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

I emailed a baseball podcast about a linguistics thing and they read out my email!

I mean they read it on one of the mailbag episodes where all they do is read out emails. But still! I wrote it a while ago and had forgotten about it since, so it was fun.

At the end, one of the hosts said "whatever degree you got, hang that sucker on the wall with pride, man, because that makes a lot of sense." Super cute.

The next email was from a woodworker, who wants to make them an official piece of wood to knock on, because one of the hosts is someone who's always saying "knock on wood."

And this juxtaposition meant that they commented on how impressively diverse their patreons are, anything that comes up they can get an expert opinion on or "find someone that has devoted their life to this topic."

As I have mentioned, I accidentally made a baseball fan of diffrentcolours. (Accidental because all the other English dudes I've dated either hated all sportsball or hated everything USian so I wasn't expecting him to take an interest but it turns out he's the right kind of nerd for sabermetrics to appeal to.)

This afternoon, I introduced him to the concept of Remembering Some Guys (since the Opening Day PR always involves a lot of it; the Twins start in St. Louis so I read names like Jason Isringhausen or Scott Rolen) and used as evidence the thread on here a while ago where everyone listed the mediocre players they loved when they were ten or whatever. He asked me mine (probably Gary Gaetti), and then he said "Mine would be Jake Cave!"

It would. I'm so delighted. He's only been a fan for a few years and yet he totally gets this and has his own Guys already!

He also just told me he misses Sanó and Astudillo. Aww. I do too. And those Guys are perfect for Remembering.

I'm so proud.

Conservatives think "diversity" is nonsense and progressives might think it's at best a nice-to-have if there's a budget for it once all the "real" stuff has been sorted out.

But it's not nonsense and it's not just for warm fuzzy feelings! It keeps you from writing "tits" in Spanish on a lot of hats that you then can't sell and everyone laughs at you.

One of the things we ask of baseball is, not to dissociate us from the real world or spare us from it, but to give us a break from the otherwise unrelenting awareness of the gap between how the world is and how we want it to be.

So begins what is possibly my favorite piece of baseball writing this year.

Like a lot of us probably, I've been ruminating a lot lately -- as the U.S. election nears, as the days grow darker and colder, as big and small stresses loom -- on the gap between how the world is and how I want it to be.

Baseball is never worse, though, than when it's shoving that gap right into our faces, making it even more stark and obvious and excruciating than it is while we navigate the rest of our day. Right now, Twins baseball is baseball at its very worst.

So in March I said, about cancelling my autorenewal on the MLB TV subscription, "I'm sure I'll go back to it. I don't think a year without watching or listening to baseball will do my (currently already shitty) mental health any good. But I just need to have a lot of feelings first." But after a half-hearted attempt in May had met with the slightest resistance, I never even regretted it again.

It wasn't quite the dreary year of MLB that I'd predicted -- I worried about the superteams, the boringest kind of teams, coming back in the Dodgers and the Yankees, and while the Yankees were certainly way less fun than last year (when they were briefly below .500 for the first time this millennium and their fans acted like the world was ending), the Dodgers are continuing their inability to keep pitchers healthy and there will be no 100-win teams this season. Of course I'd like to think that with no team winning that many, there's no team that needs to lose that many either -- but the poor White Sox had to show me how far from true that is by being literally the worst team in anything we'd recognize as baseball as she is played today. (That they lost to the Tigers, who went from having barely-more-likelihood of going to the playoffs than those pale hose a month ago, to clinching on that night they beat the White Sox for that record number of losses, is a hell of a thing; it's wild having the Twins be the most boring team in the AL Central this year!).

If that last paragraph didn't make any sense to you, don't worry. The tl;dr is that I ended up feeling pretty justified in saving $150 on not paying for a depressing subscription I wouldn't have gotten much use out of.

Hey I was just showing solidarity with the Twins fans in Minnesota who also couldn't watch the games on TV! That was another really dreary part of this baseball season. The most recent episode of Twins podcast Gleeman and the Geek that I listened to this morning featured the eponymous host saying that they'd had a lot of e-mails from people telling them that this podcast was the only way they'd followed the Twins all year, and I am, no exaggeration, among those. And actually that's felt okay, that has been enough.

