Last night I was driving somewhere, Twins game on the radio—they're playing the Yankees, who have a win percentage so far of .714, the best in baseball—when a Twin hit a ball to right field. Don't know exactly what happened but whatever it was caused broadcaster Dan Gladden to exclaim, "Stanton cannot play outfield!" Before leaving to run errands, I'd been watching on TV when the Twins scored the first runs of the game after Stanton ran back on a deep fly, then decided to play it off the wall, which he did—after the ball had landed at the base of the fence. Gladden's declaration came after he subsequently turned another fly out into another double. Before I got back home, he made yet another bad play (according to Gladden).
My intention is not to pick on Stanton but just to point out to the anti-fans in my life that no team is without flaws. By "anti-fan" I mean people who, told that the Twins are doing "pretty good," or that Buxton had two more extra base hits yesterday, reply
When did they last win a playoff game?
or
He just came off an 0-for-30 streak, plus he's always injured.
Yes, I read about these issues in the Strib. But the Yankees, who are on pace to win more than 110 games, play a right fielder who might as well use a metal glove, and have you ever wondered when the Seattle Mariners last won a playoff game? Or consider the Los Angeles Angels. They have Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, probably the two best players in baseball. A couple years ago, they spent a sum of money that would be regarded as nontrivial by the main sponsor of the Saudi golf league in order to sign a 3rd baseman, Anthony Rendon, who is currently batting .242 (and not playing on account of a balky wrist). Trout got a hit the other day that ended an 0-for-26 drought. Their current record is 27-31. They've lost 13 games in a row and just fired their manager. Their last season with a winning record was 2015.
I'm mainly trying to talk myself out of a tendency I know I have—dwelling obsessively on the Twins' weaknesses, about which I'm intimately familiar since I follow them every day, and unthinkingly thinking that life must be perfect for the fans of other teams. It's not even perfect for Yankee fans, and maybe there's a life lesson here hidden in plain sight. Everyone knows what they're up against, but it's not like the rest of human experience is accurately reflected on Instagram. For that, we have literature—John Cheever's fantastical, enormous radio, for example, and I like too this poem by Thomas Hardy.
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