Something good finally happens to the Twins

Justin Morneau and Micheal Cuddayer have signed long term deals with the Twins ensuring that we will not have another Hunter/Santana debacle on our hands. Morneau's contract is said to be 6 years long and worth about $80 million while Cuddayer's is 3 years and about $23 million. I think I would have liked them to put another year on Cuddy's contract, but if they move him to center like Gardy (bat-shit crazily) said might happen three years would probably be a better deal for the team to have the 4th year option.

I am really starting to like Bill Smith as the general manager of this team. I don't know about his ability to get the prospects in trades that Terry Ryan always seemed to find but he was willing to trade pitching for batting and now he's signed two very good baseball players to contracts before they got a whiff of free agency. Terry Ryan would be sitting with his thumb up his ass going over the Johan trade offers with a fine toothed comb and too busy to ensure that two of the best players on the club stay here in Minnesota.

Now all Smith has to do to pull off the trifecta of GM brilliance is get the Mets, Red Sox and Yankees back into a bidding war. Get me Lester and Elsbury. Get me Hughs, Kennedy and Cabrerra. Get me a couple players from the Mets that Terry Ryan approves of. Honestly I have no clue about any of the players being offered by the Mets and that scares me, but I didn't know who Joe Nathan, Boof Bonser and Fransisco Liriano were when I was unsure about making Mauer the every day starter (still not sure about how that will play out).

The Star Tribune told me about the contracts.

Why no A.J.?

A.J. Pierzynski didn’t play in the final game of the Twins/ White Sox series today and we here at SPK decided some detective work was necessary. After a few calls and a bribery consisting solely of White Castle’s flavored chicken rings we were able to obtain a transcript of the conversation between Ozzie Guillen and A.J. prior to the game. Enjoy.

Ozzie: (yelling from his office) A.J., ged ing here! Joo god some ‘splaining to do.

A.J. : (enters the room with a wrestling belt around his shoulder) What’s up Oz?

Ozzie: I ayng Berry mad at joo A.J. Why joo godda spikey da NVP’s foot ayng make ada Twings bats work? No es bueno A.J.

A.J.: I don’t know what you’re talking about Oz. I’m a perfect angel and an all-star caliber catcher.

Ozzie: No, joo is mine least favoritest player ayng I hab hated hated joo frong day one.

A.J.: that kinda harsh Oz, I thought you said you liked me.

Ozzie: No, I tell dat (censored) Mariotti ang da media dat we hates joo less causen joos ong da team. Day god 40 hits ing two ganes, A.J. Joo pisses dem off ayng den joo calls a bad gane? Day gonna bean joo for chure if I puts joo out dare today.

A.J.: Come on Oz! I was thinking of sliding into Castillo to try and mess up his knees again today!

Ozzie: Das bad beisbol A.J. joo godda learn dat joo cang jus do dat.

A.J. What if I got Redmond to punch me in the face? Is that bad baseball?

Ozzie: I hate joo A.J.

A.J.: But he’s going to punch me.

Ozzie I’n gonna pun joo ing da face. I wich we coo ged songting in a trade for joo like da Twings. Joo godda sit today, I ayng playing Toby.

A.J.: that’s bullshit Oz, I’m gonna call up all the talk radio in Chicago.

Ozzie: goo, I’n don give a sheet, call de Springer too. Ged oudda her, I godda ting of a nicknangs for de new Twings pitchers.

The twins swept the Sucks today in fantastic fashion. I fell asleep when it was 4-6 and woke up when it was 7-6. A.J. wasn't on the field and the Twins didn't need Redmond's .320 Batting average or Castillo's .334 average. Thats 7/8 games, 47 hits in this last series and a good feeling about my favorite baseball team. When Mauer and Rondell White get back I have a feeling we'll bring it to the rest of the A.L. Central.

ESPN wastes my time: Oden to Blazers

So the NBA lottery has always bothered me and it continues to this day. I’m pissed that ESPN has wasted a half hour of my life knowing full well that they have already told me the same information for the last week. They do this on purpose; make me keep checking back to see if the information has been released. They pretend like this is something special… In reality they probably should have released the draft order at halftime of the game. They introduce a bunch of people I don’t really care about and who will not make a decision for another month. On top of all of this they allow David Stern to beam about the Spurs and Tim Duncan in particular while defending his decision to tank the Sun’s season.

