Home Runs and Playoffs and other Convoluted Thoughts

The Minnesota Twins hit 307 home runs this season. That is more home runs than any team in the history of major league baseball! The New York Yankees hit 306 this year. The Twins and Yankees won their respective divisions and will meet this week in the divisional playoffs.

The fact that the Yankees were out-homered by the Twins will be an extra incentive for the Yankees -- giving them something to prove; motivating, energizing, focusing their hitters. It's the kind of thing managers sometimes use to fire up a team.

On the other hand, the Twins can look at their remarkable home run record and feel confident, secure, motivated to prove it wasn't a fluke. Indeed, more Twins players (5) hit thirty or more home runs this year than any team in history (the Yankees had just two 30+ HR hitters). The Twins power can come from anywhere in the lineup. Heck, the backup catcher is a home run threat!

On the other hand, the playoff series starts in Yankee Stadium, a place where the Twins have not done well historically and where the ballpark favors the home team's big left-handed sluggers.

On the other hand, the rookie manager and most of the Twins players are not part of that Yankee Stadium futility. They have no reason to fear the jinx. Moreover, the Twins have the best road record in the major leagues this year, so being away from home is no big deal.

It is a little tiring to listen to the baseball analysts on the TV and the radio and the bar stool (and this blog) because the hell of it is that nobody knows.

Let's play ball!

Craig Finn, from somewhere down near the Iowa border, founded The Hold Steady and moved to New York, but he's still a Twins fan and wrote this song as an homage. Enjoy!

And besides, the Twins have La Tortuga. Nobody hurdles La Tortuga...

Fame is Fleeting

It's the birthday (1896) of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. He wrote short stories, novels, and screenplays. He moved around a lot -- St. Paul, New York, Paris, Los Angeles. He drank too much and died young. He's still famous around these parts because of his connection to St. Paul.

Here's a picture of the lovely brownstone on Summit Avenue where he lived for a while.

When he was in town, he hung out at the bar in the Commodore Hotel a few blocks away. The building has been converted to condominiums but the bar has been restored and is open to the public. They're having drink specials today, I assume. I have not yet visited the Commodore but it's on the bucket list.

Today is also the birthday (1934) of Arne Carlson, former Governor of Minnesota and frequent commentator on local affairs. Arne was born in New York and went to Choate prep school back east. He came to Minnesota for grad school and never left. He's a sharp-tongued iconoclast, which makes him fun to watch even when he's wrong. Arne has been known to frequent the Commodore bar.

Bob Dylan mentions F. Scott Fitzgerald in this song. I do not know if Bob has visited the Commodore, but I can picture him brooding silently in a corner there.

And in this time-travel scene from Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," Scott and Zelda make a cameo appearance. Enjoy!

The Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul is named for F. Scott, as is a little pub on Selby Avenue called, simply, The Fitz. I've heard The Fitz has good deep-dish pizza, which has nothing at all to do with F. Scott.

Crime doesn't usually pay

On this day in 1876, Jesse and Frank James, along with Cole Younger and Clell Miller and a couple of other bad guys, tried to rob the First National Bank in Northfield, MN. They failed for two main reasons: First, one of the bank employees lied to the robbers in the bank by saying the vault was on a timed lock and he couldn't open it on demand. Second, one of the gang outside got panicky and fired a shot, thereby alerting the townsfolk. Somebody famously yelled, "Git yer guns, boys, they're robbin' the bank!" A gunfight ensued. Some of the would-be robbers were killed, some arrested, a few others escaped.

The event is commemorated each year in our sleepy little town with a parade, an art fair, a rodeo, a carnival, and the inevitable corn dog and taco vendors. There are some re-enactments (right there on Division Street) of the failed bank raid, using real horses, some wanna-be cowboys, and pistols with blanks.

We usually try to leave town to avoid the noise and the crowds.

Here's Minnesota's own Erik Koskinen singin' about guns and banks and stuff. Saw Erik and his band at the Turf Club a few years ago, which was fun even though the drinks were overpriced.

Enjoy!

Anticipation

Monday, September 3, 1883: An elegant party was held in St. Paul to celebrate completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad -- which ran from St. Paul all the way to the Pacific coast. (The party was a bit premature: the final connection wasn't made until September 8.) The President of the railroad, Henry Villard, greeted esteemed guests including the President of the USA Chester A. Arthur, retired general Ulysses S. Grant and Grant's buddy General Philip Sheridan. Later that year, Sheridan would become Commander General of the US Army. In that capacity, he helped protect the railroads by "pacifying" the native tribes in the west.

