Season-Ender 2011

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I
The World Series seventh game was a disappointing anticlimax, perhaps because I found myself rooting for the Texas Rangers. 1. They were an American League team, thus one I was familiar with from following the Twins. 2. They seemed more deserving, having won a division, as opposed to wild-carding the party. 3. Tony LaRussa, who seems to get about as much pleasure from sport as Tiger Woods. And 4. the Rangers being robbed when a third strike, per the tight FoxTrax box, was called a ball, forcing in a run and leading to another run when the next pitch hit a batter. That inning, when two runs scored without a ball leaving the infield, gave the Cards a 5-2 lead and sapped whatever spirit the Rangers could muster after losing two-run leads in three almost back-to-back innings. Final proof that karma had descended on St. Louis came when Allen Craig leaped and took a home run away from Nelson Cruz an inning later(?).
Of course, for all intents and purposes the Series was lost by the Rangers the night before, in one of the more entertaining – not best – postseason games I’ve seen. I say “lost” not to diminish the clutch hitting of David Freese, but because the Rangers helped by giving so much away. The Cardinal runner who scored to improbably tie the game in the 9th was walked on four pitches by Texas closer Neftali Feliz. Freese’s game-tying triple with two strikes and two outs was then horribly misplayed by rightfielder Nelson Cruz, who was positioned too far in (see below), then drifted instead of sprinting back before making an ungainly leap that let the ball bounce off the bottom of the fence and roll back toward the infield. The Cardinal scoring the equally unexpected tying run in the 10th got on with a Texas League (how ironic!) single, then scored on a broken-bat hit by Lance Berkman. But in between those bloops the Rangers blew another key play: with runners on second and third and one out, Ryan Theriot hit a chopper to Adrian Beltre at third. The runner at third was halfway home, but Beltre eschewed that play for the safer out at first. Had that run been cut down, Berkman’s single would not have tied the game. This recap doesn’t even include the Redbirds’ tying run in the sixth which came about thusly: infield single, error, walk and walk – the last by ace reliever Alexi Ogando, who didn’t even come close to the plate. Or the Cards’ tying run in the third, which also came without a ball leaving the infield.
II
Some of the pleasure of watching the Series – of those I saw, Game Two was almost as classic as Game Six – was diminished by the annual agony of enduring Tim McCarver’s “analysis.” More than 20 years ago, early in his career, I wrote McCarver to complain about his announcing. At a key point in a game, perhaps in a Series, McCarver was mid-opinion about the positioning of the outfielders when a dramatic home run was struck. Rather than letting the game build its own tension, and recognize it, he was babbling on about an irrelevancy. He wrote me back, with schoolboy penmanship, admitting that some people said he talked too much, but blah-blah-blah. Since then, he has changed not a jot.
McCarver acts like every baseball game is a tutorial, and he is the teacher. The fact that some people watching the World Series may already know something about the game does not dissuade him. Just as bothersome as the fact that he is always talking, is that his analysis is half the time either irrelevant or plain wrong. “Because the pitcher throws with a submarine motion, his pitch will always rise,” he says, just before the replay shows it sharply dropping. “If that ball hit the runner in fair territory,” he needlessly comments, “the batter would be out” – when, in fact, the runner would be out and the batter would be credited with a single.
Outfield positioning is his personal hobbyhorse, one that bit him in Game 6. When Lance Berkman was up in the 10th, McCarver kept insisting that the outfielders were playing too deep – playing a “prevent defense” (to use his inapt football analogy) – to throw the runner at second out at the plate. Never mind that Berkman had 32 homers on the year and homered in the first. Or that the runner on second was the fleet John Jay, who would undoubtedly beat any throw from the outfield. Or that there was also a runner on first, representing the potential winning run, and maybe it was just as important to keep him from scoring on a double to end the game. But McCarver’s bigger sin here was one of omission, not commission, for he said nothing about Cruz’s positioning the previous inning, when Freese’s drive went over his head to score runners from first and second and tie the game. If ever there were a time for the “no-doubles” defense, that was it. The run on second was meaningless, all that mattered was not letting the runner on first score. Which he did. Because Cruz was playing too shallow.
