As the strikeouts speed by, blurring into one another, I enter a hypnotic trance, in which my mind wanders from mundane crapitude to dwell in the realm of the fantastic, where anything is possible. Cue a sick beat from Clams Casino. Enter David Copperfield. Experience the impossible.

Note: Go Twins.

If you think tricks are things that Chip Kincaid does for money or candy, you can follow him on Twitter.

If you answered yes to any of these questions you might be suffering from holycrapthisseasonsuckssobadiwishwewerentinlastplaceiwanttokill                     -myselfandothersisitis more commonly known as last place depression.

Coping with last place depression can be difficult at times- you may be left to ponder questions such as- Does God hate me? Did my parents raise me out of spite hoping that I would be miserable? Should I set the local chinese restaurant on fire? Are my children actually aliens implanted by Satan to rape and torture me and steal my money and food? While such questioning can prove to be useful in rooting out these evil traitors in our lives, they oftentimes lead to punishable offenses being committed.

Thankfully there is a way out.

The professionals at Hrbekistan Health & Pharmaceuticals Inc. through years of testing have developed a cure. Early testing conducted in one particular study showed that eating excessive amounts of chicken wings could at least during consumption help to numb the pains of last place depression (LeCroy, 2002).

HHP in later years discovered a breakthrough in treatment of this disease: it was proven that in fact that when the White Sox lose at the hands of the Twins the symptoms of Last Place Depression not only disappear altogether for those who watch, but the worldwide infant mortality rate decreases by 74%, rape and violent crimes decrease by 48%, enmity between Isrealis and Palestinians actually cease for a time, and the overall sinfulness of the world decreases by 67%.

As such we advise all Hrbeki citizens to at least temporarily divert their attention from murdering their children and burning down Chinese restaurants to sabotaging the White Sux and watching the Twins win the series. Such a plan offers promise in eradicating this dreadful disease.

We here at HHP are committed to the welfare of every hrbeki citizen- we may still feel the effects of last place depression throughout this season, but at least for one series let us make the world free of  this awful epidemic.

Thank you.

Hrbekistan Health and Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Today, the Twins completed a four-game sweep of the Royals, and I’m not even going to let myself be cynical about it.

So what if it was against a pretty bad team? So what if the Twins are still in last place? So what if they’re still 12.5 GAMES out in the division? So what if they’d still have to sweep the next SIX SERIES just to get above .500? So what if it was THE F**KING ROYALS and a year ago I would have never thought of it as ANY SORT OF REASONABLY NOTEWORTHY ACCOMPLISHMENT? SO WHAT IF EVEN A SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT MIGHT GIVE TWINS MANAGEMENT A FALSE SENSE OF HOPE, FOLLOWED BY THEIR TRADING KYLE GIBSON FOR A PROVEN CLOSER LIKE KYLE FARNSWORTH FOLLOWED BY THEIR SIGNING ALEXI CASILLA AND DREW BUTERA TO LIFETIME CONTRACT EXTENSIONS FOLLOWED BY THE TWINS BEING AWFUL FOREVER AND EVER?

No sir, no cynicism here. Just good ol’ fashioned motherf**king hope.

If you want to bear witness to his eventual Twins-related suicide, follow Chip Kincaid on Twitter

Are you sad? Remember: food is your friend. Today, I present to you some of the best dishes upon which I’ve ever laid my fork.

Copper Onion - SLC - ricotta dumplings, thyme, lemon

Sunset Grill - Nashville - sweet & sour smoked duck, wrapped in a scallion pancake with papaya salad, toasted coconut, & creme fraiche

Lotus of Siam - Las Vegas - roasted duck, pineapple, bell pepper, and tomato, in a red curry base with a touch of coconut milk

If any of these foods had the requisite orifices, I would make sweet love to each of them, cook them breakfast in the morning, and then eat them.

If you like your tweets a little sweet, with a whole heap of savory, you can follow Chip Kincaid on Twitter.

