TBS Hates the Minnesota Twins

As any avid reader of my blog can tell you, I’m a pretty big baseball fan.

To that end, I’m a huge Minnesota Twins fan.

As such, the past couple of weeks have been very exciting. The Twins scratched and fought and clawed their way back from the brink to win the American League Central Division in a thrilling one-game playoff against the Detroit Tigers.

For their efforts the Twins earned a date with the New York Yankees in the first-round of the playoffs.

For anyone who doesn’t follow baseball very closely, the Yankees are $200+ million behemoth that currently employs three of baseball’s top four highest paid players.

The Twins are a small-market team that has survived (and thrived) over the years largely on solid scouting, shrewd player development, and spend-thrift tactics.

To get a good grasp on what a David vs Goliath story this really was, one could look simply at the overall payroll of the Twins (roughly $65 million) versus the aforementioned salaries of just the three highest paid Yankees (roughly $75 million).

Anyway, bitching about salaries notwithstanding, the real problem was how badly TBS—the station covering the playoffs—treated the Twins throughout the series.

From day one, the Twins were treated like an afterthought. The announcers never gave them any credit or even a fighting chance.

Often times the announcing was so abysmal I had to mute the TV for fear that I’d throw a book or a baseball or myself through it in a desperate attempt to quiet the mindless ass-rambling of Chip Caray.

For their part, the Twins played some very tight ballgames but just couldn’t hang with the Yankees and eventually were swept out of the Division Series three games to none.

All of that I can handle.

I was upset by the Twins’ inability to put games away.

I was upset by the announcers’ inability to not suck at life.

I was upset by the umpires’ inability to see with anything better than 80/80 vision.

What upset me most, however, was that during the decisive Game Three matchup between the Twins and Yankees, TBS decided to pan the crowd and zoom in on some of Minnesota’s “finest specimens.”

They did the same thing in New York, mind you, zooming in on celebrities like Jay-Z and Kate Hudson, or well-dressed business men and hotties in Derek Jeter jerseys.

In Minnesota, we got this:

That’s right folks, of the 54,735 people in the stands that day, the powers that be at TBS decided to flash these two on the screen for all the world to see.

Sure, sure we got the occasional snapshot of some worrisome looking Nordic gals in their pink Joe Mauer jerseys or some wholesome, sideburn-bearing gentleman in crooked TC caps. But it was these two fine specimens that the TBS crew decided to focus on.

Of all the audience shots, these two received the most prolonged screen time; so much so that at my Twins party (which, living in Boston was more of an anti-Yankees party than anything else) the entire populous in attendance broke into uproarious laughter.

Not cool, TBS. Not cool at all.