Twins Fan

The thing about writing, for me, is that my best stuff never makes it on "paper." It's stream-of-thought randomness when I'm riding my bike. Or when I've had just enough coffee, my brain moving at the perfect clip--genius. I wrote the best speech the other day, for me to give in a couple months--problem is, I was half sleeping when I "wrote" it. No one will ever hear it.

Once I sit down in front of a computer, my words simply don't melt together with the same brilliance, as you are well aware.

Really though, it isn't a problem.

For the first time in my life, I am a Twins fan. That isn't a problem, either. I am a born and bred and shameless (except for that whole McGwire thing) St. Louis Cardinals fan--and pre-InBev Anheuser-Busch groupie, too--and that will always trump the little team that could, the Twinkies. Al-ways. Rhymes with Al-bert.

Actually, you have to throw all of those cute little criticisms like Twinkies out. Now.

The Twins have a REAL stadium, Target (what else?) Field, maybe even the bestest of the modern era stadiums, I shall see next weekend--against the Cardinals, mind you. They have Mauer. They have Morneau. They have Span. They don't have the Metrodome. They will soon have many more real fans--you know, people who will brave some elements and pay attention to the game.

Question: Why is Joe Nathan on the 40-man roster? Please tell me it isn't for some sappy sentimental B.S. Regardless, get well soon Joe.

Seriously, folks, this is a good team, and it has been for a few years. It is a real baseball team and organization. This will be my ninth baseball season in Minnesota. Now until recently--like, last year--I referred to Twins fans as the biggest suckers in baseball. This was an educated baseball observation from a guy who is from a true baseball town. You see, the Twins had one of the richest baseball owners yet the organization typically spent just enough to make the team just good enough--but not quite good enough. Blame it on the big bad Yankees? Ha.

"We're small market." Uh, you're bigger market than St. Louis. Smaller win totals, yes, smaller market, no.

Suckers.

Enter 2010, enter Target Field, enter Joe Mauer here for the long haul, enter $100 million payroll--who doesn't like a big fat payroll, eh?--enter a team even Chad can root for, though I'll never ask Bert to circle me or crave Dan Gladden's commentary.

I know, we lost to them in 1987. Blah blah. I'm still way more pissed at Don Denkinger than I ever was about the Twins. Funny story . . . I went to the Final Four at the Metrodome a few years ago, sat in the top row. On one of the pipes overhead was scrawled, "Cox Sucks." If you don't know to what that refers, you're too young to be reading this. Go to bed.

Anyway, here I am now a baseball fan in a hockey town--not a baseball town--but of course I am a hockey player, so it all works out. Maybe someday this will be a baseball town.

And I'm a Twins fan, though yes, there is still only one proper use for a Homer Hanky, and it ain't wavin' it at the ballpark.

So it is, with just two words left to say--and say 'em wth me: Pu-Jols.

Clocks

*** "I'm a clock-a rock-a, rockin' wit-da-rest." ***

It's been in our family for about 40 years. As children, we'd tear down our steps, banking left for the final four, and jump to ground level--stopping just in front of the clock, it ringing and rattling, like a growl. I'm not sure what the consequences would have been had a landing been "within" the clock, but I'm sure nobody would've been whistlin' dixie over shattered glass, a cut child, and a wounded grandfather clock.

It's a nice clock, maybe German and maybe 100 years old. That's what Brett the Clock Repairman said.

I was surprised the other night waking up to noise, a sick-clock noise, and a poor-for-sleeping smell. It was a sick-clock smell, I soon learned. I collected myself in the half-light of dawn, not quite scrambling to get out of bed but eager, wondering why my clock sounded sick and my house smelled.

Smoke, I saw it as soon as I landed at the bottom of the stairwell and turned left, one foot in the kitchen. Smoke from the clock, the sick clock. It's a big clock, a seven-feet-tall rectangle the size of a case of longneck beer bottles if you hugged it. I like the clock, but I can't say I've ever hugged it.

