Twinkies

Check out the A-L Central standings this morning. The Twins are tied with the White Sox for the division lead. Before the season everyone was predicting the demise of the Twinkies. They had to trade away Johan Santana so they could get value for him before he bolted the Twin Cities as a free agent at the end of the season. I dare you to name another player on the club other than All Stars Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. Unless you are a roto-geek you can't name any! This team is one of the best run franchises in baseball with a manager that is often overlooked. Ron Gardenhire just quietly gets the most out of his players without the hoopla of guys like Joe Torre, Lou Pinella or Terry Francona. Give those guys the Twins roster and I'm not sure they would be able to make them contenders. Do I think the Twins will win the division...I'd say 50/50 but if you are a fan of well run-low budget franchises you've got to root for the Twinkies.

The folks at ESPN must be thrilled with how things have worked out for them. Monday Night Football will debut this coming Monday with the Preseason matchup between--wait for it--ta da--the Bengals and the Packers . There is no way in April, when the schedules were announced, that they could have predicted the fact that a meaningless game in August will give them huge ratings. Some might speculate "The World Wide Leader" had actually conspired with Favre to create all this controversy to build ratings. Heck my wife wanted to know the latest on Favre last night. If even the casual fan is interested in this circus imagine what real fans must be clamoring for.