The teams that actually need/ deserve the # 1 pick don’t get it. Milwaukee won it a few years back. Duncan was picked up the one season that David Robinson went down. I recall this one time my favorite basketball team had the worst record with one Mr. O’Neal and one Mr. Mourning in the draft. Who do the Wolves end up with? Christian Laettner… A Duke player. Do me a favor and start naming all of the Duke players that led their NBA team to a championship. Now do it with Tar Heels.

As expected Memphis and the Celtics both got the shaft. You’d think that Stern would have rigged the thing in favor of a team like Boston with such a rich history, but he probably read that thing that John Mellencamp said and decided that he would punish Larry Bird along with Kevin McHale by not giving them the # 1 pick. Actually, I consider staying at #7 a victory. I was sure we would have been kicked back to # 10. The shitty part is that we now have Greg Oden in our division on a team that will be very scary by the time the Wolves consider offering contracts to worthy players (if that ever happens). On top of that the Sonics pick second so Kevin Durant will be in our division as well. Welcome to the basement Minnesota.

The Wolves need to pick up a center or a big guy. I want Roy Hibbert. I’d like to have Al Horford, but he’ll be gone. Neubie’s head would explode if we picked up Joakim Noah and I’ve always wanted to see what that looked like… so I’d be ok with that pick (for a day or two). The Wolves will pick up Yi Jianlian because he is the Asian Mark Blount and if McHale is going to go big he is going to find a way to blow it anyway. I hate my favorite basketball team.

On a side note- does anyone else see the parallels between Noah and A.J. Pierzynski?

LUNCH BREAK: Safe At Home Edition

In the past a road trip by one of the writers on this site would have been accompanied by photo like the one above, but nowhere near as sexy. If I have time later this week I may elaborate on the art of a CD case as a projectile. Until then stare a Sarah Silverman for a while and click on some of the links below.

Is your baseball team getting what it paid for?

A Fan’s View from Section 220 tells Twins fans that 2 out of three ain’t bad, but it’s not time to rejoice yet. Also, Dick Bremer can predict the future.

10,000 Takes has found the world’s tallest (and worst) Baseball player ever.

KG for Shawn Marion? I’m willing to entertain that idea.

Roger Goodell’s NFL is Bass ackwards. Did they make Adrian Peterson do this?

The Wild plan on holding onto Backstrom (via 10000 takes)

Chipper Jones hates inter league baseball and Ozzie Guillen has anger issues.

Free Darko hates on the Spurs and gives us a James White video… I consider that a double bonus.

At this point I’d rather read about NCAA basketball than watch the eventual defeats of the Cavs and Jazz.

God the White Sox are @#$*!!!!

We here at Some-Peoples-Kids have an utter disdain for the Chicago White Sox after a certain incident at U.S Cellular last August landed AdamBez at the first precinct station and myself roaming the south side of Chicago in Twins apparel, trying to find a ride home. Our abhorrence has manifested itself for most of the off season and now will be let out in a torrid of blog entries whenever our Twins play the Sox.

Tonight starts the first series of the season between the Twins and Sox at U.S Cellular and we should see quit the pitchers duel between Javier Vazquez and Carlos Silva. The Twins will hopefully continue to get timely hitting and pray that Silva lasts more than three innings. As for the Sox, they have been on the receiving end of Cleavland's offensive punishment and only squeaked out their first win yesterday when Cleavland's bullpen collapsed in the ninth.

Before the game starts we'd like to thank A.J. Pierzynski for being ok enough to con the Giants out of two little known pitchers by the name of Joe "the savior" Nathan and Mr. Fransisco "El General" Lariano. Quite frankly A.J. is a bitch and a dirty player, but he's not our problem. Actually hes a a big reason this team looks the way it does. We'd also like to thank Contraras for being 1 million years old... If we're thanking the White Sox for being old we might as well thank all of their sluggers, too.

Those bitches on the southside can't even properly bean someone. They all follow A.J.'s dirty lead. One of the best parts of their game may be "small ball" this existed in their World Series run and was then totally forgotten outside of talking to the media. The only reason they'll get more write-ups at SPK is an inexplicable disdain for the Sox, and everything either White or Sockey. Frankly we're more worried about the Indians and Detroit.

Any team that gives its best asian player a nickname that sounds like a woman's "southside" does not deserve the respect of a fine blog like ours. In fact the only person that doesn't get completely ripped apart during a Sox-Twins conversation is Ozzie. The man has said many things that he probably shouldn't have; but he speaks his mind, has a funny accent, swears like a sailor in television interviews, respects the Twins and always-always ends up chewing his team out by the third game of our season.