III
Watching the Rangers and Cardinals, one could not help but realize how far the Minnesota Twins have sunk from championship contention. Position-by-position there were better players on display, even when Nick Punto was in the lineup. Most glaring was the shortstop play of Rafael Furcal and Elvis Andrus. They consistently got to balls that Nishiyoki would have barely waved at – not to mention Trevor Plouffe – and their arms were a revelation. Ian Kinsler at second gave the Rangers strength up the middle that good teams require and the Twins this year lacked. Even at the position where the Twins are expending half their payroll, catcher, both Yadier Molina and Mike Napoli showed a consistency and grit that you would be sorely tempted to trade Joe Mauer for, were he not from St. Paul. When it comes to power hitting, you recall that the Twins barely had one player reach 20 home runs for the year. By contrast, every time Pujols, Berkman, Hamilton, Cruz or Beltre came to the plate, you felt it was only a matter of their connecting before the ball would leave the park.
As for pitching, there was only one Chris Carpenter in this series, although Derek Holland did to the Cardinals what he also did to the Twins. For the most part, you just felt that most of these pitchers were plain tuckered out – either from the long season or for having to appear in so many of the playoff and World Series games. No one had the electric stuff I saw from Justin Verlander in the earlier round: if he throws his pitch, you know no one can hit it. It’s hard to compare the roster of B-level pitchers on the Twins, what they would have been like after so much work.
IV
So what should the Twins do with their roster before next season? Which free agents should they keep? What positions do they need to bolster?
The last question is the easiest: shortstop. Identifying the need to upgrade that spot, which the manager and general manager have both admitted, is one thing; doing it another. Plenty of middle infielders move around each winter, but most tend to be of the Julio Lugo/Orlando Hudson variety – some good statistics but they don’t do much to make their new team a winner. Nor do they stay long. The best shortstops always seem to be developed in a team’s own system. That doesn’t bode well for Minnesota, since everyone in their system seemed to get a crack at the Show this year, leaving few undiscovered gems down below. If the Twins had kept J.J.Hardy and he’d hit his 30 home runs here instead of Baltimore this year, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But somehow one doubts that would’ve happened.
Of the free agents, Capps should be history, if only because Twins fans need a change of scenery. Nathan is not worth a lot of money, but I doubt any other team will think otherwise, so he should be retained as closer “insurance,” not as closer. Kubel, too, will be valued more highly by the Twins than anyone else, and I don’t mind if he becomes a platoon DH. The hard call is Michael Cuddyer. He could probably run successfully for mayor of Minneapolis, and he proved his versatility and relative durability this year. Unfortunately, he could fit into other teams’ plans, and the Twins can’t afford to give him Mauer-Morneau-type money. I would be happy with an outfield of Revere-Span-Cuddyer, but I’m afraid it won’t happen.
After shortstop, the big need is a backup catcher who can hit over .200. Is there another Molina brother out there, perhaps? The Twins traded away their two catching prospects who could hit, and that cupboard is bare. As for pitching, the Twins need to bring in a new starter, if only to keep the fans interested. Pavano won’t improve, and only Scott Baker still has the potential to be dominant. The rest – Duensing, Blackburn, Slowey, Swarzak – can be competent, but competent in this division means .500. Liriano should be traded, if at all possible. He needs a change of scenery, and Twins fans’ patience has about expired.
Most of all, the Twins need some fresh faces, even if it means rolling the dice a bit. If they come back with the same cast, there won’t be much interest, or much of a future. If they come back with the same cast and it flops, the Twins will have to resort to the standard remedy: fire the manager.

