Reverse jinx time!

Let's see here.

Stumble out of the gate with a poor record, big free agent acquisition breaks his leg, bullpen is shakier than Michael J. Fox on a vibrating bed, franchise player being paid the GDP of a small country going on DL...I should officially be at DEFCON 3 on the Twins season.  But oddly, I am not.

Maybe it's the lingering bitterness from the hockey game that shall not be named a week ago distracting me (still have about 3-4 moments a day where I well up with rage and want to punch something, yet no punches thrown to date, feel I deserve credit for this, would've taken the news that I had inoperable brain cancer better than I took that game).  Maybe it's the fact that the Twins always seem to find a way around this stuff.  Could be the start of the NHL playoffs blunting the force of these early shots, or perhaps I've just been beaten down by all the losing.  Whatever the reason, it's an unlikely place for me to find myself, and although it's far from the start we'd hoped for, it's still April and there's no reason to panic...yet.

Now I don't want to go down the road of countering every negative item from the first two weeks of the season with a piece of optimism, because there's been a dangerous negative precedent set in that regard.  Way back in July, I tried to quell the gnawing doubts that were accumulating about the Vikings season by offering points of hope.  We all know how that turned out, so I shan't tempt fate by going down that path again.

But I will bring up the one salient stat here that requires no analysis to back it: 6 out of 9

That's the Twins performance in winning the Central Division since 2002.  Not to mention that one year they lost in a one-game playoff.  Now we can debate how much those division titles are actually worth, and I'd readily admit that there's no reason to believe the postseason will hold better prospects this year, but the bottom line is things have been worse and ended up better in years past.  Again hearkening back to last summer, I gave up the team for dead on July 16th.  They then proceeded to run away with things.

So perhaps that's all that required here, and the Twins are simply the yin to the Vikings yang (please, no Visanthe Shiancoe jokes).  As we've all seen, the Vikes never collapse until even the most hard-bitten and fatalistic fan (that being me) is roped into believing.  They thrive on raising you up before they crush your spirit into smithereens.  Could it be that the Twins are their polar opposite, and won't turn on the jets until they've been written off?  If so, I'll do my part, there is no way the Twins will win this division.

Not enought juice there?  Okay, once more with feeling:

THIS TEAM STINKS!  THEY CAN'T HIT, HAVE NO BULLPEN, AND THEIR TWO FRANCHISE PLAYERS ARE CHINA DOLLS!  ANY MEMBER OF THE PITCHING STAFF COULD GET SHELLED AT ANY TIME, AND OUR "ACE" HAS ALL THE FOCUS AND MENTAL TOUGHNESS OF A TEENAGE GIRL!  THE ONE THING TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS SEASON IS SHEDDING $32 MILLION WORTH OF GARBAGE NAMED NATHAN, CAPPS AND CUDDYER!  IT'S OVER, TRADE EVERYBODY AND REBUILD!

That should do the trick.

Gotta love that reverse jinx

Sometimes you need to say something you don't totally believe in order to avoid the letdown of things going against you.  An expectation of failure, if repeated often enough, can hammer at the mind to the point where the actual failure barely raises an eyebrow.  Sure it's a cowardly and pathetic way to live your life, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and playing the "knew it all along" card when it actually does, but it's damn hard to keep putting yourself out there when you've been burned so consistently over time. 

Mock and ridicule me if you'd like, but the Vikings alone would've killed me years ago had I not begun to employ this defense mechanism.  Once while watching a Twins game, a friend of mine told me "I don't know why you watch these games, they seem to make you miserable."  Sadly, that probably sums up my career as a sports fan more succinctly than anything else.  It's a loser's mentality, but in my defense I've seen a lot of losing, I apologize for nothing.

