the twins on abbey road - side two

it's been almost two weeks since i posted "the twins on abbey road - side one." a lot of people liked it, and i was super-duper excited to post the next side. but school is hard, work is hard, wooden boards are hard. but here i am, ready to take you down memory lane with some beatles, some twins, and some genius. if i'm lucky.

today's post will concern the magical journey on which the twins embarked at the beginning of june, when the flowers are abloom, little children are out of school, and, um, may has just finished. the boys took us on a wild ride; oh yes, they did. i now advise you to cue up your music playing device to abbey road's "here comes the sun" and follow me down the river of dreams.

7. here comes the sun
"little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter spring"
if i can take you back to the end of side one, you'll remember being enveloped by a storm of white noise, a smothering musical migraine that only john lennon's warped brain could bring you. you were sitting there, thinking, holy moses, i bought a piece of crap. abbey road - more like ASSY road - HA! the twins season ticket holders were thinking the same thing. but something very bizarre happened in june, something so transformational it brought to mind memories of alex mack. joe mauer started hitting the ball just about every time he came up, justin morneau decided that it was much more fun to hit home runs than strike out on sinkers down and away, and the pitching started to behave much less like giant sacks of poo. oh, and also, three wise men named ron, terry, and carl followed a bright shining star across the wilderness and found a big, black, intimidating baby jesus swaddled in a twins uniform way down in a.j. pierzynski trade land. his name was francisco, and he came to redeem the world. a new day had dawned in the northland. george harrison's second great song of this album pretty much sums up the early summer for the twins. "little darlings," he soothed us, "the smiles returning to your faces." oh, they were.

8. because
i must now invoke my creepy beatles knowledge. now, this "fact" is disputed, but apparently john lennon got the inspiration for this wacky little number while listening to yoko play beethoven's "moonlight sonata." he allegedly told her to play the piece in reverse - and there are basically the chords for "because." i'm making a stretch here, but i think the reversed chords are representative of the "back to basics" approach the twins adopted in june/july, shedding the heavy weight (in so many senses) of tony batista, returning juan castro to cincinatti, tossing out the RUBEN sierra sandwich (again, HA!), and flushing chief excrement sack kyle lohse down the toilet. this veteran extermination left a gaping crater in the twins lineup, filled with the likes of jason bartlett, jason tyner, josh rabe, jason kubel, and boof bonser. now, the real tie-in with the song comes in. for the line "because the world is round, it turns me oooooooooooooon," substitute "boof" in for "the world" and see if you don't pee your pants.

9. you never give me your money
my personal favorite of all the songs on abbey road, "you never give me your money" does not unfortunately correspond to my favorite time of the twins season. if you haven't heard it before, it's pretty weird. the lyrics don't make any sense at the beginning. most of the time, paul mccartney writes pretty straightforward songs, but on abbey road, with "maxwell's silver hammer," "she came in through the bathroom window" and "you never give me your money," paul was evidently very high on drugs. anyway, the song courses down schizophrenia lane, dabbling in honky tonk and paul's underused, um, fat billy joel voice. am i right? doesn't he sound like a fat billy joel in the middle part? ok, whatever. the most emotive part of the song comes when he says "oh, that magic feeling. nowhere to go..." and that's exactly how the hometown boys felt during late june. they won like 100% percent of the games that month but remained about 400 games behind the tigers. certainly we fans were euphoric, but it kind of gets old when your team doesn't move up in the standings. anyway, this is my favorite song on abbey road, and if you disagree, i will have to eliminate you.

10. sun king
well, the last song was the beginning of the suite of several connected songs that defines abbey road, and "sun king" is the second song. in my opinion, it sucks, and has no real relationship with the twins season, other than the fact that the quasi-italian the beatles sing in the song makes just about as much sense as the crazy success the twins enjoyed during the summer. "everybody's laughing, everybody's happy," indeed.

11. mean mr. mustard
i'd like to make this an ode to the twins bullpen, which pretty much blew away everyone during the course of the entire year. as the song's title indicates, it's about a mean mr. mustard who "sleeps in the park," "shaves in the dark," "sleeps in a hole in the road," "keeps a ten bob note up his nose," "always shouts out something obscene," and is generally a "dirty old man." let's look at each of these characteristics with respect to the twins 'pen. who sleeps in the park? hmm. a suspicious, poor sap does. why, that's got to be dennys reyes, who is fat, looks like he would probably be found laying on a park bench, and has a suspiciously low e.r.a.! who shaves in the dark? well, that could describe almost any twins reliever, but most obviously it's juan rincon, whose shaving skills, post-steroid use, suffered mightily as a patchy beard settled in over the course of the year. next. sleeping in a hole in the road. that's easy. someone who's small and hapless. answer: jesse crain, the smallish guy who had some troubles this year. done. then there's the guy with the bank note up his nose. this one's a little tougher, but i think i'll have to assign it to pat neshek, who clearly snorts/inserts something into his naval cavity to enable him to deliver the ball in that weird way. i'll also give it to matt guerrier, who looks the part of a chronic drug user. lastly, there's joe nathan, who on the mound has a habit of twitching uncontrollably and swearing. and they're all dirty old men, which is what makes them so awesome. including mike redmond, who, although not a reliever, is certainly a dirty old man and probably has a mysterious sister who takes him to see some kind of queen on the weekends.

