Not going very deep today. Win and the Twins are in and we have baseball at least through the weekend.

Lose and the Twins join 22 other teams on the sidelines.

I liked having a day to breathe between Games 162 and 163, even though it turns everything into a scurry on the other end for the winning team.

The thing I keep thinking about today is how much fun this has been. That was reinforced for me last night while I was watching the Vikings-Packers game and, more specifically, watching Brett Favre.

The guy has fun playing football, and that makes him fun to watch. And I say this as someone who has retained one hometown loyalty on the pro sports landscape — to the Bears. They may be fine and perfectly serviceable quarterbacks, but T-Jack and Rosenfels don’t give off the exuberance vibe that has set Favre apart during his Vikings months.

I can’t get inside the heads of those who reduce sports to ongoing curmudgeonly commentary. Yes, there are times when your team will make you crazy — and it’s perfectly OK to call them out for it. Because when that happens, the game isn’t as much fun for the players, and probably isn’t as much fun for you. Watching baseball is fun (almost) regardless. Watching Sean Henn, to name one earlier this season, wasn’t as much fun.

I don’t care right now that the AL Central is the weakest of the American league’s three divisions, which makes it the third best among baseball’s six divisions, right?  It’s October 6th and I’m going to a baseball game — which I also hope to be doing on October 11th, for that matter.

Back in my traveling basketball coaching days, I used to tell my players that I was all about having fun — but that we weren’t going to have fun by getting our brains beat out. You work hard in practice and we can have a lot of fun. Get a 20-point lead and the big kid can bring the ball upcourt and the point guard can post up.

Advice for today: Knock off work early, find a gathering place, prepare for so much tension that you won’t notice when it gets dark outside and get ready to celebrate. Have a “fired up/ready to go” afternoon and evening.

Figuring out how to survive the Yankees can wait for a day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.