Maybe we are at a crossroads with MLB and pro sports in general.
Do we really think we can keep pro sports – where millions of dollars in contracts/revenues/etc. are at stake – clean?

Also, do we really WANT to know if players are cheating? I remember when Big Mac did his 70 thing in 1998 w/Sosa and the AP reporter snooped in his locker and found Andro and we (the sporting public) more or less wanted it to go away so we could watch the Great HR Chase of ’98.

Just thinking out loud…

Ryan on stepping down: “This is a necessity for my sanity.”

Didn’t see this one coming – just heard from the one (and only) Scott Stebbing via the telephone that TR is going to step down as the Twins’ GM.

Terry Ryan has always been a tough nut to crack – he would have made a good CIA operative during the Cold War, he’s so good and not tipping his hand.

But this is no question a huge blow to the Twins, who have built their entire being on having the best scouting and player development system in MLB. The Twins are almost always exclusively home grown in terms of top talent, and then when those guys get too good at the MLB level Pohlad cuts ‘em loose. And more up-and-coming young players come in to fill those spots.

Ryan has been the mastermind behind it all and he’s also the guy who was savvy enough to add Johan Santana as a Rule V pick, and to ship AJ to the Giants for Joe Nathan, Boof and Francisco Liriano.

We’ll miss him, that’s for dang sure.

I’m curious to find out why Ryan is quitting his post, though. I’ll find out soon enough – apparently there is a 2 p.m. Central press conference.

I’m having a nice little run lately with some fun interviews. I recently got to sit down with “Prairie Home Companion” host, author and humorist Garrison Keillor – he’s one of us, by the way, born in Anoka, Minnesota – for an upcoming national magazine article.

Keillor is a fascinating guy and one of the greatest storytellers alive right now. During the interview I asked him how he comes up with all his Lake Wobegone stories and he started riffing on a desk in his office:

“All of the stories come out of some little germ of real life. You don’t really need much at all. I mean here’s a desk, which is a piece of carpentry that was made for me by a cabinet maker in New York City. I even now forget his name. He made it in a shop down on the lower East Side and he delivered it to me in 1989. So this is going on 20 years for this for this old desk. And then a row of drawers on the back of it. You could make a story out of this in Lake Wobegone. Somebody who works with wood made this, and like most people who work with wood, this person would be a mystery to others. I just think that’s one of the greatest gifts, to be able to make things out of wood. My father was very good with his hands. He would have admired this desk. He would have looked at it, looked at the underside of it, and seen how it was put together. Somehow there’s a story in this piece of furniture.”

Keillor’s voice is mesmerizing, and that is why listening to him talk about a piece of furniture is fascinating.

The full story isn’t coming out until November and I’ll update this space when it does with links/etc.

Meantime you can check out some audio I gathered during the interview. It features GK talking about his life, faith and more and is on my “Faith & Fastballs” page at my web site.

My favorite clip would have to be the story of how Keillor tried to use an unfinished novel as collateral to secure a bank loan. If that loan officer would have only known!

Last thing, and this is for my good friend Dave Bateson, a huge fan of Keillor’s politics. Here’s GK’s take on several political figures, past and present:

“Paul Wellstone was a wrestler and he had the body of a wrestler. He was always bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. I used to run into him in the airport sometimes. And he would see me coming and he’d come towards me, bouncing up and down. And he would be poking at me with his index finger. And he always had something urgent he wanted to tell you. I admired that in him. I also admired the fact that when he went into restaurants, he always went into the kitchen and shook hands with the people who cooked the meals and the dishwashers.”

“George W. Bush – I think of Amherst and Yale and I think of a young man who felt so terribly out of place in both places. And who suffered through his adolescense and his college years. He really was an unhappy young man at Yale. Surrounded by all those very vocal, articulate, left wing people. Terribly, terribly unhappy there. And I feel sorry for him.”

“Barak Obama – the great white hope, really. The great white hope of liberals. The wish that this man would turn out to be somebody. So many people just are not sure yet, but they really want him to succeed. They’re waiting and hoping. And in the meantime he’s running a very credible, remarkable, respectable campaign for president. For a first-term senator from Illinois without much of a record it’s pretty amazing.”

