(Howard’s note: Today’s guest post is from Jake Depue, a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and 2004 graduate of Macalester College. He sometimes yells cruel things at Nick Punto, but almost always regrets it later. I assume  he will despise all things New York for the next few days.)

Among serious fans, there are two equal and not entirely exclusive ways of following baseball. The first is the “Stat Head” approach. Stat Heads get their enjoyment from the rich and complex samples Major League Baseball provides throughout a 30 team, 162 game season. No other sport can come close to the amount of statistics baseball offers to its dedicated followers. Sabermetrics has allowed serious fans and baseball executives (sometimes) to assess player value through the lens of true objectivity. You can’t hide from your .OPS, your VORP, or your xFIP.

When I think of a Stat Head (and I do not use that term in a negative way), I think of Aaron Gleeman. Gleeman has combined an in-depth knowledge of sabermetrics with good writing skills and hard work to make a career out of what was once a hobby. At his best, he has me convinced that he could run the Twins better than Bill Smith, or even (gulp!) Terry Ryan. Gleeman, and others like him, have allowed fans the right to question their team’s moves not based on the time they saw Tony Batista hit a home run at the dome or Little Nicky Punto make a diving play at short (or, sadly, into first); but on statistically significant sample sizes based on hundreds, sometimes thousands, of repetitions. They have changed the way baseball is played.

While Gleeman is an amazing Twins blogger and a daily must-read, I wonder sometimes if he and other Stat Heads enjoy baseball. Do they see the game only in numbers, every at bat broken down based on a series of different statistics for the situation at hand? Does it become robotic, with even the most unlikely of comebacks seen simply through the lens of the percentage chance it would happen?

I hope not. I hope Stat Heads smile when they see Carlos Gomez sprint full speed around the bases at Wrigley after his first home run of the season, pace around the living room during a stressful Joe Nathan save, and remember where they were when Jacque Jones inexplicably threw a 30 mile per hour floater to home to lose Game 2 of the ’04 ALDS (do you remember that throw? One of the most overlooked Twins flops in recent memory. Did he really think Jeter wasn’t going to tag?).

This is how I and many others follow the Twins. We’re Dreamers. We fantasize about watching Justin Morneau hit a walk off home run to win a playoff game, or Joe Mauer coming into the last game ever at the Dome batting .401. To the Dreamer, the stats are a valuable tool, but in the end it’s about the experience.

The memories of my summers past and present in the Twin Cities always have an unmistakable Twins tint. I remember 2002, when a chilly winter was looming in mid-October as I sat in my living room drenched in a nervous sweat, watching Eddie Guardado try to close out the A’s in Oakland and allow summer a temporary reprieve.

I remember the next summer, 2003, when a combination of a stress-free job, more mind altering substances than I knew what to do with, and a house full of carefree college kids allowed me to reach a state of living as close to bliss as I could ever imagine. For three months I wished the Twins were along for the ride. Then Shannon Stewart arrived from Toronto (sans plantar fasciitis), and the Twins made their run. They were the last piece to making my life damn near perfect.

And I remember last year against the White Sox. My personal life in disarray, the Twins gave me a 3 day escape. I was at the dome every night for that sweep, screaming, screaming from the upper deck, hugging my friends and jumping up and down when Casilla got his hit, and taking shots with random Twins fans at Grumpy’s afterwards while singing “We’re gonna win Twins, we’re gonna score!” at the top of our lungs.

My point is that for the Dreamer, no matter how pathetic it may seem to an outsider, baseball can actually affect your life. It’s given me the highest highs, and some truly crushing, why-the-hell-do-I-bother-with-this lows. I am, without question, addicted to it. When I think about the amount of baseball I watch, it equates to a part time job. I pass up social outings to watch May games against the Royals. I stay up until 3 am doing school work because I was at the Dome until 11. I sprint around the living room, I throw my remote, I hug my friends. But no matter what, it is always an experience. It shapes my memories and impacts my day.

Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under Guest post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.