Dog Days of August

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The trading deadline has passed, the season is two-thirds over, and the Twins remain in fourth place, eight games below .500. Their chances of making the playoffs, even if the Tigers weren’t a far superior team, are nil; and even if they had that chance, the Red Sox or Yankees would blow them out of the water. So it is time to look further ahead, to 2012 and beyond. What have we learned, whom should we keep, and where do we go from here?
The first, most obvious step was taken last night, when Denard Span returned to centerfield and Ben Revere was shifted to left. This took the pressure of batting leadoff off Revere and, more important, shifted him to a defensive spot where his weak arm is not the liability it was in center. Revere was routinely giving up two or three extra bases a game. In left, he is a significant upgrade over Delmon Young, who was shifted to DH, his only viable position. As for rightfield, Michael Cuddyer has a great arm but is otherwise merely competent; but if Justin Morneau can return at a high level, the outfield will be set for the foreseeable future.
Jason Kubel has shown he is a professional hitter with power and could form a potent left-right DH platoon with Young. The sooner Jim Thome gets his 600th home run and retires, the better for everyone. His home runs are exciting, but he strikes out too much and his slowness afoot is another problem.
If the outfield sorts itself out rather neatly, the same cannot be said for the infield, the Twins’ biggest weakness. Let’s pencil in Morneau at first, although his inability to play an entire season unhurt is troubling. Danny Valencia has a strong arm and pop in his bat, but his average has regressed from his rookie season and his aim is not always steady. Nor does he seem terribly popular among his teammates. One hopes that added maturity can rectify these issues and he can give the Twins a Koskie-level stability on the corner. We will know more next season.
I’m afraid the verdict can already be given for the Tsuyoshi Nishimure experiment, however. He simply does not play at the major league level. He is the weakest hitter and worst shortstop I can remember seeing in the big leagues. He is still starting because the Twins invested a lot of money in him, and they have no one to replace him, but finding a shortstop somewhere has to be the Twins’ biggest priority for the future. Obviously, there is no one currently in the farm system who is ready, as we have seen Trevor Plouffe, Matt Tolbert and Luke Hughes this summer without being impressed.
Alexi Casilla, who at least can hit .250 with occasional power, could be moved to short without hurting, or helping, much. That would leave second base for Plouffe-Tolbert-Hughes. All of them are competent and could be carried, without embarrassment, in a lineup with eight solid hitters. The trouble is, with Valencia-Casilla-Plouffe in your infield, you have a bunch that needs to be carried. It’s like giving away three innings of offense.
Mauer is good, if not great, behind the plate, and the same can be said for his offense. He doesn’t have enough power or get enough clutch hits to justify his salary, but most days he’s a solid contributor. Given his inability to play every day, or get through a season unhurt, however, the Twins need a backup catcher who can hit more than .200. A winning team needs production up and down the lineup, as the saying goes, and when you get the likes of Hughes, Nishioka and Butera hitting together, that’s too big a hole for the rest of the Twins to regularly overcome.
Unless, of course, you had great pitching. Here, as Dick Bremer mentioned last night, every pitcher on the roster except Anthony Swarzak and Glen Perkins has regressed this summer. Carl Pavano probably doesn’t have much left and should be gone after this year. Francisco Liriano can be unhittable, but is far too erratic. If the Twins could get a shortstop in return, I would trade Liriano in a minute. Nick Blackburn should give way to Swarzak now in the rotation. He still could turn it around, as he did last year, but for now he’s a number five starter, at best. Scott Baker is their ace, and Brian Duensing can be an innings-eater; so those two are solid, but they would rank three and four on a good staff. Where can the Twins find a number one and number two guy? That’s a big problem, as their touted minor leaguers are either injured or having bad years themselves.
Lastly, I love Glen Perkins this year, and would be glad to give him the closer role next year, unless Joe Nathan take a paycut. I would trade or give away Matt Capps, and the same for Jose Mijares, whom I tabbed as a potential closer two years ago but who, since then, has exploded into a headcase with no control.
In sum, I see a lean four or five years ahead for the Twins. Almost every other major league team has been bouyed by fresh blood, on the mound or at the plate. The Angels, to take today’s opponent as an example, have a rookie first baseman named Trumbo, who has replaced their injured regular and hit 20 homer with 58 rbis, more than any Twin. With one of the thinnest farm systems going at the moment, the Twins will simply have a hard time keeping up.