Back to the perfect baseball article:

In a way, the Twins are already in the playoffs. You can rebel against the impulse toward despair and rage and resentment, if you want, and embrace the fact that everything we really want out of the postseason is already coming to Target Field over the next few days--at bargain-basement prices, to boot.

What makes the playoffs worth pursuing? Why are they the objective of every fan base and every player? ...It's the raising of the stakes of the game that changes it. It's the brightness of the lights and the national attention and the desperation that makes its way onto the field.... Everything matters. In life, hardly anything feels better than knowing you're doing or witnessing something authentically important, and whereas regular-season baseball is always of negotiable importance, the playoffs matter.

All that vividity and nerve-jangling danger is here. The Twins are a daily story everywhere that baseball is discussed, and they'll play on national TV this Saturday against the Orioles. All that's missing is the bunting on the railings.

(This is where my heart breaks, because this was written on Wednesday and this is Saturday and the Twins already lost that first game against the Orioles which means they are officially out of playoff contention. That takes all the sparkle out of the weekend's games, I probably wouldn't watch them if I could, because it's like watching the last month of Obama being president: our guy(s) can't do much and things are only going to get worse from here.)

But the point still stands! What makes the playoffs fun is that they're meaningful, tense, higher-stakes and widely witnessed. I think this phenomenon will be if anything more familiar to my friends who are soccer-football fans, of teams in leagues that have promotion and relegation. Because people don't just talk about and care about who wins; there is due concern given to the bottom of the league table in a way they wouldn't without relegation.

Last winter, Netflix announced they were doing a documentary following the Boston Red Sox during this season, and hosts of the MLB podcast I listen to were a little bit scornful of this: the Red Sox aren't even that good! Whereas I was intrigued and -- they've had an interesting year, just missing the postseason themselves but even if they hadn't -- I'm more likely to watch that than about, I dunno, the Dodgers season this year.

Success gives worse advice than failure because success doesn't know what worked and doesn't have to think about it that much. Maybe another way of saying this is that happy teams are alike -- (almost) everything is gong like it should! -- but each unhappy team is unhappy in its own way. I can't wait to hear about how the Red Sox are unhappy because I do not know!

Back to the article, which does such a great job of articulating who I think is most at fault with the Twins' 2024 season.

The Pohlad family [owners of the Minnesota Twins] has so methodically demoralized their customer base, there's one other vital, joyous ingredient of playoff baseball missing: the crowd.... In the world I want, we could all melt together into this moment, and Target Field [their home ballpark in Minneapolis] would be full all week, because the Twins have earned this quintet of de facto playoff games--for worse, with this month-plus of harrowing collapse, but also for better, with a summer of tremendous baseball.

The untouchable, disinterested owners of the team have set up everyone below them in the chain of command to fail, and as a result, watching even this quasi-playoff week of baseball isn't off to a fun start. In the world I want, the Pohlads would realize that this is all their fault and try hard to ameliorate the problem in the future. In the world we have, a lot of irrevocable damage is already done, and the mountainous beds of money on which that family luxuriates make them partially unaware of and wholly indifferent to the ways they're making the world worse--including this way.

The list of MLB owners who need to sell their teams into public ownership may encompass all of them if you ask me, but there's no doubt that first on that list is John Fisher who has ripped a team away from Oakland to an uncertain future and no fixed address just because he, inheritor of the Gap fortune, thinks his underpants-gnome level plan will make him some more money.

This has been known and remarked upon for the years that Fisher has been indicating that he doesn't care about Oakland and was happy to move the team even with no idea about what that move would actually entail. So for a long time now, people have been reading him for filth. I'm still thinking about something Joe Sheehan said most of a year ago:

The thing about great wealth is that it allows you to define your own life. The destitute, the poor, the great mass in the middle, even people of moderate or considerable success are all, to one degree or another, dependent upon others. I’ve made a nice little career, and the list of people to whom I’m indebted runs deep into three figures. I’ve been knocked around by industry trends and bad luck and outright malice. I have not had complete control, and I doubt very many of you reading this have, either.

