Boone Era ends, Praying Era begins...

Well, over the weekend the Twins dropped Bret Boone- good, but failed to make a deal for a major league hitter- bad.

The Boone move was hardly unexpected, as he wasn’t hitting for power, wasn’t hitting for average, wasn’t fielding well, wasn’t throwing well, and wasn’t a team player.

But the real deal breaker was that he was purportedly very “gaseous” in the dugout.

Of far more serious consequence was the inability of GM Terry Ryan to pull off a deal, and bring a legitimate RBI guy to the club.

My personal feeling is that he has contracted a classic case of LP, or as it’s also known: Low Payrollitis.

LP develops slowly over years and years of a low payroll, which doesn’t allow a GM to keep productive veterans around because they become too expensive.

With a low payroll, valuable veterans aren’t affordable anymore, so you need to keep an overflowing stock of AAA players ready to move up to the big leagues.

I think LP has handcuffed Mr. Ryan.

He now (and has for a while) regards his unproven prospects as more valuable than proven MLB players. There will always be room for conjecture between the two, but when you have a legitimate chance for the wild card slot, you have to make your team the best it can be now, not look to the future.

If you’re out of the running now, you look to the future; if you’re in it, you look to today.

By hording his prospects, Mr. Ryan signals to me he’s given up on this season, and looks to next year.

And what signal does this send his starting pitching? Basically, that you need a complete game shut-out to get a win. What’s happened to Radke & Silva and all of their quality starts is criminal.

You know, in life there are people who complain about everything all the time, and there are people who rarely complain about anything. So when a guy in the latter category like Brad Radke complains, as he did yesterday, there is no doubt Ryan has failed the team for this year's run.

So why would I pay for a ticket to see a team abandoned by management for a playoff run this year?

If they want to wait until next year to improve the team, I’ll wait until next year to buy a ticket to see the team.

If you think that’s just hyperbole, I will mention that last year was the first time in 10 years I did not attend a T-wolves game.

When management pays to put a team on the field I can stand to watch, I’ll pay to come see it.

And I know I’m not alone as a discerning sports fan in MN, and I’ll bet all the local teams marketing dept’s hate people like me. To them I say: get a job with the Packers, their fans would even buy tickets to watch monkeys play in the cherished green & gold.