Twins at the Quarter Pole

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How could I have been so wrong in my predictions for the Twins’ 2011 season? 45 games into the year, they have the worst record in the majors and show no sign of getting much better. In hindsight, the thinness of the Twins’ roster should have been obvious, but who takes future injuries into account when doing a preview? Of course, every team has players on the disabled list, some as valuable as the Twins’, but for other teams, the replacements have been competent. The fact that every Twins minor league team finished last in its respective league last year, or close to it, should have been a tip-off that the well was running dry. Now we are at the point where there is no confidence on the team. So much of sports is mental, and if you think you’re going to lose, you probably will.
Now for the more individual causes: Joe Mauer’s breakdown is problem #1. Most obviously, you’re trading a .350 hitter for a .125 hitter, since the Twins last year traded away the two best-hitting catchers in their system, Wilson Ramos and Jose Morales. Just as important, Mauer has always been a winner, and his unflappable confidence anchored the team’s personality.
The second biggest problem is the morphing of the middle infield from a question mark to a disaster area. I had high hopes for Tsuyoshi Nishioka at second and guarded optimism for Alexi Cassila at short. Nishi, instead, broke his leg, and Casilla has remained as erratic in the field, on the bases and at the plate, as he was the first two times he was sent down to the minors. This has opened the door for Matt Tolbert and Luke Hughes, neither of whom could bat .200, and Trevor Plouffe, a default shortstop if there ever was one. He hits like an aspiring Michael Cuddyer – not a number two hitter, where Gardy is using him – while in the field his feet are slow and his throws are wild. Instead of being strong up the middle, the goal of every team, the Twins feature a black hole.
On the corners Justin Morneau and Danny Valencia, in contrast, look like legitimate Major Leaguers, but Major Leaguers having bad years. Morneau is clearly not recovered from his concussion-imposed layoff; he gets hits, but how many teams are using a cleanup hitter with only two home runs? That’s one more than Delmon Young has, and at least Morneau can field his position. Young can give up more runs in leftfield than he produces at the plate, and frequently does.
Jason Kubel is playing fine, all the more remarkable given how little help he is getting. Cuddyer is Cuddyer – a home run and double one game, three groundouts to short the next. He can be a piece of the puzzle, little more. Jim Thome has been hurt much of the year, but what can you expect from someone with his age and body? There’s a reason no other team wanted to sign him. His experience with the Twins is very similar to Brett Favre’s with the Vikings, and the sooner they cut the cord, the better off they will be.
As for the pitching, the starters have not been bad, except that they seem to be effective for six innings only, and the Twins have no one to pitch the seventh. All of them have had bad outings, but they have all had more good outings than bad, and remember that any team only need win 57% of its games to make the playoffs. It’s the relievers who have been the disappointment. Joe Nathan was rushed back to the closer spot prematurely, and we’re still trying to see where he will fit in. Jose Mijares can’t find the strike zone and is nowhere near the pitcher he looked to be two years ago. Matt Capps may have the bulldog personality of a closer, but he doesn’t have a strikeout pitch and is strictly average. Given how few times the Twins have taken a lead into the ninth, it has been especially deflating when he lets the game get away. Glen Perkins for the defense has been the equal of Jason Kubel for the offense. The other relievers are simply minor leaguers on loan.
Where does this leave the Twins? Unfortunately, like the Vikings last season, this was supposed to be year where all the pieces came together. The team was built for the present, not the future. As a result, perhaps, the future doesn’t have much to show for itself. There are no hotshots in the minors, just waiting for their chance. We’ve seen Ben Revere and Luke Hughes, and we’re worried. Can the Twins rebuild through a trade? It’s hard to see anyone on their roster whom another team would want. Someone like Denard Span is a good complementary player, but he’s not going to make an impact elsewhere, and most teams have a centerfielder. I could be wrong – and I’ve been wrong before – but all I see is a multi-year slog through mediocrity until a new generation of Mauers and Morneaus comes along. If it does.