The wealthy, though, the .01%, they can chart their path as they wish, their deep reserves serving as both a battering ram to success and a cushion against failure.

As the final season at the Oakland Coliseum drew to a close this Thursday afternoon (note that the writer starts one paragraph: Thursday felt like a playoff game at 1.5x strength; it's not the standings that make a playoff game, it's the vibe!), if MLB fans have learned anything from Oakland in the past few years, it's that owners add nothing to a team and the teams belong to their fans and their cities (or in the case of the Twins a 4- or 5-state area that falls in to the gravity well of Minneapolis/St. Paul) and we deserve better.

After work, diffrentcolours and I went in to town to get me some posh shoes to wear this weekend (I asked about the dress code and was basically told "err on the side of too smart," sigh, so I really did need new shoes).

It went surprisingly quickly, so I had time/energy for a stretch goal which was solving the backpack problem, which I did not fix with a backpack but with a man bag which D spotted as looking cute and clearly like a UK handbag/U.S. purse but for guys too insecure to carry anything that doesn't look manly.

We even have time for a pint on the way back to the train station. It was chilly but sunny with a few fluffy clouds in the sky which were turning pink and golden in the sun that was setting far too early for my tastes (it was dark on my way home yesterday from the gym and I was Big Mad about this; I am not ready for winter to be encroaching!).

Tonight he started playing one of his free-this-month PlayStation games, which is a baseball one that accurately replicates the current season. It was really fun to watch him play a game, as the Minnesota Twins of course, and win 7-0 against the team that won last year's World Series. Something I would not expect of the real-life Twins now! (So many good players are out injured that just hearing their names again gave me a wave of nostalgia, and they currently are doing incredibly badly, at a point in the season where it's especially important for them to not do that.)

He had a great time, and I realized how bad I am at explaining breaking pitches, and I also had a great time watching him have a great time.

I still haven't gotten an MLB TV subscription for this year.

I didn't expect to go this long without it. (It's worrying evidence of an anhedonia pattern that I'm observing but seem powerless to do anything about.) But then, the Twins made that extra-easy for a while by being terrible. They started, like...7-13 I think? With a dispiriting set of players lost to injuries.

But then they won a few games. I commented that it was embarrassing to see their social media so happy about beating teams like the White Sox and Angels. Terrible teams did account for a lot of the winning streak. But not all of it!

Yesterday I saw the streak was up to 12 games. I also thought it might be nice to actually watch some baseball on this sunny long weekend full of dad stuff (drinking lager, cleaning the patio...).

So I actually started to try to buy the subscription. Which involved finding out the Twins were losing 7-1. Against the Red Sox. In the eighth inning. (They ended up losing that game 9-2... or, as I saw Twins Daily typo it, 92- . It might well feel like they've lost ninety-two to not-even-zero since it means the end of a reasonably long winning streak!)

I still don't have the subscription.

Not because my team was losing. But because I thought my card information was saved and it wasn't and going to get my card from the next room and type in all that shit on my phone seemed like way too much work.

I've long said that on Manchester's derby day, when its two big football teams play each other, my queer/disabled/etc friends and I have to warn each other to stay home, the city centre and lots of other places aren't safe to go when ALL the drunken hegemonic football fans are out at once.

But I'm gonna have to start being more specific. Today City Women are hosting United Women, and I didn't even know it was a derby until I left Etihad after my gym class.

So. "On men's derby day..."

For another example of how differently women's sports is treated:

At the gym, when our trainer asked if we were going to watch the match, I said I was sad there was no more Six Nations to watch, and another person said "Women's Six Nations starts today!"

"Can I watch it on TV?" I asked (not rhetorically or anything!).

"Ah, that I don't know," she said.

I can. But in a much more haphazard and "channel schedule subject to change" way than the men's tournament would ever have to tolerate. But I watched the Wales v Scotland match this afternoon and it was so good even though it was so heartbreaking to watch Wales get that close and then not be able to win, at home and everything.

