{"id":641,"date":"2010-03-27T07:57:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T12:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=641"},"modified":"2010-03-27T07:57:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-27T12:57:46","slug":"im-ready-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=641","title":{"rendered":"I’m Ready to Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring is here (just watch this<\/a>) and I’m ready to go. The Twins are going all the way this year, folks. All the way. Liriano and Neshek are back, Mauer and Morneau and Cuddyer and Kubel are ready to start popping the ball out of the park, and the starting rotation is the strongest Minnesota’s ever had. <\/p>\n

It’s just as exciting as the spring of 1988. After our first World Series championship the preceding fall, Garrison Keillor reported in a classic New Yorker<\/em> piece<\/a> about how the team had spent the off-season doing volunteer work on a farm for troubled youth they established with their championship bonuses (see also here<\/a>). Garrison also noted our front office had been busy that off-season:<\/p>\n

Sent a couple in their mid-forties to the San Diego Padres in exchange for Duane (Madman) Mueller (29, 280 lbs., 6’2”, right\/right, a.k.a. Mule, Hired Hand, The Barber). Duane is a big secret because after he was suspended by the Texas League for throwing too hard he played Nicaraguan winter ball for three years and then spent two more doing humanitarian stuff, so scouts forgot how, back when he was with the Amarillo Compadres, nobody wanted to be behind the plate, Duane threw so hard. His own team kept yelling, “Not so hard, Man!” If that sounded dumb, then you never saw him throw: he threw hard. A devoted Lutheran, he never ever hit a batter, but in one game a pitch of his nicked the bill of a batting helmet and spun it so hard it burned off the man’s eyebrows. No serious injury, but big Duane took himself out of organized ball until he could learn an offspeed pitch. He’s from Brainerd, Minnesota, where he lives across the street from his folks. His mom played kittenball in the fifties and had a good arm but not like her son’s. She thinks he got it from delivering papers and whipping cake mix. “I’d sure hate to have to bat against him,” she says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m ready, man. Bring it on, folks, bring it on. <\/p>\n