Where there's smoke you must stick your head in to find out why there is smoke. So I did that, the dong and chime wheezing all the while, probably from the smoke.

Why is my grandfather clock on fire?

It won't extinguish even though I'm sure it doesn't like water dumped all over it. I'll take it outside, to the backyard, hurl it out the door to rest there, sick from smoking and finally unable to injure others.

Now is my chance to hug the clock, hold time in my hands.

I can't though, not easily. It's big, not so much heavy but cumbersome. Wrestle it, to the floor. See why it's on fire. Fix the fire.

It's a heater, like a furnace. It has burners in it, the clock has natural gas burners, just like the massive furnace in my childhood basement with the blue flames I used to stare at, and hold slivers of wood to the flame.

My grandfather clock is a furnace of sorts, burners and everything.

Water doesn't help, it just keeps burning. Get it off the floor, drag it--drag it like a roll of carpet, heavy like a big tube of sand, but it will move. It has to move. A burning clock belongs outdoors.

I made the kitchen, made it to the kitchen. Two men, Somali men, my roommates I guess, pop from around the corner, looking at me, plain looks on their faces as to say, "Nothing unusual going on here." I nod to the back door.

They look at me, plain looks on their faces.

"Open the door!"

Door open, they walk, out the door. The door closes.

That's not helpful.

I put the big clock down, fire and smoke too. I have to open the door. I hear fire trucks. Not for me, it's just a furnace clock on fire, nobody knows but me--and my roommates.

We made it. Outside . . . clock, smoke, fire, and I, outside.

The fire trucks are here, they stopped, for me.

They can deal with the clock, right here in the grass. The clock is in the grass, right here.

Neighbors, all eyes up. Smoke, fire.

The roof is on fire?

Confusion, the confusion, it never stops. A fire impossible to put out.

Celebrated

***Caesars Tahoe; Stateline, Nevada. Only the name has changed.***

From April 1993 through August 1999, I worked at Caesars Tahoe. Needless to say, the entire experience was magical.

Seriously though, folks, there are three things people typically ask me about said occupation:

1. What is the secret to gambling? Answer: Don't play.
2. What is the weirdest thing that happened to you there? Answer: Tough call. Watching a guy take a leak in a slot machine coin try, in full view of everyone? An armed robbery in our casino? Seeing Patrick Swayze's penis? 
3. Did you ever meet anyone famous? Answer: Yes.

Now let's get something straight from the get-go: Celebrities are fine, but I've never really understood why we celebrate them. Give me some of your cash, bigshot, then we'll celebrate. Oh okay, some entertainers should be celebrated--Wayne Gretzky and Ronald McDonald, to name two, but generally I just don't care. I prefer to leave it at, I appreciate you entertaining me, Mr./Ms. Superfreak, but really, no, I don't want your autograph or to touch you.

That said, as a group over six years, the collection of these people that I met is fairly interesting. In fact, someday I will sit down and list them all, just because. The better list though is the group of non-celebrated characters I met along the way, believe you me. Those are the folks who will someday be characters in my short stories, whether they like it or not. Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Mario Lemieux, Dan Marino, Jack Wagner (I still have no idea who this plastic man is), Carmen Electra, Marty Schottenheimer, John Smoltz, Oscar de la Hoya, Charlie Sheen, Chris Isaac, Bobby Brown, blah blah blah are generally not half as attention grabbing as casino regulars George, Ralph, Carol, Frankie, Hal, et.al. are, though a couple in that celebrity list are pretty cool cats.

For the most part, though, it's the the nice, interesting average Joes met along the way that you remember.

My parents moved to Minnesota several years before I, so naturally I would visit from time to time. During one of those visits to Minnesota, my mother and I had lunch at the Union Depot in St. Paul, at a place called LeAnn Chin's--delicious Chinese food it was.

A year, maybe two, later, a nice woman seated in the VIP slot area at Caesars made a simple request, and being the customer service-centric man I am, I was happy to accommodate. In the process, I took her Emperor's Club (player-tracking) card, took a look at it and her account, and, well, it was a woman named LeAnn Chin. Her account listed her as from Minneapolis.