Denard triples, Kubel singles with 2 outs to bring him home. Twins 1-Mariners 0

The Twins get off to a good start thanks to our dynamic-duo of non-suckiness. Imagine how bad the Twins would have been up to this point if neither of these guys had played well. Span is really having a heck of a season already amassing 2.5 WAR which is only .1 less than what he ended with last year.

Second Inning

"So disCusting"

Thanks to the epic base-running of Jack Cust, and a nice throw by Kubel- Nick Blackburn gets out of the inning with no runs allowed.

Third Inning

It is nice to see that Matt Tolbert has finally come to grips with his masterbunting problem. If you have a stat line  of .162, 0HR, 2 RBI through 70 AB and are batting second something is wrong. Just bunt. Oh well at least it worked- Alexi Casilla scores on the squeeze putting the Twins up 2-0.

Fourth Inning

As if Kubel wasn’t content in just being one of the only good batters on our team he goes and makes a nice defensive play. He may not be agile but he can dive- like any good possum can. Mariners tie it up in the inning though at 2-2.

Fifth Inning

It looks as if the Twins have a new song by New Medicine called “Resolve to Fight”.  This might be inspirational in our current situation were it not from the album entitled Race You to the Bottom.

Sixth Inning

Nick Blackburn goes one two three getting the side to groundout. That my friends is called getting BLACKBURNED. Take that Chone!

Denard hits an RBI double after Rivera scores on Fister’s balk. PLEASE MORE DENARD ON MY SPANCAKES!

Last nights bullpen implosion was depressing yet predictable. Let’s turn our thoughts to the ambiguous sexuality and funny antics of soccer!

via comedy.com

This guy just hit an own goal off of his own face. BUMMER

 The miraculous ankle healing power of anger.

This guy is a bonafide B.A.M.F.

Many occurrences in life can prompt existential thought-  a sunrise, the birth of a child, and apparently for Cristiano Ronaldo- another man’s boner.

Soccer is a sport where men can express themselves in beautiful ways.

And my personal favorite…

… the CELEBRATORY DONG MUNCH!!!! We all know winning can arouse such powerful emotions that sometimes we  just can’t resist biting our teammates wiener.

New material for butt punching Carl Pavano?

Sometimes a loss hits so hard, you don’t know how to go on living. Sometimes they burn slowly and deeply in the shadows of the soul. In some cases, there’s only one recourse, and that’s imagining how things could be worse. In that spirit, I present to you, Insane Clown Posse’s video for their song, “Miracles.”

We don’t have to be high to look in the sky
And know that’s a miracle opened wide
Look at the mountains, trees, the seven seas
And everything chilling underwater, please
Hot lava, snow, rain and fog
Long neck giraffes, and pet cats and dogs…

The sun and the moon, and even Mars
The Milky Way and f**king shooting stars
UFOs, a river flows
Plant a little seed and nature grows…

F**king rainbows after it rains
there’s enough miracles here to blow your brains
I fed a fish to a pelican at Frisco bay
It tried to eat my cell phone, he ran away…

Water, fire, air and dirt
F**king magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherf**kers lying, and getting me pissed…

In some alternate universe, the Twins won last night. But, in some other alternate universe, you listen to this shit. Rejoice and be present in this universe.

If you want to witness daily miracles of mirth, you can follow Chip Kincaid on Twitter.

1936-2011

When we were kids, we would spend hours wheeling and dealing, trading baseball cards with each other. The values listed in our tattered issues of Beckett were mostly taken as gospel truth, except when it came to Harmon Killebrew cards. Those were worth more than any other card, because we knew our dad, Chief Hrbeki himself, would grossly overpay for cards featuring his childhood hero. When Killer died Tuesday morning, I asked Dad if he’d write something up for the blog. This is what he sent me this morning.

I was saddened to hear that my boyhood hero, Harmon Killebrew, died Tuesday, May 17, at the young age of 74, succumbing to the effects of esophageal cancer.  My immediate sadness, however, was tempered by the many memories that helped shape my boyhood years, and even affected my later adult life.

I was first a Harmon Killebrew fan, and then much later, a Minnesota Twins fan.  That Killebrew played for the Senators, Twins, and later the Royals, was, to me, an irrelevant fact.