When I first learned, right as the World Series was finishing, that Dick Bremer was no longer going to be doing TV commentary for the Minnesota Twins now that this season had finished, my first thought was oh no, he's got some awful health problem.

I thought this because he's in his 70s. But also because it had never occurred to me that anything short of his death would get him away from that microphone.

To call him an institution seems to put it too mildly. He had just completed his fortieth year doing Twins play-by-play. I can't imagine Twins games sounding like anyone else because he started this when I was one year old. He started in the second year that the Metrodome existed.

By the way he seems fine, health-wise. The truth turns out to be more and less sad: I'm glad he's physically okay, but every impression I've gotten of him is that he's the kind of person who will be sad he didn't quite manage to call 5,000 games (he called 4,972!), that he didn't get a send-off...he might not have wanted a lot of attention but I'm sure he'd have wanted to know when he had gone to his last Spring Training, called his last Opening Day and his last home game in Minneapolis and his last game... Maybe he did know by that last game, but if he did he couldn't tell anyone and that also sounds awful.

I listen to a Twins podcast done by two local (to Minnesota!) sports writers who cover the Twins. I have, once or twice, paid extra to get their bonus episodes on Patreon -- like when Correa signed, it was worth the price of admission for just how giddy John Bonnes sounded -- and when they mentioned having gone into more detail about Bremer there, I signed up again just to hear it.

And it was nice to hear from the only people I'm likely to hear from about how weird it makes me feel to imagine Twins games without him. But it was also surprisingly touching and insightful at the end, thanks again to John Bonnes.

He said:

All of the accolades coming out yesterday are certainly deserved.

I think baseball does lend itself more towards the connection to announcers than any other sport. There is so much space to fill. And that space is often conversational, it's often that with which we connect.

(Gleeman says "Yeah, it's like a feeling of: I'm gonna spend the evening with Dick Bremer and Justin Morneau, watching the Twins."

Bonnes agrees, "Exactly right," and goes on.)

And so, how much of that is rational vs. emotional vs. whatever, something that's ingrained in our DNA, I'm not sure. But finding someone that you want to spend every evening with [laughs] - three hours! - is no easy trick! And over forty years!

Bremer had, not just the discipline and skill to be able to call that, but also showed enough genuine interest in that which you're watching, in the state in which he lived - every small town that was ever mentioned on that broadcast...! And so there's the 'he's one of us' aspect that's going to be really tough to replace. I mean that in a good way, I don't mean that in a cynical way. That's something that any market probably appreciates.

And then on top of that you don't want to spend three hours with somebody that's grating or inauthentic or...is afraid to reveal some of themselves to you. And the part they reveal to you, you admire, or you appreciate, or you tolerate [chuckles] in some cases.

There is, beyond just the skill of announcing, there is a validation of a person's character and personality that goes along with the forty-year run when you've got to talk into a mike for three and a half hours, a hundred and sixty-two times a year! Plus spring training. Plus postseason. Plus everything else!

He has checked all of the boxes. He has an endless amount of energy and enthusiasm for baseball and for this community. And now he's got a lot more time. And I'm interested to see where that gets directed to. I expect it will be in ways that I will admire and also appreciate.

I had never consciously considered it in this way, but I love the idea of baseball commentators having to reveal something of themselves to their audience in order to do their job well.

And there's something about just how much time you spend with them -- I don't watch anywhere near all 162 games in any baseball season (never mind a Twins season, ha! 62 might be a stretch sometimes!) but this had me wondering about the uncountable hours I spent listening to Dick Bremer over my lifetime. Have I spent that much time with any of my partners? Is it only more for my parents? Realizing that he's in that kind of company makes more sense of how affected -- oddly affected, I wanted to say at first, but no -- I was at the news of Bremer's departure.

I was pretty tired today -- not as bad as yesterday, but I was so fatigued that it actually hurt to get up to serve dinner. I looked forward to an early night snuggled up with Gary by 9pm or so.

But then D wanted to watch the first Twins/Blue Jays game with me, and asked when the second one started and it was 9:30 local time, and now it's 12:30 and I just watched Sonny Gray pick Vladdy Jr. off second base in the most amazing way -- I yelled so loud I woke up the dog -- and now it's 11:30 and there's no way I'll feel any less tired at work tomorrow is there.