Pelagic Birding

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Took my first, and perhaps only, pelagic birding trip with the LA Audubon Society out of Santa Barbara Harbor on April 30. I found out later that this is the notorious rough-water trip. I also discovered as we returned to harbor that half the birders were on scopalamine, scopase or dramamine. The other half, I heard, including me, got seasick. The first hour, as we motored up the coast toward Point Concepcion, past Sands Beach where I watch snowy plovers and Rancho Dos Pueblos, where Serin will be married, I was fine, except for my surprise at seeing the ocean surface coated with oil slicks, allegedly from seeps in the ocean floor. As we turned out to the open ocean, however, the ups and down soon made me queasy, and a lot more was going up than down. After breakfast left me, the man behind the snack counter gave me a garbage bag, which was my trusty companion the rest of the trip. We left at 7 a.m., got back at 8 p.m., so I would say I was sick for 12 of the 13 hours, much of it spent lying on my back on a bench, half-dozing, but generally in suspended animation.
That said, the birds were, to my mind, amazing. The boat would cruise at speed until it found a slick, whatever that was, where birds were feeding. We would then float down the slick, feeding chum off the stern, and the loudspeaker would call out sightings. Having never seen ocean birds before, I didn’t know what to expect, but I was surprised at the good views we had of most species. Admittedly, there were some that excited people that I may have seen but couldn’t tell, because they were spots on the waves or were flying with other, equally nondescript varieties. The big find of the day was a Murphy’s Petrel – a lifer even for the man at the microphone. I was at the rail when people were talking about it, but, not knowing what I was looking for, I can’t say I saw it.
Easier, and more exciting for me, were the few birds that were distinctively marked, which usually meant having some white on them. Laysan’s Albatross, for one, was unmistakable, both due to its size and its color. But my favorite of the day was the Sabine’s Gull, a bird I had never even heard of before, which flashed beautiful black-and-white stripes on its forewing as it fly. Other seabirds were generally muddy – e.g., the Rhinoceros Auklet and Sooty Shearwater – but the Sabine’s Gull was crisp and handsome.
By far the most numerous birds were the Phalaropes, both Red and Red-necked. I have no idea which there were more of, because for the most part the flocks took wing as the boat approached them; but there were sharp individuals of each species that floated close by. In all, we saw hundreds of them, dainty little birds for such a big ocean. Another easy-to-identify find were the black terns. Having seen these in Minnesota I was not as excited as the Santa Barbara birder who said he had never seen so many – seven – at one time.
In all, I’d say the birds are most interesting to life listers, as they are largely drab, don’t do much and all inhabit the same environment. But what magic there is comes from that environment – being totally out of touch with land, sitting in an endless, infinite expanse of ocean, and coming across birds, like the albatross, that make this their home.

Timid Baserunning

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While Gardy’s conservative managing style seems to pay off, year after year, I admit I get frustrated at his unwillingness to let his faster players try to steal second more often. Lots of good things can happen on stolen base attempts: the pitcher can be slow to the plate, the pitch can be hard to handle, the catcher can drop the ball and, most often, the throw to second can be offline. Even the best catchers throw out only 33% of potential base stealers, and that statistic includes the easier play at third base.
In the Twins’ first loss to the Yankees this year, they were down, 4-3, in the 8th inning when Nishi got an infield single with one out. To score him from first with the tying run, the Twins would have needed two more singles against All-Star closer Rafael Soriano. The TV announcers expected him to run, but he didn’t, until the count was 3-2, at which point Mauer flied to left, and he stayed put during Morneau’s at bat.
Then in the next inning, against uber-closer Mariano Rivera, Jason Kubel hit a two-out single and Jason Repko was brought in to pinch-run. Now tell me, what were the odds, historically, of the next two batters, #s 8 and 9 in the order, getting hits off Rivera? Undoubtedly less than the odds that Repko would be safe at second on a steal, and perhaps even get to third on a bad throw, from which it would take only one hit to tie the game.
In a way, this is similar to the 4th-and-1 situation from your own 40-yard line in football. Analysis has shown clearly that the odds favor going for a first down instead of punting, but the conservative call is traditional and safe. No one will fault the coach for making that call. Similarly, no one will fault Gardy for not sending the runner with two outs in the ninth; whereas if Repko goes and is thrown out, the manager will be questioned. But it is still the smarter play.

