Monday,
January 31, 2011
Your
Twins Fest Stories!
It’s
Monday morning after Twins Fest. I am exhausted. What a weekend! It was a great
time at the Hot Stove Banquest and also spending two great days at Twins Fest.
Yes, it got a little (OK, a lot) crowded on Saturday, but overall, it was still
a lot of fun! It was great spending time there with Fanatic Jack, The North Dakota Twins Fan, Marty Andrade,
Betsy Bissen, Karlee Kanz, Topper Anton, Emily Jipp and Andrew Bryz-Gornia, and on Friday night,
it was great hanging out with John Bonnes and Howard Sinker, and meeting a few new people.
I talked to a lot of people and a lot of players. But now I must embark upon my
7 hour trek north, back home and back to reality. Oh well. It was a great
weekend and I will definitely share stories here tomorrow.
But
for today, I need you to fill up the comments section with your thoughts and
your stories from Twins Fest. Some of the better stories may be posted here as
well. If you’ve blogged about the weekend, be sure to leave your links here as well so others
will read them.
Friday,
January 28, 2011
Twins
Fest is Upon Us
Just
a few quick notes and links before I begin a very full, fun-filled
Twins-related weekend.
First,
a big thank you to Josh Johnson, Nick Lenz and also to Joe Benson and Kyle Gibson for this. It’s pretty cool.
Again,
tonight I will be at the Hot Stove League Banquet. I’m excited to see Jim Kaat
speak, and of course to hang out with John, TVOR, Howard and his wife and
hopefully several others. Here is directly stealing something LaVelle blogged the other day, an
e-mail from Julian, about the event:
Juan
Berenguer has been added to the line-up for Ballpark Tours 3rd
Annual Last Hot Stove League Banquet & Charity Auction scheduled for this
Friday Jan 28th – Carpenter’s Hall 710 Olive Street in St. Paul.
Senor Smoke will join Jim Kaat at the podium as our keynoters. In addition,
local author Pete Schilling will chat about the art of heckling & a couple
of media usual suspects (not sure who yet) will take part in our Q & A. The
focus of the event is to raise money for the Dunning Little League baseball
program & this anti-dome crowd will be able to bid on an auction item sure
to ‘bring down the roof’!!!! The Ballpark Tours gang has raised over $50,000
for the fields at Dunning over the years.
Tickets
are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Tickets can be purchased at Anodyne
Coffee, 43rd and Nicollet, 612-824-4300 and St. Paul: Golden Thyme Coffee, 921
Selby, 651-645-1340.
•
John
Bonnes and The Voice of Reason went to the Diamond Awards last night. John blogged about his thoughts, and I think it’s fair to say that TVOR had some
thoughts as well.
•
Rob
Delaney has been claimed by the Tampa Bay
Rays. I liked Delaney and what he did from the time he signed with the Twins as
a non-drafted free agent following the 2006 draft through AA was remarkable. He
had two option years left, and yet, I got the sense from many that he wasn’t going
to make it with the Twins. He struggled at AAA. I liked the K-rate and the lack
of walks, but most believed that he just
did not have the ‘stuff’ to succeed in the big leagues. The Rays, who like the
Twins lost a lot of their bullpen, can probably use Delaney more than that
Twins would. Everything I’ve ever heard about Delaney is that he is a great
guy, a great teammate, and I’m sure there are a lot of players in the Twins
organization who will be saddened by this news.
•
As
for Dusty Hughes, the left-handed
reliever that the Twins signed after the Royals let him go, my general thoughts
are… Meh. That he was let go by the Royals doesn’t bother me at all. It’s
funny, especially with left-handers but with any reliever, you just don’t know
what you’ll get from day to day, much less year to year. I have no problem with
the transaction, and maybe it’ll be a good thing. Maybe he can be the next Craig Breslow. I doubt it, but who
knows?
•
Nick
Nelson posted some good thoughts about it as part of his Three-Bagger. Needless to say, Nick has not been a big fan of
the Twins front office decisions most of this offseason.
•
You
can pre-order a copy of the Maple Street Press Twins Annual 2011
that John Bonnes and the
TwinsCentric guys are finishing up. Seriously, it is going to be even better
than last years, so get your copy today so you don’t have to compete with all
the traffic caused by people trying to get their copy at the newsstand.
•
Parker wrote a nice article on The Two Sides of Nick Punto. Again, I think that the Twins will miss Punto, but
who knows, maybe Tolbert can be decent.
•
The
Twins announced last night that Bert
Blyleven’s #28 will be retired. That’s great! But why wait? I never did
understand that. It’s unfortunate that it didn’t happen a long time ago. Based
on the class demonstrated by Jesse Crain
at the Diamond Awards last night, I am certain he would have happily turned
over his number.
•
The
Twins also announced on Friday that there will be a Tony Oliva bronze statue added outside Target Field this year.
•
Sounds
like the North Dakota Twins fan will be all over
Twins Fest this weekend with posts and pictures, so be sure to check those out here.
•
If
you will be at Twins Fest this weekend, and you see guys in the autograph lines
that have been on my podcasts or done Q&As on my site, etc., please thank them, and if you
want, thank them for me. I obviously appreciate it and judging from your
comments, you really appreciate them too.
•
Finally,
as I’ve mentioned other times, I plan to update this site and will probably
have some pictures here throughout the weekend. But I
will most likely be frequently Tweeting throughout the
weekend, so if you don’t already, you may want to follow my tweets, at least
for the weekend.
Thanks
again for all of your support! Feel free to comment here, or e-mail me.
Thursday,
January 27, 2011
Quick
Update
Those
of you who pre-ordered a Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook, I
will be placing the order tonight. I was up too late last night and up way too
early this morning, but I have now read through the entire 170 page book and
made all of the edits. Just a couple of final steps and the book will be ready.
So, hopefully those that pre-ordered will get a copy of the book within the
next 10 days or so. Those that didn’t pre-order (could sneak an order in this
afternoon) will be able to order a paperback book and/or an electronic version
of the book by the end of next week.
There
is the book update. Now for the weekend update (apologies to SNL). I am leaving
my house in Northern Minnesota right now and heading down to the Twin Cities.
On Friday night, I will be at the Hot Stove League Banquet in St. Paul (see Twins Geek’s blog today for details)
where Brad Zellar will host and Jim
Kaat and Juan Berenguer will be
among the other guests. Should be a great time. I will then be at Twins Fest in
Blaine on both Saturday and Sunday. So, if you’re there, be sure to say hi. I
do plan to update the site periodically. However, if you are looking for more
frequent updates, maybe some pictures, etc, you’ll want to follow me on
Twitter. You can do so by clicking here.
Back to Archives
Home