Being born and raised in Idaho, of course I liked potatoes.  I also enjoyed all sports in general, particularly baseball.  I especially felt hometown pride for anything — or anyone — associated with Idaho.  Idaho sports personalities were my favorite.  In football I rooted for St. Louis Cardinal’s safety, Larry Wilson (raised in my hometown of Rigby), and Green Bay Packer’s guard, Jerry Kramer (raised in northern Idaho).  In baseball I followed the careers of Pittsburgh Pirate’s pitcher, Vernon Law (born and raised in Meridian, Idaho), and, of course, Killebrew (born and raised in Payette, Idaho), an all around good guy and killer of baseballs, hence the nickname, “Killer.”  My connection to Killer was made greater by the fact that Harmon’s spiritual faith was the same as mine.

Like me, Harmon was raised in a small Idaho farming community.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t consider him like a family member.  I religiously followed Killer’s stats daily in the newspaper box scores.  I would check to see if he hit a home run, and how many hits he managed.  I sorrowed when he struck out.  I paid attention in 1962 when he hit 48 home runs and drove in 126 RBIs.  I rejoiced in his 11 all star designations.  I felt vindicated when he achieved MVP status in 1969, and following his retirement, I appreciated his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984.   One funny thing, however, I don’t remember ever checking out the Senator’s or the Twin’s scores or ever knowing or even caring about his teams’ records.  As I noted earlier, in the beginning I was a Killebrew fan, not a Twins fan.  The Twins would become a part of me many years later.  When I attended graduate school at the University of Minnesota, I became a natural Twins fan, a passion I would pass on to the next generation of Piepers.   I enjoyed attending the games at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington.  I would drive down Killebrew Drive, with reverence, remembering my childhood hero.  Most importantly, my first meaningful date with my future wife was at a Twins baseball game, huddled under a make-shift tarp during a rain-delay to keep dry.  (Tee. Hee.)  [Ed. - Gross]  And so, in a way only a true fan can, I give Killer credit for helping me choose my wife.  How can you not love the man?

Only once do I remember ever seeing Killebrew in person.  A couple years ago, our family snagged some invites to the Hall of Fame induction festivities at Cooperstown.  While strolling the walkways of the downtown shops, we came upon a table, and I found myself, face to face, with Killer himself.  He was seated, grinning, chatting and signing autographs.  I was awestruck.  I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.  Here he was, in living color, my childhood idol.  My son, urged me to get an autograph.  But the line was too long, the cost was too great, and my 50 plus year old heart was beating far too furiously.  Alas, I didn’t take advantage of that opportunity.  I wish now that I had.

As I look back on my memories of Harmon Killebrew, I recall his own account, recorded in one of my dog-eared books on my shelf, of his decision to play professional baseball.    About these early years, Harmon wrote, “I had been able to do pretty well at slugging the ball, and there were about twelve major league ball club scouts out Idaho way making invitations to me.”

Harmon was leaning towards playing football and baseball at the University of Oregon when he was visited by Ossie Bluege, the Washington Senator’s farm director.  Bluege made the trip to Idaho at the request of Clark Griffith, the owner of the Senators.  Mr. Griffith was a personal friend of Senator Herman Welker, of Idaho, who frequently bragged about one of his constituents, “a boy in Idaho who … could hit the ball pretty well”.  Pretty well, indeed! Harmon was only batting .847, at the time.  Mr. Griffith decided to have Mr. Bluege check this young phenom out.

Of this event, Harmon Killebrew recorded, “The night Mr. Bluege arrived in Idaho the game was being threatened by rain.  He talked to me before the game, and after shaking my hand he told me I had strong hands and he thought I could be a good infielder… Finally the rain stopped, and after the crew had worked over the diamond to make the field as playable as possible, I stepped up to the plate… I tested the bat across home plate and eyed up the pitcher.  When the right ball came spinning towards me, I uncoiled my wrists, swiveled my hips for extra power, and connected with the hickory.  The ball sailed up, was momentarily lost to sight when it went above the range of the lights, then, still soaring, sped over the left field fence.  I had been in that particular park a good deal of my life up to that point, but I had never before seen a ball go over that part of the fence.  Mr. Bluege was a little interested, I suppose, in just where that ball landed, so the next morning he set out to find out.  The ball had landed in a potato field.  Mr. Bluege stepped it off from home plate to spud field at a distance of 435 feet.  He thought that was a pretty good hit for a seventeen-year-old boy, so he left a contract for me…”

After consultation with his family, Harmon decided that schooling could wait, and that same day, he signed a contract into the major leagues.  Harmon later recalled, “It has been a decision I have never regretted.”