Twins Preview

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I approach the 2011 season, opening tonight, with some trepidations, primarily because so many pundits (but not all) are picking the Twins to win their division and even beat the Yankees in the playoffs’ first round. This generous appraisal is based mainly on the fact that the Twins won the division last year (relatively easy – i.e., no playoff game required) and none of their players had particularly stellar seasons. There’s no one on the 25-man roster of whom it would be unrealistic to expect better things in 2011.
The problem is that in the past, when the Twins have been successful, it has generally been a surprise. They are good at sneaking past more star-laden teams, like the White Sox and Tigers, being overlooked and lagging behind until a late-season spurt gives them the division. When they are supposed to be good, they disappoint.
My other qualm is that, spending spring training in California, I have not seen a minute of actual player action. This, however, shouldn’t matter much, as countless years of experience have taught me that results in spring training don’t matter much. Further, as Jim Souhan points out in today’s Strib, the Twins’ recents victories have depended as much on mid-season additions or adjustments – viz., the Shannon Stewart for Bobby Kielty trade in 2005 – as on the opening-day starting lineup.
With those caveats in place, let me say why I expect nothing less than a banner year for the Minnesota Twins.
1. Starting pitching. The Twins have six solid starters, none dominant but each capable of the occasional gem and all able to keep their team “in the game.” I’ll bet the Twins rank very low on the list of teams involved in 10-8 games, and that’s because their pitchers rarely blow up. In fact, the one pitcher who can be unhittable, Francisco Liriano, is also in that regard the most problematic. We pretty much know what we will get from Baker, Blackburn, Pavano and Slowey. Duensing has looked promising in a limited role; if he blooms, the rotation could be very good. Best of all is the depth: if someone goes off track or gets hurt, as always happens, Slowey can slip right in, and Perkins and minor-leaguer Kyle Waldrop are right behind.
2. The Nishi effect. Keeping the same cast can make a team stale. Adding a high-energy newcomer can make everyone a little better, as the adjustment necessary creates a little edge. Tsuyoshi Nishioka sounds like a perfect Twin: excellent defense, good speed, handles the bat well – in short, everything Ron Gardenhire has been looking for in a #2 hitter the last several years. In some odd way, I also think his being Japanese will help cement the social fabric of the multi-ethnic Twins, divided fairly evenly among whites, blacks, Hispanics and Canadians.
3. Target Park. You have to think that the Twins will thrive even more in their home park, having gotten last year’s period of adjustment out of the way.
4. Delmon Young. Of all the Twins who could have a breakout year – Cuddyer, Kubel and Valencia foremost among them – Young is the one who seems most poised to deliver on the promise the Twins saw when they traded Matt Garza. I would still much rather see Young at DH than in left field, but that won’t happen so long as Jim Thome is around.
5. Last year’s underachievers. I’ve alluded to this before, but every Twin has had a better season in the majors than he did last year, and they are all still 30 or under. Morneau was hurt, Mauer’s power and average dropped, Span struggled, Punto was Punto and none of the bench players shone. It’s unreasonable to think everyone’s numbers will improve, but if only half do, and then if the Twins get production from a currently unidentified source, as well, the offense should be potent.
There are, to be fair, clouds on the horizon, too. To keep the net positive, I will list but four.
1. Alexi Casilla. Shortstop is the key to the defensive arch, the captain who has to take charge of the infield. With a rookie and an almost-rookie on each side of him, Casilla’s role has to be huge. In each of the last two seasons, he has been given every opportunity to win a starting job, and he has failed each time, mostly from inconsistency. With no one behind him who can both field and hit over .200, a faltering Casilla would seriously weaken the Twins.
2. Morneau and Mauer. They say he is back from his concussion, but Morneau was handled gingerly in spring training and his hitting was dismal. Morneau is a streak hitter, with a fine line between power and strikeout. If he doesn’t regain confidence quickly, he could become a black hole in the middle of the lineup. (Personally, I would relieve some pressue by batting Young cleanup and dropping Morneau to fifth, which would also set up a left-right-left lineup through the order.) Mauer is hardly fragile, but he plays with a bad knee at a physically demanding position and the Twins no longer have Mike Redmond, or even Jose Morales, behind him
3. Joe Nathan. For the same reason, loyalty, that Gardy will bat Morneau in the fourth spot, he has anointed Nathan his closer, even though he missed all of last year and the Twins acquired Matt Capps to replace him. Nathan made me nervous when he was healthy, and I expect less this year. Nor was Capps a sure thing. On the loyalty point (or, said another way, Gardenhire is loath to mix things up), I worry that Gardy will stick with Jim Thome when age finally catches up to him.
4. Middle relief. This is low on my list, even though others regularly bemoan the loss of Guerrier, Crain, Rauch, Fuentes, Neshek, et al. Seriously, how comfortable did anyone feel with Crain on the mound? How many disappointing home runs did the over-relied-on Guerrier surrender? How long were we holding our breath with Rauch as the closer? I’m not saying the new guys can’t be worse; it’s just that there’s no reason to believe that a middle bullpen of Slowey, Perkins, Mijares and Capps can’t be as good.
Finally, one neutral factor to consider:
The surprise star. Every baseball season produces a game-changing talent that no one thought much about this time of year, along the lines of Josh Hamilton, Joey Votto, Jose Bautista, or Buster Posey. Should such a star emerge for the Tigers or White Sox, the Twins’ chances would correspondingly diminish. But then again, should such a one come to pass in Minneapolis – say, from among Danny Valencia, Dusty Hughes, Kyle Waldrop, or Luke Hughes – the Twins could be unstoppable.