12. polythene pam
i really, really wish the twins roster contained a female in drag who masqueraded as a twin. wait, what's this? perenially clean-shaven, full-hipped lew ford? wait. that's gross. this song's short enough that the image should be washed clean soon.

13. she came in through the bathroom window
i guess this song was written about an actual incident - apparently a fan crawled into paul's home. it's not about yoko, or linda eastman, or anyone special. i've really got nothing to say about this song. it's all saved up for the next few songs. i apologize. but there's a pretty interesting cover of this song by joe cocker.

14. golden slumbers
well, we were rolling along at high speed through tracks 10-13, and then this super mellow ballad stalls us. you know what this means. francisco liriano goes down for the count. everyone says our hopes are dashed as our big, black baby jesus drops his cross. (was that a really foolish thing to say?). then, brad radke, greasy, bearded, dependable pitcher for years, finally has his arm go kaput on him. the world sheds a tear. what to do, twins fans? paul mccartney is putting us to bed, here, with his "and i will sing a lullaby," and everybody thinks that we're all really going to bed? just because francisco blew out his elbow? just because rad badke (my invention, and i'll stand by it) stretched his arm to limit? just because jason kubel is a cripple? just because we all drank some warm milk and are under the covers? that means we're going to lay down and go off to sleepy land? well, i don't really th

15. carry that weight
holy hell, that came out of nowhere! a whole legion of encouraging beatles! when our 2 and 3 pitchers went down, who carried the weight? cy young candidate johan "gutenberg" santana did. matt garza did. ron"farmer in the"dell white did. torii "shinto gate" hunter did. justin "less yes" morneau did. carlos "nothing rhymes with orange, month, purple, or" silva did. boof "john" bonser did (by the way, i made up all of those nicknames, and they are hereby copyright). everyone carried the weight, and it was magnificent. at the end of the song, there's a little reprise of the "you never give me your money" intro, reminding us that although we played like the best team in baseball, we still weren't in first place; the tigers were still there, winning. and then, and then...

16. the end
something about the title of this song is so final - so conclusive, you know? this song pretty much rocks, no matter how you look at it. paul, john and george trade guitar solos in basically the most awesome way imaginable. they wail. johan and joe and justin and everyone with a first name beginning with j wailed on their baseball bat guitars. it all built up to the end, when the twins took over first place - "with a little help from my friends" - the royals (again, HA!). and that was awesome. i'm running out of funny, witty, or dry things to say, because really, that last day was so awesome. and paul left us with some metaphysical wisdom: "and, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." ah. so beautiful. i have absolutely no idea whatsoever what it means, but it sounds nice and i pretend it has some significance for me. the twins ruled, though. what a perfect ending.







17. her majesty
oh yeah, this song's just tacked on at the end, here, you know, so, uh, um. yeah. we can ignore it. it's not really a song, anyway, it's just misplaced tape. you know, meaningless. crap. well, we all know that that's not true. about 15 seconds after the majestic end of the abbey road suite, the perfect ending, we have this little 23 second dud. it really is misplaced tape, though, as the first huge chord is from the end of mean mr. mustard and the last chord leads into polythene pam. and then it's over. it's a throwaway. this song is the most perfect description of the end of the twins season that exists. trust me, i checked. the twins tasted the sweet milk of heaven on the last day of the season, and it really felt like nothing could stop them; they were going to the world series, dammit. but then some team from the west coast, of all places, comes in, thrashes us around, leaving us in a pitiful heap, and in about 23 seconds the season was over for the twins. it really felt like the whole series was originally meant for another part of the season - a sweep at the hands of the a's seemed like something that should have been stuck in the middle of may. but it came at the end, and like abbey road, we have to live with and acknowledge "her majesty" and the twins postseason fade as parts of greater wholes. after all, her majesty does make it kind of distinctive, in a way.

but the really great thing about how abbey road ends is that it's so anticlimactic that you want to listen to the whole thing again. the end of the twins season left us with so little closure that all we could do was relive the memories of the summer, game by game, song by song, and appreciate it for all the wonder it brought us. that's what i've tried to do here. it took me about 2 weeks to do this, and i really should be doing homework, but sometimes, when the powers of the beatles and the twins combine, i am captain planet! everything else can wait. thanks, twins, for a great year. love, tom (and a bunch of other people, i think).

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.