Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

"what, uh, what's the one paragraph version of this Situation" a Minnesota friend asked when I posted "Happy Carlos Correa Day to all who celebrate" along with a screenshot of Gleeman's tweet ("They finally did it" it ends). I can't really do the story justice in a paragraph but I might have managed it in a sentence:

It took multiple unprecedented things happening in a row for the Twins to get this kind of player, it's a surreal situation and this is a bizarre result but it's also funny and I'm enjoying it (while also being mindful that there's a human person at the center of it who's probably had a shitty couple of months, and do we all deserve a stranger's medical details, and we should examine our healthist attitudes to elite athletes, and etc....).

I'd like to write that longer version some time, I have big thoughts about how good and how bad it is that teams like the Mets are spending so much on their players, but I haven't been able to articulate them in two months of listening to off-season baseball podcasts and I'm definitely not going to manage it tonight, writing on my phone after a day with too much computers and not enough sleep.

I am happy to see Correa in one of those (are they shockingly ugly or do I just fear change? (and miss the pinstripes!)) new Twins jerseys, but honestly not much more happy than I would be if he'd gone to the Pirates or the Royals, or definitely some team like the Orioles...just any "ordinary" team that isn't the Dodgers or the Yankees or whatever, or the fucking Mets who just said "we need another guy" like they were just making a human pyramid of ridiculous talent. Correa would be a franchise-altering player at so many teams and in Queens he wasn't even going to be able to play his position, so little did they need him. Every team is owned by billionaires who could spend like Steve Cohen does, and in some ways the fact that he's the only one is an indictment of the league, and maybe it won't always be this way but for now while he is the only one, it completely fucking sucks to see him just hoard players.

And the entitlement of Mets fans, like they deserve Carlos Correa and it's an injustice for someone who could be in New York to go to a place like Minnesota... I find the entitlement both infuriating and life-giving: I will happily drink the tears of Mets fans in my morning coffee.

I worry that the Twins are going to go too hard on the "this is your home" stuff because that seems way too "Minnesota," but I'll allow it because the sentimental stuff came after they've given him a deal that's forty million dollars (at least) better than the Mets' one...which is very not Minnesota. I am sure this kind of aggressive spending is an anomaly more than it is the start of something new we can expect from the Twins, but that's all the more reason for me to enjoy it while I can.