Birding in Texas

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If I feel justified in placing an entry on birding in my Sports column, along with thoughts on baseball, soccer and football, It is due to the competitiveness that has crept into this hobby since my youth, when it was a quiet, generally solitary way to spend some time in the woods or at your window watching the bird feeder. Now birders compete for who sees the most, who sees the first, and people compile lists of birds seen in one day, in one year, in one lifetime, in one place, in one state, in one country. Thus, almost every conversation we had in three days of birding in south Texas (February 23-25), consisted of, “Did you see the white-throated robin, the crimson-collared grosbeak, the blue bunting, the black-vented oriole?,” for these U.S. rarities were deemed the only species worth pursuing, and the competition to add them to one’s life list was palpable.
When Gary and I bird, we do keep a running list of what we see on a trip, but the list disappears as soon as we return home. We like to see as much as we can, of course, but we’re hardly crushed if we don’t encounter some bird we’d never heard of before. Finding, identifying, and observing are what we are there for. That sounds simple, but in birding along the Rio Grande Valley it was not that easy, largely because birding the sport has taken over from the hobby.
Every sport has its stadiums, and in south Texas these are the parks – national, state and local – where admission is charged, visitor centers have opened, and lists of birds seen are posted daily. Nine “World Birding Centers” have been set up to lure birders, even though some are as small as a backyard. The odds of a casual birder “finding” something on his own are practically nil, let alone identifying it before someone in the group calls out its name.
Ah, the group. So many of the bird sites we visited consisted of a collection of bird feeders, with birders sitting to one side. It’s better than seeing something in a zoo, and there is still a chance nothing will show up, but the feeders constitute a heavy human hand on the operation. It is just not the same as observing a bird in the wild, in its native habitat, feeding on the worms or thistle that nature provides.
We went to Roma Bluffs, in the middle of a city, because we were told that’s where we could find the buff-bellied hummingbird. Sure enough, at the feeder behind the office, there was the buff-bellied hummingbird. Audubon’s oriole? For that, we were told, you have to go Salineno. A bird-loving couple lived there in their trailer and had set up a gold mine, for the birds, of suet feeders, tray feeders, oranges and grapefruits, and a peanut-butter mix that went on the branches. Among the other regulars at the station were five Audubon orioles, to the delight of visiting birders, who sat in folding chairs and threw money in the jar when they left.
The center of the action, though, was Bentsen Park, which was a trailer park when last we visited ten years ago but is now a birder’s version of Disneyland, with a tram passing by every half-hour to take you to another attraction. (Admittedly, the transportation was welcome in the 94-degree heat.) Perhaps it wasn’t such a great coincidence that on one tram ride we ran into birding friends from Minnesota! Anyway, the attractions here were the blue bunting (“tropical species, very rare and irregular in southern Texas”) and the black-vented oriole (“resident from central Nicaragua to northern Mexico”). We ran into more than one person who had sat at one feeding station several hours in order to catch a glimpse of either bird. On Thursday, we were sitting with a man and his daughter we had met the day before in Santa Ana when I spotted two very plain, very brown birds in a bush. These, we all agreed, were female blue buntings, a view we confirmed when they flew onto a higher branch for a closer, unobstructed look. They ignored the feeder and were quickly departed, so I felt pretty good about the sighting. The next afternoon, after the tram and most visitors had gone home, we stopped back at the same place and had no sooner sat down that the black-vented oriole flew in to the suet feeder and poked around, giving us good looks, for 30 seconds.
These birds hadn’t been our goal, so we didn’t feel particularly triumphant, but at least we didn’t feel left out. Far more satisfying and memorable moments came a bit later, as the sun was setting and we had wandered off from the feeding stations. As I looked across the resaca I saw in the distance a bird hovering in the air – a white-tailed kite. And when I turned around Gary told me to look up at the power line: there was my first vermilion flycatcher of the trip, bringing our total to 95 – not quite the century one always shoots for, but pretty close. Seeing beautiful birds without other people around us and without artificial lures bringing them to us beats the advertised black-vented oriole for me.