And I'm not even going to care. How often do I get to see the Twins win a playoff game?

Holy shit, I'm reading a baseball newsletter I love, this edition full of silly questions like "What if two players on the same team who look similar, but one is fine (Hunter Renfroe) and one is maybe the best player of his generation (Mike Trout), pretended to be each other?" and "look at this guy making what's always a difficult throw with his wrong hand!"

And sandwiched between such fun nonsense, I was intrigued by this question because I'm also a fan of a meh team that'll likely just miss the playoffs:

I'm a Cubs fan, and this has been a particularly odd season (read: it sucks) for me from an emotional perspective.

If your team has bad results and is supposed to be bad (2022 Cubs), expectations are calibrated and it's easy to appreciate the season for what it is, invest in the prospects, etc. If your team has bad results and is supposed to be good (2019 Cubs), that's a tough one, but the experience is accessible and explicable. You have an identity! You have a right to be MAD (BULLPEN! MANAGER! INJURIES!)!

This season, after some high highs followed by some low lows, it's averaging out to a mid-talent level Cubs performing like a mid-level team. Which is frustrating. Inexplicably frustrating. They're close to being good, but not close enough to matter. And that's correct. And I'm finding myself having a hard time enjoying it at all, really.

How would you enjoy a season where a meh team, projected to just miss the playoffs, is performing exactly at expectations and will likely just miss the playoffs?

I was not expecting how hard this part of the answer would come for me!

The second approach is tougher. It does not come easily. But it's to accept the sadness, the boredom, the frustration, without judging those feelings. I'm not saying you should try to spin those into good emotions, the way you say you're able to in the hypothetical bad/bad and good/bad seasons; or even ignore them by shutting the team out of your mind. I mean that you can't outrun every hard emotion or bad expectation. When they come, it can be best to simply observe those emotions, be curious about them, know that they are temporary, let them be real. In fact, here’s the A3 advice box in today's New York Times, responding to you, personally!

People fare better when they accept their unpleasant emotions as appropriate and healthy, rather than trying to suppress them. When we perceive our emotions as bad, we pile more bad feelings onto our existing ones, which makes us feel worse. It's likely to increase the intensity of our negative feelings and the amount of time we suffer from them.

What I’m really saying is give yourself a break from the wanting; be sad without wanting to be not sad. Let your want muscles lie fallow for a season, and accept all of life.

I was just thinking this morning that I am trying to keep feeling my feelings but it's hard because I'm just sad all the time lately!

It's been a sad week.

Somehow it was only Monday, this week that I couldn't go see Elliot Page?

And the plans that didn't happen Tuesday night are what I'm missing today, because both D and I couldn't be away so long when one of us has to pin Gary down for his eyedrops (I've done it all five times today, and after he bit me on time #3 (only superficially but the adrenaline crash hit me hard and I was tearing up a lot recently even before that...), he has been very reactive ever since. Including as I update this at 1:30am, not having slept yet for this reason.

And as happy as I was to stay home with the puppy and not go to a movie I hate at the cinema on Wednesday, it is difficult not to feel after a while like fun things are for everyone but me! I didn't even listen to the Doof this week and that's an at-home activity! But I wasn't feeling it after my long day in London.

And next week...a friend asked me how my Thursday was looking and I just laughed bitterly: I knew she'd want a favor and I have a GP appointment for me and a vet appointment for Gary before I even start work, and a meeting for the thing I volunteer for after work...separate from the other meeting relating to that volunteering which I have on Monday night, sandwiched between work and D&D...and our D&D group meets virtually so that's 13 or so hours at the computer altogether.

A busy week is no guarantee of a nice weekend. A weekend sandwiched between two busy weeks no moreso. I was looking forward to seeing a friend tomorrow for a late celebration of her birthday, but I got my days wrong: she'd meant today, which would've been fine, but she wasn't well enough today. And that was it for my plans! It's hard to contemplate going on to another demanding week without some more nice things in between.