There are two things that send me to the brink of road rage. One is when drivers don’t use their turn signals. The other is when drivers jump in front of me in the passing lane and force me to slow down.

The latter happened about eight times this morning as I drove across Alligator Alley. I had the cruise control set, had, `Mike and Mike in the Morning,’ on the radio and was minding my own business. Then a guy in an Escalade, a blonde in a Highlander and another guy in a Cherokee appear on the road. For over 30 miles, someone from the group would pass me but eventually slow down and force me to go around them. Eventually, they would accelerate and pass me again, and the process repeated itself over and over.

I got mad, accelerated to a high rate of speed and left them. But I came up on some other cars, and the whole jump-in-the-passing-lane bit began. So the two guys and the blonde eventually caught up. What a mess!

We weren’t in heavy traffic. Why can’t people maintain their rate of speed on a relatively open highway? I was pretty wound up by the time I got to ballpark.

Joe C. is back in Fort Myers, monitoring the Joe Mauer news. The sneaky guy was able to have his MR arthrogram yesterday to speed up the process, so I’m sure we’ll have an update today.

Justin Morneau and Jesse Crain were in the clubhouse this morning after Team Canada was booted from the World Baseball Classic. Bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek was all over Morneau for getting kicked out of the tournament before Nick Punto.

I like the group of pitchers the Twins have here today.

 Twins: 1. Span, LF. 2. Casilla, 2B. 3. Crede, 3B. 4. Kubel, DH. 5.  Cuddy, RF. 6. Buscher, 1B. 7. Mike Redmond, C. 8. Harris, SS. 9. Gomez, CF. Pitching: Perkins, with Blackburn, Nathan, Dickey, Gosling, Delaney, Swarzak and Julianel on the trip.

Orioles: 1. Roberts, 2B. 2. Jones, CF. 3. Wigginton, 3B. 4. Huff, 1B. 5. Matt Wieters, the greatest catching prospect since Joe Mauer, C. 6. Scott, LF. 7. Freel, RF. 8. Zaun, C. 9. Cabrera, SS. Pitching: Pauley, with George Sherrill, Jim Johnson and friends.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under preseason. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.