Manic Depressive

I'm going to let y'all read a bit from the screenplay and shooting script I've written for the upcoming movie "Newspaper Newlyweds", the big Hollywood blockbuster that was optioned from the Fraters award-winning [*] series.

This scene visits Nick Coleman and columnnist-wife Laura Billings at home.

BILLINGS: "You like this?"

COLEMAN: "Oooh, yeah. That's hot."

BILLINGS: "Hot, huh?" (sly grin)

COLEMAN: "Yeah. Hot. Like the circle of hell Karl Rove is going to be sent to when justice is finally served"

BILLINGS: (Nonplussed): "Huh?"

COLEMAN: "Sorry, baby. Where were we?"

BILLINGS: "Do you like it when I do...this?"

COLEMAN: "Not as much as some rich fatcat likes Bush's discriminatory tax cuts for the rich..."

BILLINGS: "Nick..."

COLEMAN: "...or as much as Halliburton likes the fact that Bush lied to go to war and the nation is falling apart..."

BILLINGS: "NICK!"

COLEMAN: "Huh?"

BILLINGS: "You're doing it again!"

COLEMAN: "Doing what?"

BILLINGS: (regaining enough composure to coo seductively) "Talking about politics when I am trying to..."

COLEMAN: "Did you pay the Dayton's bill?"

The good news? The preceding is fiction.

The bad news? It's not the last fiction in this piece.

The worse news? Given the way Coleman writes about the region's big story this week - the Twins getting into the playoffs - I have to qualify the first bit of good news. We just don't know.

Let's join him - and, in so doing, let's ring the "Bell of Speciousness" every time Coleman slips in a pointless political reference:

October is often a time of surprises.

In election years, those surprises are often bad, and rumors are flying that we might be in store for another one [Ding!].

Wow. Cool!

But in the autumns when baseball breaks free from the demands of its grasping owners [Ding!] to win the hearts of people on this prairie, October surprises are a beautiful thing.

We could have beauty on tap this October.

Against all odds -- a dreadful start, the death of Kirby Puckett and a strong-arm effort to put a new baseball stadium on the shoulders of taxpayers [Ding! - although I agree in this case] -- the Minnesota Twins are in the playoffs.

Which means I will shut up, for now, about the new stadium. Because being in the playoffs trumps everything else.

Well, for maybe a paragraph...There are no Republicans or Democrats in the playoffs. No St. Paul or Minneapolis. No city or suburbs. No rich or poor. No white or black.Although if there is any such split to be found - no matter how tortured the logic to find it - Coleman's the man to dig it up. But I digress.

There is just us and our team. And we stand against everything that is NOT us and our team: Against the Yankees or the Athletics or the Tigers, against the National League, against the rest of the country. And against the oncoming dark and cold of a winter that will have to wait until the playoffs are over...There is a lot of baseball to be played, but Game 7 of the World Series, if it comes to that, won't happen until Oct. 29. And if it is played at the Dome, we not only will be lucky, we will be grateful for that ugly roof.

The average low on Oct. 29 in the Twin Cities is 35 degrees, barely enough to thaw the frost off the pumpkin. And while it might warm up to the low 50s (the average high for that day, over the past three decades), you should pray that you will need your long johns before the Twins hang up their mitts.

Just imagining the apple crisp chill of a late October night when baseball is still being played in Minnesota should lift your spirits. The Twins may not get that far -- after all, they are just one of eight teams in the playoffs.

But if they should end up in their fourth World Series, this will be one of those autumns we remember all our lives.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day - and Nick Coleman gets the occasional thing right. If and as the Twins progress through the playoffs, I'll write about some of the insanity that swept the Cities back in '87 and '91. They were two of the most amazing times of my life - and I wasn't even one of the million people who claim to have been one of the 60,000 people in the Dome on Game Six or Game Seven, either year...

By the end of October, Minnesotans hunker down, check the furnace and put the frozen hoses away in the eternal hope of finding one more spring, one more chance at bat. Having the Twins still playing in October feels like a taste of something so rare in this life that it feels like a preview of the next.

So, bring it on. We have the M&M boys, Mauer and Morneau, we have Johan and Boof-da, we have a shot and we have all winter to savor it.

Indeed

Let other people in other places worry about the other October Surprises that might be lurking[Ding!]. Political blogs are buzzing that Karl Rove has promised one [Ding!] in time to change the November elections, and the gloom-and-doom crowd is speculating it might be anything from another tax cut to a preemptive attack on Iran. [Ding!]

Wow - Nick Coleman has gone, in two years, from "bloggers are hobby hacks" to giving them prominent placement in his column.

But unless it is Armageddon, it can wait until November.

The Twins are in the playoffs, again. The air is full of expectation and hope. October is on its way, and a small-market team with small expectations is riding a wave of fans who rarely get this excited about anything that doesn't have a walleye on the other end of the line.

So let October come, and let it bring surprise [Ding!. But please don't wake us until it's over.

Promise.

[*] No, not really

Posted by Mitch at September 28, 2006 07:47 AM | TrackBack