Fire Gardy

This week Reusse penned a little special on Alexi Casilla’s emergence, along with a little history of his time with the Twins.

He decided to start his article with the event that brought Casilla into The Mind Of Reusse, or as Reusse probably likes to call it, “existence.” Yes, the history of Casilla started with Luis Castillo being traded.

General Manager Terry Ryan was criticized for giving up by the local sports media.

And you, Mr Reusse. I seem to recall you trying to get Ryan fired for that trade. So I suppose this article is going to be you eating some craw and admitting to being wrong about Casilla, right?

[It] allowed Santana to add a dash of righteous indignation to his mind-set as he rejected the Twins’ attempts to re-sign him.

Bringing back the old argument that Santana wanting out was Ryan’s fault … sure doesn’t seem like Reusse’s planning on admitting that he might not have been totally right that Casilla sucked, Castillo would play well until he’s 50, and Santana would have signed for $10M/year if only we hadn’t traded Castillo. Then again, maybe he’s just really setting us up for a good one.

Reusse then goes over a brief history of Casilla’s recent career, mostly stuff that everyone already knows. He talks about Casilla working with Oliva and Vavra to improve his lefthanded swing (which is interesting and a good thing).

“I never see my name anywhere when people write about our team, but I’m playing well,” Casilla said.

This really has nothing to do with Reusse, but I think it’s a good point. And it goes back to what I said in response to Dave Cameron’s idea that Jose Lopez is part of the future core of the Mariners but Casilla is useless dead weight (or nothing at all) on the Twins. Casilla is younger and better than Lopez, but for some reason nobody ever talks about him. What’s a guy got to do to get noticed nationally?

I think one place to start is for the local media not to constantly find ways to shit on him, and when they can’t find anything, just writing nothing about him at all. That way national people only hear the bad things about him, and don’t look any further. That’s how it connects back to Reusse. Didn’t think I could do that, did you?

He was going to be heading back to Rochester as soon as Nick Punto recovered from a hamstring pull. Instead, the Twins stumbled into a switch-hitting, playmaking second baseman — a younger, faster Luis Castillo.

I … would not call it stumbling into a “younger, faster Luis Castillo,” given that that’s exactly what Terry Ryan said Casilla would be like. This is not Ryan doing something stupid and it accidentally working out for the best, ie “Pulling a Homer.” This is just a good move that worked. So we’re right at the point in this article where Reusse admits he was wrong about Casilla and shouldn’t have criticized Ryan so vehemently.

As it turned out, Terry Ryan was right all along about Casilla … just 10 months early.

Almost. He almost made it. He admitted that Ryan was right, but not that Reusse was wrong. And finished with that nice little parting jab, finding a way to criticize Ryan even for being right.

I’m watching this cooking show right now, and the host made a drink called “Risky Whiskey.” The ingredients are 3 parts whiskey, a quarter part maple syrup, a splash of sweet vermouth, two splashes of lemon juice, and a bit of bitters. I do not understand any of these units of measurement. Especially because a splash is larger than a quarter part, and a splash is the same size as two splashes. What in blazes is a splash? And why is it three parts if the only other ingredient that uses parts just uses “one quarter part?” In what way does this make sense? For some reason, cooking shows like this one remind me of newspapers.

As everyone knows, I’m big on Casilla and always have been. I was thrilled to see him perform well last year, and hopeful that fans and writers would finally start to realize that he is a huge part of the future of this team. It feels like we’re almost there.

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