I bring this up to defend my posting last Friday, which declared the Twins season dead in the water, with no hope to be salvaged.  Obviously no season is over following the first game after the All-Star break, especially when talking about a team that had closed gaps of 2 or 3 times it's size over the same period the past couple of years.  Hell, I'm pretty sure the Twins were 4 games out with 3 to play last year and still won the division.  Well maybe not, but pretty close.  But after watching one atrocious display of baseball after another these past few months, I had to take action, even if it was the meaningless action of an idiot sports fan that made zero sense and left me looking foolish.

We all hear a lot of talk about "bandwagon" or "fairweather" fans.  Some people consider it a badge of honor to stick by a terrible team at their worst, just so they can crow about how they were there the whole time when things swing back the other way.  I can see the honor in this to a point, but there's also something about it that strikes me as profoundly dumb.  Frankly I've always been envious of those people who could flip open the paper three-quarters of the way through a season, realize their local team was in playoff contention and pick up the chase from there.  Sure those of us that follow it day in and day out like to scoff at the folks who don't know the score of the last game, or where our team sits in the standings, telling ourselves it will mean more to us when the winning finally comes, but will it really?  I think so, but I'm not really sure, could be they're just as happy as I am, and all the loyalty didn't mean squat.

Rest assured, I would never stop watching, but could see how my attitude could strike many people as fairly bandwagon.  At least as far as emotions go.  I gave up on the 2009 Twins roughly 36 1/2 times (the half being when I was in the middle of a long-winded cursing of Michael Cuddyer before he hit a home run to tie a game in late September).  Sometimes I gave up on them multiple times in the same game.  But I never stopped following the team and caring how they did.  After all, it wasn't just about that season, it was about a lifetime affiliation with the team.  Whether Brian Duensing was a legit starter or Delmon Young's hot streak meant he'd turned a corner as a player, these are the thoughts that carry a fan through the lean times.

So I suppose it's a question of definitions.  Is anything short of unfailing optimism grounds for being accused of fairweather fandom?  Does spewing nine innings of bile at a certain underperforming starting pitcher (that's right Baker, talking to you) mean you shouldn't be able to celebrate a surprising good performance?  Does logging countless hours watching, reading about and debating a team make up for these lapses in faith?  Maybe not, but we're all who we are and I make no apologies, you might be the perfect fan, but there have always been a few million people who've been better than me at everything I've ever done.  I've gotten past it in other areas, why should being a sportsfan be any different?

And you know what?  If you're the superstitious type (guilty), then I can make a case that I'm a better fan than all the unwavering supporters out there.  Sure you may look better on paper, your friends may like watching games with you more, you definitely get more enjoyment out of this stuff on a daily basis, but I bring the most powerful force in sports to the table: The Reverse Jinx.

Everyone knows what it is to jinx something, you don't discuss something bad without immediately knocking on wood, players don't approach a pitcher in the dugout when he's got a no hitter going, you NEVER call a Vikings win in an NFC Championship game under any circumstances, you just let those sleeping dogs of luck lie.  Well I, my friends, believe that the opposite is true, but downplaying the possibility of things you want to happen, you can actually make them more likely.  Not only does this feed into the lowered expectations mantra I described earlier, but it actually can help the collective karma of the team.  Yes, I honestly believe this.  No, I do not need you to recommend a good psychiatrist.

You want proof?  Look no further than last Friday.  Following the Twins coughing up the first game of their series, I declared them dead, only to watch them win three in a row from a red-hot White Sox team, the last in improbable fashion.  To top it off, I even picked up Bobby Jenks in my fantasy baseball league, 13 straight saves converted, 3 runs allowed TOTAL since June 1st coming into yesterday's game...and he gets shelled for 4 runs in the 9th without recording an out.  Power of positivity my ass, what more proof do you need!

So, I'm doing my part fellow Twins fans, embrace the negativity and the negativity will set you free.  On that note, I'd like to say Scott Baker is garbage, we will be lucky if he gets out of the 3rd inning tonight, and soft-tossing Aaron Laffey (borderline member of the Paul Byrd All-Stars for terrible pitchers who have the Twins number) will once again make a mockery of our allegedly high-powered lineup.

Just an honest opinion about a team with no chance. 

As far as you know.