Talking points:

The Minnesota Twins-Chicago White Sox race is intriguing, but nowhere near as intriguing as the 2008 Presidential race. With that in mind we here at Twinscast came up with an idea, we’ll call it, ‘Who said that?’ We’ll fill the column with some quotes and some comments about the two races and you can try to guess who said what: our speakers are Ozzie Guillen (Chicago White Sox manager), Ron Gardenhire (Minnesota Twins manager), Barack Obama (U.S. Senator of Illinois), John McCain (U.S. Senator of Arizona) and Sarah Palin (Governor of Alaska). Feel free to post your answers on the comments section and whoever gets the most right can have a signed picture of Bryant chest-bumping me - you heard that right.

1. “I don’t know. We’re good friends. I mean, we’re not that tight… I have respect for what he does, but on the field he’s my enemy.”

In a presidential race everyone is your enemy until they’re your friend, but it’s really just a farce.

Imagine that Bryant and I were fighting over the same woman, and in that vein, I tell the woman every terrible thing (truth does not actually matter, we’re trying to win here) that I know about Bryant.

1. He has trouble fulfilling a woman’s needs sexually.

2. He drinks.

3. His reproductive organ may actually be a composition of different parts of his back.

4. He got his degree from Brown.

Three weeks later Bryant has won the girl, his arguments against me (1. He’s gay; 2. He gambles; 3. He’s prone to masturbate in public; 4. He’s broke) were more persuasive than mine. Now he and I and the girl are all out eating dinner together, back to being old friends. We’re sharing old memories, planning a trip to California, and deciding when we should get together to do the podcast.

We’re able to laugh about all the terrible things we said about each other.

Me: Oh that thing I said about Bryant’s penis being built from skin from his back, that was almost too good.

Bryant: Yeah but it seems that my old story about you jerking off in public really swayed her opinion, wouldn’t you agree honey?

Woman: Yeah I knew that both of you were full of sh-t but Bryant was just a little more convincing in his lies.

Would this ever work? No. I wouldn’t talk to Bryant for months. This is why men don’t argue over women unless they’re in a Jennifer Aniston movie - if my friend has a smoking hot, friendly, intelligent girlfriend and I don’t, well what can you do? But we’re supposed to believe that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are all of a sudden best friends? Or that Joe Biden has finally decided that Obama is ready to lead the country? Really, in the course of three weeks your whole perspective changed? Really Joe Biden?

2. “I got an old ink pen, my friends, and the first pork-barrel laden earmark, big-spending bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it.”

To the Minnesota Twins advance scouting team and Minnesota Twins General Manger Bill Smith. It wasn’t that the Twins cut spending across the board during the winter, it’s that they cut-spending in the most asinine, unbelievable ways - now at this point in the season quibbling over what happened six months ago seems foolish and irresponsible. But, I will contend for as long as possible that this Twins team has thrived in spite of front office incompetence. They have thrived because of great managing (Gardy, Rick Anderson, Joe Vavra, Tom Kelly’s work with Morneau, etc.) and great seasons from a number of young players who the front office didn’t have full faith in (Buscher, Casilla, Span).

It fits the Twins mold from previous years. They spent money on washed up veterans (Monroe, Lamb, Everett, Hernandez) and waited until the very last moment to cut them loose. It isn’t that this is a bad idea and each player had defining moments (Monroe - three-run home run against KC in the ninth; Lamb - walk-off single against Pappelbon; Everett - ; Hernandez - 10 wins?) but it still speaks to a resignation that when it comes to big time spending the Twins are more willing to grind it out and pray for lightning to strike.

3. “You can’t back away from situations, and [he] doesn’t back away from anything.”

My favorite thing about this year’s election is the fact that people can just lie. It doesn’t even matter how blatant the lie is, people can just lie and lie and lie and get away with it. It reminds me of a man continually denying an affair while the wife stands there with another woman’s underwear in her hand.

And if there is one thing that John McCain, The Maverick of the Middle-Class, has done this election it’s prove that he doesn’t back away from any situation, even if it means devaluing every moral stand he has taken in his career.

Dinner with Jerry Falwell? Check.

Overturn Roe v. Wade? Check.

Support for Bush tax cuts? Check.

And it isn’t just McCain, when faced with the chance to gain some votes every politician will stand sturdy and say whatever is necessary to get a new convert - regardless of whether or not their new position goes against their stated ideology.

4. “I answered him yes, because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink.”

To any Minnesota Twins fan or coach who has believed in the bullpen this season. Matt Guerrier, Brian Bass, Jesse Crain, Dennys Reyes, Jaun Rincon (he was here this year, remember), etc. have all had the chance to show their readiness because in the reliever role, you can’t blink. But of course, all that Twins relievers have done this season is blink, and blink, and blink, and crap the bed.

It’s important to remember that at the start of the year the greatest fear for any Twins fan was the starting rotation - the bullpen was supposed to be in lock-step. The fact that four of the five Twins starters right now have ERA’s under 4.00 (Perkins ERA ballooned last night), and the fact that the offense has scored the third most runs in the American League, should mean that the team is cruising along, but the bullpen has been the weak-link.

The Twins bullpen has gone 22-24 on the season with a 3.97 ERA, that’s good for eighth best in the American League, the only teams with a worse ERA are Seattle, Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, Texas and Cleveland.

