Bull Durham, a wildly overrated baseball comedy (give me “Bad News Bears” over it any day), features a character and pitcher named Nuke LaLoosh, a goofy son-of-a gun who throws extremely hard but with little control until he falls under the tutelage of catcher Crash Davis as played by Kevin Costner. Except there was nothing... Continue Reading »

As former Twins broadcaster Dick Bremer once said: “I think we’ve had enough of the Cleveland Guardians.” Boy, have they ever. The Twins played four games with the Guards, losing three of them by one run, including two incredibly painful back-to-back walk-off losses in extra innings on Wednesday and Thursday. The result is that the... Continue Reading »

Luis Tiant, the beloved Boston Red Sox pitcher, forever immortalized for a pitching motion that had him looking at second base before he whirled home, spent a season with the Twins in 1970. The #MNTwins released Luis Tiant 50 years ago today. Over seven seasons from 1972 to '78, Tiant averaged 243 innings pitched, 17... Continue Reading »

Life offers three inescapable realities: death, the Internal Revenue Service and the Minnesota Twins losing to the New York Yankees. They lost Thursday, they lost Friday and they lost again Saturday, 7-1, to drop the series to the Bronx Bombers. But at least Mother Nature is a Twins fan because she has nudged a hurricane... Continue Reading »

Superman calls it kryptonite. The Minnesota Twins call it the New York Yankees. And the Yanks did what they always do when they play the Twins, they beat them, 8-4, on Tuesday before nearly 18,000 fans at Target Field. Moving on… I’m just about finished with Thom Henninger’s latest book on the Twins. It’s called... Continue Reading »

What in the world has happened? I hate to declare the season over with 129 games still to play, but it effectively is in my book after the Twins took a 3-0 lead over the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field on Tuesday, then watched as the South Siders reeled off nine unanswered runs... Continue Reading »

Hall of Fame manager, Tony La Russa, who began his major league managing career with the Chicago White Sox, is back where it all started after he was named the team’s new manager this week. And that means an extra level of competition for the Twins in the AL Central. The White Sox have a... Continue Reading »

Twins beat writer, LaVelle Neal, has an interesting story in the Strib, one that looks back (like we all are these days) at a Twins loss in late July 1992. Neal writes that it spelled doom for the Twins that season and became an omen for the rest of the decade. The Twins had only... Continue Reading »

I hope you’ve been reading Strib columnist Patrick Reusse because he’s been in fine form with recent pieces about ex-Twins manager, Billy Martin, and, of course, longtime media figure, Sid Hartman. Hartman, who turned 100 last month, continues to work for the Minneapolis-based newspaper. And for those trying to decipher “strib,” that’s short for Star... Continue Reading »