Don’t know about you, but I am officially burned out on Hot Stove coverage. I have a pretty big appetite for this stuff, but it’s as if I’ve passed through an all-you-can-eat buffet and can no longer stand to think about food.

“Minaya thinks Mets have players to land Santana.”

Yeah? Wake me when it happens.

La Velle has been all over the news this week at the winter meetings. He just sent me four text messages during the Rule Five draft. Sounds like Twins minor leaguers are dropping like flies. Trust me, we’ll keep you covered, but while he finishes up in Nashville, I could use a diversion.

We’ve been at it for several weeks, speculating on where Torii Hunter would land as a free agent, watching the Santana negotiations unravel and then covering the futile frenzy of the Santana trade sweepstakes.

Sometimes, when the Santana and Hunter highlights flicker on TV, I’ll catch myself thinking about the pure baseball stuff for a second. Like what a thrill it was watching Torii sprint to catch a ball in the gap. Or watching Johan work the corners with the precision of a surgeon before putting hitters away with that Bugs Bunny change-up.

When Bill Smith completed the trade for Delmon Young last week, he mentioned the scouting report from Tom Kelly, who had noted that the ball makes a special sound when it comes off Delmon’s bat. I can’t wait to get to Fort Myers and hear that sound.

I’m sick of the Hot Stove League. I miss the game itself. Baseballreference.com has a countdown going on its site that tells us it’s 116 days until Opening Day.

For now, I’ll settle for another favorite pastime — reading a good book. I’d been meaning to do this for a while, but I’d like to recommend “The Soul of Baseball: A road trip through Buck O’Neil’s America,” by Joe Posnanski.

Loyal readers know I’m a big Buck O’Neil fan, and Posnanski is one of the best sportswriters in the business. I highly recommend his blog, and of course his work for the Kansas City Star. Posnanski traveled the country with O’Neil before he passed away in 2006, and the book is an intimate portrait filled with life lessons. It’s like “Tuesdays with Morrie,” only less contrived.

A sample from a game Posnanski watched with O’Neil in Houston:

Buck sat in his seat before the first pitch, and he watched the players warm up. It was an old scout’s habit. Buck watched everything – warm-ups, batting practice, pitchers throwing in bullpens, on-field conversations.

… In baseball, Buck said, anyone can spot the star. But the best scouts looked for the future star, the starlet in a drugstore. And to find those, Buck said, a scout had to look for small moments of grace. Buck looked around the field and took in the easy tempo of infielders tossing the ball around just before the start of the game, and he offered a running commentary.

“Look at that third baseman. He’s got a strong arm. The shortstop has soft hands – the ball sticks to his glove, like Velcro … The second baseman has bad feet. He looks like he’s stomping grapes. … The fist baseman just scooped a bad throw out of the dirt, but it was luck. He didn’t show that natural ease. He stabbed at the ball, and it was like, Look what I found.”

“You see today, but I see history,” he said. “That could be Babe Ruth out there, or Josh Gibson, or Willie Mays, or Cool Papa Bell. I see this game a little bit differently. I see a skinny kid swinging with an upper cut, I might say, ‘He looks like Ted Williams.’ I see a big man pitching, like this big man on the mound [Roger Clemens], and to me it might be another Nolan Ryan or Hilton Smith. I see little things that remind me. It’s beautiful.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 10:51 am and is filed under Catch-all, Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.