For love of the game.

That didn't go so well.  The Twins stayed in it for a while, but couldn't keep up with all the runs Detroit scored.  Kyle Gibson had his second consecutive poor start and his third poor start out of four.  It sounded like he might have been getting squeezed, although one can't be too certain of that just from listening to the radio.  What one can be certain of is that Kyle Gibson is not good enough to throw the ball over the middle of the plate.  He needs to live on the corners, and if he's not getting strikes called on the corners, he's going to have a tough time getting outs.

Kennys Vargas got three more hits and Danny Santana got two.  Vargas is now hitting .337 and Santana is hitting .324.  Will they keep that up?  Probably not--the list of people with lifetime batting averages that high is pretty small.  But they sure look like they can play.  When's the last time the Twins called up two guys at midseason and actually had them contribute?  For that matter, when's the last time the Twins called up anybody at midseason and actually had them contribute?  Danny Valencia came up in 2010 and hit .311.  Have they had anybody since?  In recent years, our midseason callups have been guys like Rene Tosoni and Luke Hughes, guys who simply weren't good enough to play in the major leagues.  It seems like this has to be a positive sign for the farm system that they had two guys who were actually ready to play.

Yesterday's game didn't go so well, but overall, this was a fun four-game series.  There were a ton of runs scored.  The Twins won two of the games by big scores, and they were in the third game.  They scored forty-two runs in four games.  Yesterday's game fell apart in the second half, but other than that, we saw some pretty entertaining baseball.  And when you root for a bad team, sometimes you need to be satisfied with that.

I just wish more people were.  Have you ever noticed that the people who claim to love the game the most seem to be the ones who are always complaining about it?  "The games are too long."  "The players are a bunch of wimps."  "Nobody knows the fundamentals any more."  "The players are a bunch of showboaters."  "Pitch counts have ruined the game."  "The DH stinks."  "These computer geeks are destroying everything."  "The players are all on drugs."  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  They claim to love baseball, but to listen to them, they don't seem to even like it.

And then they wonder why the game isn't as popular as it used to be.  Well, duh.  Why would it be, when the people who claim to love it are always talking about how terrible it is?  That would be like if my church council and I went around town talking about how lousy our church is and how it was so much better fifty years ago.  You think that'd make anyone want to come to church?

The game of baseball was a great game fifty years ago.  I have lots of great memories of the players of my youth.  My first heroes were people like Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew and Camilo Pascual and Bob Allison and Earl Battey.  And I had lots of non-Twins heroes, too, guys like Sandy Koufax and Maury Wills and Frank Robinson and Willie Mays and Juan Marichal and Roberto Clemente.  Baseball was a great game in the 1960s.  It was a great game in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, and in the 2000s.  And it's a great game today.

As you've figured out by now, I have a huge respect and love for the history of baseball.  But I also have a huge respect and love for the game now.  Knocking the current game does not make the past better.  And conversely, loving the current game does not show any disrespect for the past.  Is the current game better or worse than the past?  I don't know.  It's probably better in some ways and worse in others, like everything else in life.

There is never a time in life when we can go back to the past and have things the way they used to be, whether we want to or not.  We have to live in the present.  But if we look around, we can see a lot of good stuff happening in the present.  The present isn't perfect--no time in history ever has been, and no time in the future is likely to be--but there are a lot of things that are pretty good.  And in baseball, there are some pretty awesome players playing the game right now.  I wish the people who claim to love baseball could stop complaining long enough to appreciate them.

Anyway, the Twins will take today off ("today's players always take days off.  They should be playing doubleheaders!") before going to Kansas City for a three game series.  We're down to thirty-two games left.  We'll just have to settle for 90-72!