Here's a brilliant song by Eilen Jewell that references railroads.

Coincidentally, September 3 also marks the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American revolution and established the good old USA as a free and independent republic. The western border of the country was the Mississippi river, with the rest still occupied by France and England and Spain and Mexico. It took a few more wars and a few more treaties to follow the railroads to the Pacific ocean.

Ben Franklin was one of the signatories to the Treaty of Paris. He would go on to establish the US Post Office, invent a wood stove, father several children with French prostitutes, and found a chain of small department stores.

The French helped us win the Revolutionary War (thanks, General Lafayette!) but would later test our alliance by foisting Yves Montand upon the world. Here's Mr. Montand advising us to use an alternative to the rapacious railroads.

Juxtapositions

Today is the birthday of two great philosophers.

John Locke was born in England in 1632. He is said to be one of the founders of political liberalism and a key figure in the Age of Enlightenment. He was also a physician so he advocated empiricism over mysticism, facts over conjecture, democracy over tyranny, and whiskey over beer. Many of his ideas were incorporated into the constitution of the USA.

Michael Jackson was born on this day in 1958. He was a noted singer and dancer and very strange person. His political philosophy was much like Locke's insofar as Jackson favored the pursuit of happiness, although he was a kind of forlorn character.

I've been reading a book called Nature's Mutiny by Philipp Blom, about the so-called little ice age of the 16th and 17th centuries. He argues that the changes wrought by that century-long cold snap in Europe helped shape economics and politics for centuries thereafter. Locke figures prominently in the story. It seems Locke fell in with a group whose goal was to weaken the power of King Charles II. Charles' people didn't appreciate that, so Locke had to flee to Amsterdam for a decade or so.

Locke's theses on political power and corruption may have been the inspiration for Mr. Jackson's anti-establishment musical essay "Smooth Criminal."

This is an historic day (even more than usual)

In 413 BC, troops from Syracuse (no, not New York - the one on what is now Sicily) defeated the Athenians, which made Syracuse (Siragusa) briefly the center of the Hellenic empire. If you go to Siragusa, eat at the Medusa restaurant on the island of Ortygia. Those folks were really nice to us.

On this date in 1896, British troops battled some overmatched rebels in Zanzibar. The British had installed a territorial governor on the island a few years earlier, but some picky Zanzibarians objected. When they mounted a coup and took down the British-appointed government, the British decided the Zanzibarians had misbehaved badly, so they blasted the bloody hell out of the capital and took back the territory. The battle lasted 45 minutes (although some accounts put it closer to 30 minutes). Zanzibar is now a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania.

Then, on August 27, 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson was born. Long story short: war cost him his job.

St. Paul's own Dave Frishberg wrote a song about Zanzibar.

Zanzibar was also the name of a funky little bistro in Red Wing, Minnesota. Alas, it closed a few years ago. Such is the march of history.

Good poetry, good music, good day

It's the birthday of Declan Patrick McManus, born in 1954 in London, England. In addition to recording as Elvis Costello (often backed by The Attractions, sometimes by The Imposters), he has recorded music as Declan MacManus, Napoleon Dynamite and The Royal Guard, The Coward Brothers (with T-Bone Burnett), Nick Lowe and His Sound, and The Emotional Toothpaste.

He's prolific.

It's also the birthday of Bill Holm (1943), poet, essayist, humorist, composer. He grew up in the tiny farming town of Minneota, Minnesota. He spent considerable time in Iceland and in China, teaching and writing and having a fine time.

I have most of his published work on the bookshelf near the bed. His stuff is fresh and insightful and fun.

This poem is from his collection "Box Elder Bug Variations."

MINNESOTA WINTERS ARE DIFFICULT FOR
CREATURES WHOSE WEIGHT CANNOT BE
MEASURED IN STONES

A box elder bug surprised out
in west wind at forty below
rode swirling snow
clean out of Minnesota,
wound up embalmed in
an ice cube in Pennsylvania,
scared hell out of a lady
who found red stripes in her gin
and tonic, thought she'd seen 
the face of God.