Twins 2014: Wait 'til Next Year

English: Minneapolis, Minn. (July 17, 2006) - Minnesota Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire the Minnesota Twins vs. Tampa Bay Devil Rays game. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Minnesota Twins will not be worth watching this season.  Maybe in 2015 or '16, who knows.  But not this season.

The baseball experts say this team is a shoo-in for another 90+ loss season.  The Twins have plenty of young talent, but most of those players are simply not ready to make the big move up from the minors.  Until then, the Pohlads have opened up the checkbook to bolster the pitching staff, and they came up with veterans Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes.  They have also kept manager Ron Gardenhire and most of his coaching staff.

Joe Mauer, the Face of the Franchise, is moving to first base in a career-extending move.  Being an MVP catcher has its advantages, but he got knocked in the head once too often, which meant that he was often out on the disabled list with concussion symptoms.  Thus the move to first, where the Twins could use his bat for nearly every game.  Replacing him behind the plate is Kurt Suzuki

The rest of the offense does not inspire confidence, with Brian Dozier, Josh Willingham, Aaron Hicks and others struggling to put runs on the board.  But fear not.  Jason Kubel has returned to the Twins after stints in Arizona and Cleveland, and if he's anywhere near the ballplayer he was in the 2000s, then it's money well spent.  Don't you think?

The upgrade in the pitching staff might mean less need for the bullpen, now led by Glen Perkins as its closer.  But you have to wonder how effective starters Nolasco, Hughes and Mike Pelfrey are going to be against guys who can hit, as opposed to keeping the Twins in the game when their teammates' bats fail them.

Target Field is hosting the MLB All-Star Game this July, and that will be a great chance for folks to see so much talent in one game in one place.   As for the rest of this season, the only talent you're likely to see is the opposition while everyone else in Twins Territory twiddles their thumbs and waits patiently for the Team of the Future.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elsewhere in Major League Baseball:

Alex Rodriguez will not be in a New York Yankees uniform this season.  Or maybe ever.

The season has already started with two games in Sydney, Australia between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks, both won by baseball's newest highest-paid team.

Wrigley Field turns 100 this year.  The Chicago Cubs have been waiting longer than that to win a
World Series.

This is the last season for Vin Scully as the voice of the Dodgers.  The last season for Derek Jeter as a Yankee.  And the last season for Bud Selig as baseball's defacto commissioner.

There are new TV deals with ESPN, Fox and TBS.  There will be more games on cable (with the addition of Fox Sports 1) and fewer on broadcast.  But the All-Star Game and World Series will continue to be on Fox.

Our division projections:

American League

East:  Tampa Bay Rays

Central:  Detroit Tigers

West:  Oakland Athletics

Wild Card:  Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians

National League

East:  Atlanta Braves

Central:  St. Louis Cardinals

West:  Los Angeles Dodgers

Wild Card:  Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks

There's No "Me" In Sportsmanship, Is There?

On March 13, Hopkins defeated Shakopee 49-46 in four overtimes in the semifinal of the Minnesota Class 4A Boys Basketball Tournament in Minneapolis.  A Hopkins player hit the game-winning shot from half court at the buzzer in the fourth overtime, a play that has been run countless times on sports highlight shows.

What America didn't see was what led up to the big shot.  Toward the end of regulation and for the first three overtimes, a Hopkins player stood in the offensive zone with a basketball tucked under his arm, not moving until there were only a few seconds left so his team could take the last shot.  No attempt was made by Shakopee's players to come out of their zone defense, and at least try to foul the Hopkins player.  The Target Center crowd booed unmercifully.

This may have been bad sportsmanship on the coaches' part for using such a stalling tactic, but it's perfectly legal.  Minnesota is one of several states that do not use a shot clock for high school basketball.

But that wasn't all for Hopkins, whose reputation as a glorified all-star team of transfers took a big hit during this tournament.  Following a last-second loss to Lakeville North 84-82 for the 4A championship, some of the players who had just been awarded second-place medals immediately removed them in disgust.