I always enjoy it when someone tells me they enjoyed something I was associated with, so I really wanted to compliment her on the delicious lemon chicken I had at her restaurant. Or was it her restaurant? I'm sure there is more than one woman named LeAnn Chin in the world, but in Minneapolis? So I returned to her, told her my story of eating at LeAnn Chin's in St. Paul, and asked if indeed she is THAT LeAnn Chin. She was, and we had a brief conversation about her, her restaurants, and when my fortune from her cookie would come to be. Very nice, soft-spoken woman.

For the record, she gambled at a very reasonable level for a woman of her means--and of course we the casino knew all about her means.

Anyway, LeAnn Chin died Wednesday, here's a nice recap of her life. While people outside of Minnesota likely have no idea who she is, everyone in Minnesota, and especially the Twin Cities, knows LeAnn Chin.

So, celebrity or average Joe? The latter to me, and those are the ones I remember.

Joe Mauer

***Oh I love this photo, I get so excited when it pops up as my desktop photo. (And sorry, City of Minneapolis, Bernie did not have a city license to play in your lovely Minnehaha Dog Park. Ha ha.)***

I've always been good about going to the dentist, you know, the every six-month thing. This is good because it is good and because I still have the tendency to put things in my mouth that technically you aren't supposed to put in your mouth. I had a dentist in Tahoe whose office was right on the lake, I mean primo--is that how you spell that?--land, you're sitting in the chair on the second or third floor, the lake in front of you. All water, it was like you were suspended over the lake. And I remembered sitting in that chair one time thinking, This is kind of cool, a world away from home, sitting in this bizarro setting for a dentist's office--right over the lake, like I am some sort of VIP dental patient.

Then there was Sacramento. I moved there on a whim, almost, knew nothing or no one, and at some point I had to find a dentist. So I did, somehow, no office over a lake at this dentist. It took the like five minutes to do the whole teeth cleaning thing. I was used to a half hour, maybe an hour. You sit, they look, they clean, they polish, and in between you spit a lot. Not Sacramento dentist, though. He looked, I think he flossed, then he said, "You're good to go." That was the only time I went to the dentist in Sacramento. I was there two years, so I guess I missed out on a couple cleanings.

Here in St. Paul, my dentist is four blocks from my house, so I walk there. I wish I lived somewhere I could walk about everywhere. I went to New York City last week, would be great to walk and ride a bike there all the time. Anyway, my hygienist here is from St. Petersburg, Russia. Her name is Nona. About five years ago, I was walking to my appointment, and my cell phone rang. It was this Eastern European accent talking. She said, "Is this Chad?" I said, "Yes." Terminator feminina said, "You are late." Apparently, my appointment was at one and I thought it was at 1:15. I'd never met Nona at that time, and I was scared. I thought she was going to chisel my mouth like Vladimir Tretiak would chisel my ankles if I was standing in his goal crease. Anyway, Nona is a gem, is still my hygienist. We have a great time every six months.

On to Joe Mauer. From time to time, you meet someone here who knows/knew Joe from childhood--he's from St. Paul, you know--and they have a good story about Joe. So a friend today told me a story from this past fall. Joe was hosting a mutual friend of his and my friend's roommate's bachelor party at his cabin up north this fall. So Mr. MVP all-everything baseball player was somehow put in charge of making all the arrangements for this bachelor weekend. So my friend's roomie gets this message on his cell phone, "Hey (whatever the guy's name is), this is Joe Mauer. I'm trying to make plans for the bachelor weekend and need to ask you a couple things."

So yeah, that's Joe Mauer, the guy who shows up with the Silver Bat and hits the tar out of the ball day in and day out, taking care of the nuts and bolts of a bachelor party weekend for a boyhood Minnesota buddy. That should answer the question of, Will he stay in Minnesota?

Uh, yeah.