And, it was a decision I, and many other baseball fans, have never regretted either.  Good-bye, Killer. You will be missed.

Sumthin' fishy's goin' on...

The Twins strike quickly against Felix Hernandez, with a Michael Cuddyer single plating two. Liriano responds by striking out two and walking none in a surprisingly effective first. Speculation begins that Liriano and Hernandez, being friends, have switched uniforms and are throwing with their opposite hands.

Second Inning

Matt Tolbert, he of the career 0.0 WAR, does his best to ruin another solid inning from Liriano, by sailing a routine throw into the dugout. I know we don’t have a lot of options, but do we really have to bat this dude second? He’s obviously not more than eleven years old and probably autistic. Thankfully, Liriano gets Brendan Ryan to ground out to end the inning. Twins still lead 2-0.

Third Inning

This isn’t any sort of dominant lineup, but it is making me really happy to watch Liriano do well. He seems comfortable, and he’s missing bats. Daddy like. UNGH. DADDY LIKE. Two more strikeouts and a ground out, and the Twins are still up 2-0.

Fourth Inning

Twins threaten again, but Ben Revere and Rene Rivera can’t get it done. In related news, THEIR NAMES ARE ALMOST ENTIRELY IDENTICAL. In other related news, Rene Rivera is bad at baseball and Steve Holm is bad at baseball and Drew Butera is not good at baseball and Jose Morales is not bad at baseball and Wilson Ramos is good at baseball and Joe Mauer is hurt. In even more related news, ALL OF THE CLAUSES IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE ARE SAD.

"If you give me your worst player, I'll give you a catcher. K thx."

Fifth Inning

Liriano gets two quick outs, but then plops Brendan Ryan in the shin and gives up two singles, bringing the Mariners within a run. After a quick mound visit, Liriano strikes out Chone Figgins. I can think of two possibilities. 1) Rick Anderson reminded Liriano that he’s the sickest bastard alive, and Liriano responded with beastly confidence. 2) Chone Figgins isn’t good.

"i'm pretty sure i used to be good"

Sixth Inning

So what’s wrong with Justin Morneau? Well, it appears to be, according to Gleeman and Hageman, some combination of luck and mechanical flaws in his swing. If he’s fully healthy, as all parties are reporting, I suspect he’ll come around and have a big summer. Still 2-1 Twins.

"Concussion? What concussion? Fishhook, Lizard Knuckle. Who said anything about a concussion?"

Seventh Inning

A pop-up and 2 more strikeouts, and Liriano finishes his night with 7 IP, 9 K, 1 BB, 3 H, 1 R, and 1 giant collective sigh of Hrbeki relief. Like I said earlier, this Mariner’s lineup is no Murderers Row, but with what we’ve seen from Liriano this season, we need to take what we can get. Well done, Frankie!

Eighth Inning

Look out, he's on fire!

Thank Kirby for Glen Perkins, one bright spot in an otherwise disgusting dungheap of a bullpen. Twins still up 2-1. But can a shaky Matt Capps get it done?

Ninth Inning

Hellz yeah, proven closer, bitchez.

Matt Capps does exactly what a proven closer is paid to do: Walk Miguel Olivo (a feat in itself) and then rely on a shady call to get out of a jam. I wonder if the Nats will trade us that Ramos kid for Capps straight up…

Sorry for the bitching. LET US REJOICE. BECAUSE…

TWINS DON'T LOSE TEN GAMES IN A ROW!!!!!

If you like funny people, you can follow Garry Shandling on Twitter. If you think Chip Kincaid has potential, meh, you can follow him too, I guess.

1936 - 2011