We preach sportsmanship and fair play to so-called student athletes because of this fantasy we all have, sitting in the stands and on the couches, that playing sports will make us better people if we congratulated our opponents for a job well done and by accepting defeat graciously.

That's not how it is for the young athletes, for whom sportsmanship and fair play have long ago taken a back seat.  From the moment they are able to dribble or throw a ball, they have had their entire childhoods (with the exception of schoolwork) devoted to strenuous practice and pressure from coaches and parents to perform at the highest level.  How they develop is often the difference between a scholarship to a major Division I program that might lead to a megabucks pro contract, and a job flipping burgers at McDonalds.

If you are a young athlete whose home situation is so desperate that you need the scholarship and pro contract to help out your family and to get ahead in the world, second place is not gonna cut it.  Failure is not an option.  Nice guys finish last.

It is often said that kids imitate the behavior of the adults around them.  All they have to do is to turn on the TV or their smartphone.  Players who use performance-enhancing substances.  Racial and sexual slurs in the locker room and on the field.  Showing off in the end zone.  Trash talking on social media.  Coaches who freeze the kicker after the ball sails through the uprights.  Need we go on?

Perhaps the Hopkins players might have been "inspired" (if that's the word) by the U.S. Olympic women's hockey team, who lost the gold medal game in overtime to Canada at the Winter Games in Sochi, then pouted as they received their silver medals.  Or how about the 1972 American Olympic men's basketball team?  To this day, not one of those players has accepted their silver medals after a controversial loss to the then-Soviet Union, who won the gold medal at the Summer Games in Munich.

Selfish behavior?  Yes.  Understandable in the heat of the moment?  Yes.  Is this what we want our youth to emulate?  Certainly not.  But they're going to do it anyway.

So don't blame the young man if he throws his second-place "thanks for competing" medal in the garbage after a close defeat.  Blame the adults in his life who brought him to this point.

Arthur Chu Is Out of "Jeopardy"

Jeopardy Sign - CES09 (Photo credit: justin_levy)

In "Jeopardy"'s 50 years on TV, few contestants have been as controversial as Arthur Chu, who just completed a 12-day run on the quiz show with a grand total of $297,200. 

Chu is the actor and freelance voiceover artist from Ohio who just might have created the template for future players to win at "Jeopardy", even if it cheeses off longtime viewers.  His method was to seek the bottom of the "Jeopardy" board (where the most money is) to find the hidden "Daily Double", instead of the usual route of going category by category.  Oh, and it also helps to be quick on the signaling device and knowing the correct question to the answer.  By the time "Final Jeopardy" arrived, Chu was usually so far ahead of his opponents that it really didn't matter whether he answered correctly or not.

Chu came across to some viewers as this smug, condescending punk who ruined the game of "Jeopardy" as they knew it.  Not only is this a racist sentiment (Chu is of Asian descent), but it also teaches us that winners are not always nice people.  We've known that at least since the days of Vince Lombardi.

Chu's reign on the show lasted 12 days, which might have seemed longer because of breaks for special tournaments, until he finally met his Waterloo on the episode that aired March 12.  Trailing for much of the game, he missed on "Final Jeopardy"  in response to the answer of who was the last British monarch who wasn't Prince of Wales.  The correct response was:  Who was George VI?  A woman named Diana Peloquin of Ann Arbor, Michigan got that right.  Her reign as "Jeopardy" champ was brief, lasting only into the next episode.

Chu has nothing on Ken Jennings.  His run on "Jeopardy" back in 2004 netted $2.5 million over 74 consecutive appearances before losing on his 75th.  Jennings has since returned to the show a few times to compete in tournaments, including one in which he matched wits with an IBM computer named Watson.

"Jeopardy", which premiered on NBC in 1964, was created by talk show host Merv Griffin, who was also responsible for "Wheel of Fortune".  The current Alex Trebek-hosted syndicated version is now in its 30th season.

So, going forward, will other contestants follow Arthur Chu's lead and hop around the "Jeopardy" board to get as much money as they possibly can?  Or will the producers tinker with the format and make things tougher for those who try?  As long as the show doesn't resort to Chu competing against  Jennings or a computer, the answers to those can only be in the form of a question.