the twins on abbey road - side one

i am posting late again, and for that i apologize. school is busy. and when i had written almost all of this post, my computer locked up. ugh.

now that the twins season is finally over, it's time for some reflection. i was riding the train to megu's house today, depressed that an exhilirating twins season had come to a rather disheartening and swift end. i thought of the misery the team was muddling through at the beginning of the season. i remember not even wanting to check if the twins had won. then, in june, everything changed. it was sublime. it kept getting better, too. soon the tigers started losing, and the white sox, too, and we were merely inches from the division lead. and the last magical week of the season made me, for the first time in a long time, mad that i had come to japan, that i was missing this glorious ascent to the top of the division. then, after the champagne dried, we brought the a's to the dome, and all that joy, the raucous abandon with which the twins had rocketed to first place, was wrested cruelly away. and now we're already in the offseason, and that sucks.

so, on that train ride, looking back on the year, i was bumming. i needed a pick-me-up. so i did some cocaine. right. then i said, "hey. music's a good way to get my spirits up! i'll think of a good song." inside the bowels of my mind's vast musical library, i shuffled through to the everlasting stand-by, the glowing beacon of the beatles. "here we go," i thought, "abbey road. always a good listen." then it hit me. it hit me like a sock full of quarters hits you in the face. we all know that feeling. the twins season was exactly like the beatles' abbey road. one of the best albums of all time. everything came together, constellated around my two fiercest obsessions: the beatles and the twins. my mind, struck dead by a hectic week of school and the celebrating athletics, was now swirling with activity. now, i present to you: the twins on abbey road, side one. if you don't have a copy of the album, go download it or something, and listen. for the full experience, put songs 1-6 on repeat, go to mntwins.com, and read the news archives for the first two months of the season.

1. come together
the twins came together, all right, and it wasn't pretty. like the song, the earliest days of the twins 2006 season was gloomy, dirge-like, and filled with bizarre imagery. the beatles' "toejam football" and "spinal cracker" bear metaphorical likeness to the twins starting lineup at the beginning of the year, which featured gems like exile-from-japan tony batista, the eternally crippled shannon stewart, RUBEN SIERRA, for god's sake, and fidel castro's crazy uncle juan. who was toejam football and who was spinal cracker, i don't know, but it's funny to think about. little-known fact: at the beginning of this song, where it sounds like john says "shoop," it's actually him saying "shoot me," which is what many twins fans were saying early this year.

2. something
"i don't want to leave her now, you know i believe and how." replace "her" with "my group of washed-up veterans that were supposed to bring power to my lineup but pretty much blow" and you have the thought that must have been racing through terry ryan's mind for much of the spring. those guys stayed around well past their welcome. however, george harrison's beautiful ode to love reminded us fans of better things to come: "you stick around now, it may show. i don't know, iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don't know." tears are welling in my eyes, my babies.

3. maxwell's silver hammer
much of the news regarding the first month of the season swarmed around the tigers, who began their annihilation of the central right away. "detroit's wooden hammers" "made sure that we were dead," laying waste to the preseason favorites (the twins, indians and white sox) and securing the lead for a long-ass time. if i had had my beatles-twins revelation back during the last weekend of april, when detroit devoured the twins by scores of 9-0, 18-1, and 6-0, i would have seen it all coming. in the beatles tune, maxwell, well, he kills a bunch of people. first, he kills the "quizzical" joan, much like the tigers disposed of the "quizzical" c.c. sabathia and fellow indians. then came the teacher (the twins, who had learned the lessons of winning division titles). finally, the surly judge, who fits ozzie guillen, a.j. pierzynski, and the rest of the pale hose to a t. maxwell exacted his carnage of carpentry on all these unsuspecting victims just as the tigers bludgeoned their way to the top. we should have heeded paul mccartney all along. but wait - PAUL IS DEAD!

4. oh! darling
consider this the ballad of johan santana. the 2005 campaign was a pretty good one for the twins pitching staff, with brad radke and carlos silva putting forth solid efforts. but then, when april 2006 rolled around, something downright dastardly happened. right under our noses, when we weren't looking, aliens replaced our formerly dependable 2 and 3 starters with giant sacks of poo. still, these bags outperformed kyle lohse, who we banished to cincinatti. this left johan santana cold and alone, feeling every pang of this song's heartache: "oh, darling, if you leave me, i'll never make it alone. believe me when i beg you, don't ever leave me alone." when paul mccartney was recording the vocal of this song, he only tried one take per day and practiced in the shower. johan santana only got to pitch once every five games, and i'm sure he practiced pitching in the shower, too.

5. octopus's garden
this is just insulting. ringo, by far the least talented of all the beatles, had the audacity to say "screw this. i'm going to write a song about how i was living with deep-sea creatures just to get away from my life of fame and fortune." that little b*tch. that's like jason kubel saying "trade me. this team sucks, and i need to save my career before it goes under." imagine that. don't be deceived by this song's nice, uplifting pop-country feel. it's about abandoning life on land to live with octopi just because you're not man enough to take a little hardship. depressed by the twins performance in the spring, i must admit i attempted to live with the fishes in okinawa once, but i got too hungry and just ended up eating my guppy roommate. i named him titus.

6. i want you (she's so heavy)
if you haven't heard this song, please listen to it now. it's probably one of the heaviest songs the beatles ever did, and it goes on for 7 minutes with just these lyrics: "i want you. i want you so bad. i want you so bad, it's driving me mad, it's driving me mad. she's so heavy." weird, huh? well, at the end of may, the twins were waaaaaaaaaay back in the division, and everyone was wanting something. replace "you" in this song's title with one of several options: alfonso soriano, carlos lee, a designated hitter, koko b. ware, kent hrbek and/or one of his air conditioners, kirby puckett, an entirely different, tom to come back from japan and beat some sense into the twins, methamphetamines, etc. anything but that twins team. i was ready to just call it quits on them and consider 2006 a rebuilding season. the season seemed like it would drag on until the end of time, just like this marathon of a song, and keep repeating the same line over and over: runners left on base, e.r.a.s over 6, fat old dudes swinging hopelessly at pitch after pitch. then a giant cloud of white noise would swallow the huge guitar solos while the beatles wailed on an aching three part harmony and john and george experimented with heavy distortion and the world ceased to make sense and and you wondered just where this song would go and then all of a sudden everything stopped. silence. and side one was over and you started thinking "holy god, what's happened to the beatles?" just as you thought "what in the world has happened to the twins i once knew?" had we been betrayed? were the sacks of poo here to stay? the only way to find out was to flip the record over. and we were all glad we did.

that's side one, folks. hope you enjoyed the recap. it's not the best side the beatles ever made, and it certainly wasn't the best first two months the twins ever had, either. neither was all that cohesive. they had their moments, but the best was yet to come. stay tuned, compadres, for glory awaits.