In a time of sacrifice and international peril, worrying about the fate of our baseball team seems small and selfish.
That, of course, is what Major League bosses want. They want us to feel it would be unpatriotic to stand up and object while they -- those flag-waving lovers of baseball and apple pie -- stick a knife in the Twins and their fans and pocket millions.
I have a word I like to apply to greedy hypocrites like that but I can't use it in a family newspaper. Insert your own. But spare me the usual hand-wringing.
If I hear one more sanctimonious politician or woolly would-be champion of the people tell us that it's a shame if the Twins vanish into the dustbin but, well, the taxpayers can't get their hands dirty, I will haunt them the rest of their days by showing up on their porch and singing the Twins theme song at midnight every time they give a dime of tax money to a museum, theater, radio station, cultural center or traveling seed-art exhibit.
How can they be cavalier about losing the fat guys shaking hands across the Mississippi on the Twins uniform? That's us, dummies: Minneapolis and St. Paul.
WE are the Twins.
Letting Carl torch the Twins would be an act of reckless irresponsibility, an act of cultural self destruction. The Twins -- more than anything except a distaste for lutefisk -- have knitted the various strands of Minnesota into one community.
If you disagree, please tell me anything else that ever has transformed the chilled masses of the Twin Cities into pulsating, dancing Conga throngs. It happened -- twice -- in the autumns of 1987 and 1991: We went giddy with celebration and ecstasy and it was a good thing it was really cold both times or we would have had the world's biggest love-in.
You could look it up.
Which, unless someone has the guts and the clout to call a halt to this nauseating spectacle, is all we'll soon be able to say about the Minnesota Twins.
Cold Omaha, here we come.
If that black day arrives, don't be surprised if you feel a bit down in the dumps. Don't be surprised if you feel like you live in a place that has no jump to it, just another burg in flyover land, a little dot on a big map. No, you shouldn't be surprised at all.
Because, baby, there is no joy in Mudville.