In case you were wondering, this is not good for the post-season. 

5. “More now it’s the woman–be careful who you take the picture with, be careful where you take the picture. MySpace, Facebook, all those different things, they can cause you a lot of problems.”

To my favorite baby-papa drama of the season: Levi Johnston. It isn’t that I care about whether or not a 17-year-old has an out of wedlock child, I seriously do not. What worries me is the sanity of poor Levi. Lets remember what some of those quotes were from his myspace page:

“I’m a fuc-ing redneck…I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shi- and just fuc-in’ chillin’ I guess…Ya fu-k with me I’ll kick [your] ass.”

Can you imagine the sheer terror on this guys face when he realized what he had just stepped into. I mean it’s one thing for a redneck to have a baby, it’s another thing for that redneck to actually have to raise and father the child - and to do it with the entire republican establishment looking over your shoulder? Dear God.

I can only imagine the conversation him and the boys had the night he found out he was hoping on a plane to St. Paul to meet John McCain and hold a down-syndrome baby on national television to prove his paternal qualifications.

Friend: Wait, you had sex with Bristol?

Johnston: Yeah.

Friend: When?

Johnston: I don’t really remember, I think it was on a camping trip.

Friend: Fu-k.

Johnston: I know.

Friend: Wait so she’s going to actually have the baby?

Johnston: Yeah.

Friend: Fu-k.

Johnston: I know.

I just feel awful for the guy.

6. “We’ve got a little travel coming the next 52 days.”

To the most mind-numbing road trip in the history of the Minnesota Twins, and to the current 10-game road trip they are embarking on. It’s one thing to be in a tight pennant race, it wears on the fans mind. I remember calling my dad after one of the games where Joe Nathan blew another save and just saying, ‘What happened?’ over and over. It wasn’t that the Twins were losing games and missing chances to move up in the division, it was the absolutely crushing inventiveness of the whole endeavor.

Luckily at this moment the Twins are tied atop the standing with the White Sox with 16 games to play. Can they hang on? I don’t know. But I do know that if they do I will be terrified for every single road game they have to play.

7. “This guy told me I was crazy, I need anger management. Shut the fu-k up. You don’t know, you don’t know my life. You went to fuc-ing Harvard.”

No matter what you think of Barack Obama there is one thing that is pretty certain. He is smarter than you. He’s smarter than me. He’s smarter than Bryant and I combined. He’s smarter than Bryant, George W. Bush and I combined. And while, ostensibly, that’s a good quality to have in the leader of the free world, it can get a little condescending.

Listen most Americans don’t want to hear about all of your accomplishments, we know you went to fuc-ing Harvard. The fact that the man is a completely self-made intellectual who struggled through hardship after hardship to get to where he is can get lost in the backwash.

If I’m Obama it’s time to start taking shots of Rich & Royal Whiskey with the folks at the Chanhassen VFW, and I’m not talking about the lunch-time crowd, I’m talking about the 12:30 a.m. crowd. It’s time for Obama to dumb it down a notch, get common, then when you’re in office you can throw back on the intellectual gravitas and understanding that would help you to manage the greatest bastion of freedom in the world.

8. “We’ve got to get home and see if we can right the ship.”

This is for everyone involved with the democratic party who are terrified right now about the fact that in a year when the election was basically handed to them, they have screwed it up. It’s hard to know exactly how this happened and it would take a political mind far above mind, but somewhere along the line they screwed up…

9. “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”

To Eddie Guardado: The Twins great pickup of the 2008 trade deadline will now have time to compete with the likes of Bret Boone and Phil Nevin for the title of biggest waste of excitement by a Twins fan base only to receiver a middle-class player at the trade deadline. The thing about Guardado is that he is what he is. You can try to shine it anyway you like, perhaps by saying, ‘Well Eddie is a better option than any other pitcher in the bullpen,’ but that doesn’t make Eddie a good pitcher, and his 10.39 ERA in 4.1 innings verifies this thought.

10. “We killed the Bridge to Nowhere.”

To Joe Nathan who as the Twins closer, is officially nowhere. It is impossible to have the role of closer when the people building that bridge to you cannot keep a lead of three runs or less. I don’t know what Joe Nathan is now, but he is certainly the best closer in baseball who hasn’t saved a game since August 27.

This is a good thing, but we’ll see how we feel about it come September 28. Also, another thing about Gomez that is my favorite running sub-plot in the outfield, the fact that he runs behind Delmon Young on every fly-ball to left. Gomez has seen too many ball flop over Young’s head or off his shoulder to just stand in center and expect a catch in left. He literally just stands behind Young, like an over-bearing mother worrying about her husband holding a child.

12. “We might fall well short of their standard, but there’s honor in the effort.”

 To the Minnesota Twins 2008 season, a magical ride that some fans seem completely unpleased with. I complain on occasion about the Twins but make no mistake about it, this season has been special and will continue to be special until the day it ends. It shouldn’t really matter if they make the playoffs or not - what’s a few extra games - but the game is the game and everyone wants to be the last one standing.

As fans we do what we can to remain objective about the quest - after all we have greater concerns than what some collection of grown men playing a child’s game do with their time. But it becomes difficult to find many things that give greater entertainment to the masses than baseball, and really, when considering the sport of politics - you know the deciding of who becomes the most powerful people in our country - it really doesn’t seem that fool-hearty to become completely lost in baseball.