today's game was actually blown by Juan Rincon, who up to this point has looked amazing. While it is tough to take another loss, I am not overly concerned about the pen's recent performance. Even the best bullpen in baseball (which resides here in Minnesota) will lose a few games now in then. Over the long haul our bullpen should win us a lot more games than it will lose. In fact, it already has.

After winning six games in a row, we now have lost five of seven. Once again, it is KC to the rescue. We should easily take two or three games there and return to form in time for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California. How do they fit all that across their jersey anyway?