“Jesse Ventura has gone off into retirement. One hears different stories about him. But he has sort of disappeared. And I feel sorry about him. I think he could have turned into a remarkable populist governor of Minnesota. But he was much too thin skinned. He was his own worst enemy, as he himself said. He made good appointments as commissioners and so forth. Nobody really disagrees with that. he was a lot better than people expected, and he wasn’t quite as good as he could have been.”

I have to say my new favorite NFL coach is Kansas City’s Herm Edwards. I got to observe him closely this summer covering KC’s training camp for a few weeks, and came away really impressed with how he conducts himself, both as a coach and as a Christian.

This week I played back an interview I did with Herm for Faith & Fastballs on KTIS AM radio.

It’s easy to want to root for somebody like Herm Edwards because after talking with him you realize he knows what really matters during our time here on this planet.

With the word coming down that Roy Hobbs cheated by taking HGH back in 2004, is baseball left with nothing sacred in 2007? Even the feel-good stories don’t feel good. Performance-enhancing drugs have tainted every aspect of MLB it seems.

Well, St. Louis should be used to this by now.

Too often in real life our Roy Hobbs characters do exactly what Ankiel has and what Hobbs actually did in the book version of “The Natural” – sell out.

Now that the season is over, we look at what went wrong.

It’s simple, really.

1. NOT ENOUGH TALENT – in particular Third Base and Left Field. Those were the Black Holes that ****** this offense & this team’s chances dry.

2. NOT ENOUGH (okay, any) PERSONNEL HELP – Ponson and Ortiz flamed out and wasted time instead of getting Garza & Slowey going, and Jeff Cirillo didn’t even want to play baseball anymore, openly talking about retiring during the season!

The Luis Castillo “trade” was like waving the white flag three rounds too early during a prizefight. Just because you were probably going to lose him as a free agent doesn’t mean you give up on the 2007 season in July and get two nothing, low level prospects for him. I mean, if they are already saying C Drew Butera is a “good throw” defensive catcher, what the heck do you want him for? He’s only in Single A and Double A and they already know he can’t hit. Neither could his old man. Whoopee.

Also, we hear endlessly how great our farm system is, in particular our great core of young starting pitchers – Perkins, Slowey, Garza, Boof, Baker, etc. And we can’t trade even ONE of these guys for a bopper who can hit 30 home runs and stabilize 3B or LF for years to come? Gimme a break.

Lastly, not locking up Hunter & Santana speaks volumes about Carl Pohlad’s approach. He got his stadium, and despite what we heard to the contrary, the wallet remains firmly padlocked.

3. NOT ENOUGH OFFENSE – The bats were silent for weeks and sometimes months at a time. That wore out both the starting rotation and especially the bullpen.

Frustrating year, to say the least!

Biggest game of the year, so the Twins turn to the Silva Bullet, aka Chief, and of course he lays a big, fat EGG.

Ugh.

Nothing like putting your team in a 7-0 hole to kick off the biggest game of 2007.

Now, for the final time, I think I can say – the Twins are DONE.

I hope beyond hope the Twins do not bring this guy back in ’08 – I don’t care if he is Johan’s best buddy on the team – Silva has been a stiff when the team has needed him most.

So, when does 2008 Spring Training start again?

The Twins are still playing meaningful games here in late August, which few of us thought would happen. That has more to do with CLE and DET refusing to run away with the AL Central than it does the Twins catching fire a la 2006, but we’ll take it!

3 games at CLE starting Monday night. At minimum we have to take 2 of 3 – really, we need a sweep, but first things first.

At least the Twins are getting some momentum right now and hitting the ball, which, funny, seems to really boost the team’s chances of winning!

The pitching is there, and if the bats can just keep pumping out even 4-5 runs a game, the Twins will win the lion’s share of games down the stretch.

It all starts Monday night, and I for one will be firmly back on the bandwagon!

Amazing. Every time I’m ready to count the Twins out, they make a little rumble. If tonight’s games hold Minnesota wakes up tomorrow only 5.5 back in the AL Central with a lot of games left vs. CLE and DET.

Funny, this little 3 game winning streak happens to coincide with the offense FINALLY waking up.

I’m on the bandwagon again, baby! If we start hitting like this on a regular basis, we have a good chance to catch CLE.