Season is over but for me it had only just started

Anyone who has been following my tweets lately might have noticed a strange chant gracing my page, it is of course “Go Twins”, If you are confused by this then don’t worry your probably not the only one, I’ll try to explain. The Twins are the Minnesota Twins, a baseball team in the American League East division, they have just won the division but last night they were knocked out in the play offs, the defeat means the end of the season for the Twins and also the end of a era as they move from the Indoor Metrodome to the brand new outdoor Target Field next season.

But why baseball, Why Twins and why now? 

Having had no interest in American sports I’ve been able to pretty much ignore baseball, we don’t get much in the way of games over here  and in honesty we still don’t. Sometime this spring in phone calls and facebook chats baseball got mentioned more and more, so i decided i would have to check it out. I’ll be honest first impressions where simple, its dull and makes no sense. When i visited the states i got to see fans and stadiums but sadly no game, I should have gone to a cubs vs soxs game in Chicago but at $60 just for the ticket I decided to go to the beach instead. I did go there hoping to see a game, I was willing to see if the excitement of a live game would catch my interest but I never got to one and I left the states looking forward to the start of the All Ireland Hurling and a new rugby season.

But this has now changed in what I think is a deliberate ploy by a friend of mine, it’s down to a few things, the first being a crazy Minnesotan who is very much into baseball, the second is she made me tweet game updates for the Twins vs Tigers game to her phone while she walked home, this was no run of the mill season game, it was to decide who got into the playoffs and who would win the Central Divisions, I can almost suspect that this was a ploy of hers to get me into the game because the excitement from the radio was evident and the game was a close one, I had no idea what I was tweeting her but I learnt quick. The game ran into the 13 innings and was won by the Twins, it was tense and I could not stop listening and looking at the MLB site for live feeds, I was hooked.

The last three games we lost, each time I’ve gone looking for a Audio or live feed, last night I watched right up to pitch and the season was over. It did dawn on me that I could really follow any team now, the Twins might be a painful team to follow but I don’t follow sport just to make me feel good about my team winning all the time (Take note NYY fans) I find that to follow a sport I need a team to focus on, I don’t really have a huge reason to support the Twins except the person who got me into baseball is a Twins fan so that’s a good enough reason I think. I’ll admit I'm looking forward to following a full season and maybe even getting some sort of top or hat that i can wear late at night when i'm streaming the games.