As part of my daily routine, I read Buster Olney’s blog on ESPN.com. It keeps me abreast of all of the happenings around the major leagues and links me into all of the daily newspaper stories in major league markets. I saw this story about the Minnesota Twins; not terribly interesting…until you get to the bottom. In their list of 2006 bobblehead promotions, I saw something that annoyed me. The Minnesota Twins are doing a Billy Martin bobblehead giveaway on July 29, 2006.
Look, the Twins haven’t always been an irrelevant team. They’ve been to the postseason, they’ve won a couple of World Series titles, and they’ve even recently inducted one of their alums, Kirby Puckett, into the Hall of Fame. There’s no reason for them to glom off Yankee history for their own benefit. Billy Martin’s affiliation with the Minnesota Twins consists of 374 at-bats in 1961 and one season as their manager in 1969. Granted, he won the AL West that season, making him the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first manager to win an AL West title?” I’ll bet that if you asked any Minnesota Twins fan, they probably wouldn’t even know that Martin was ever in Minnesota. I’ll bet that on July 29, 2006, all 10,000 fans that that bother to show up for that game scratch their heads and wonder why the hell they’ve been given a tchotchke bearing Martin’s likeness in a Twins uniform.
Billy Martin was, is and always will be associated with the New York Yankees. He was the feisty second baseman on four World Series championship teams in the 1950’s and he was the famous Bronx Zoo manager of the Yankee championship clubs of the late 1970’s. Don’t take our favorite son and pass him off as your own, you history-stealing losers!
Look, the Twins haven’t always been an irrelevant team. They’ve been to the postseason, they’ve won a couple of World Series titles, and they’ve even recently inducted one of their alums, Kirby Puckett, into the Hall of Fame. There’s no reason for them to glom off Yankee history for their own benefit. Billy Martin’s affiliation with the Minnesota Twins consists of 374 at-bats in 1961 and one season as their manager in 1969. Granted, he won the AL West that season, making him the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first manager to win an AL West title?” I’ll bet that if you asked any Minnesota Twins fan, they probably wouldn’t even know that Martin was ever in Minnesota. I’ll bet that on July 29, 2006, all 10,000 fans that that bother to show up for that game scratch their heads and wonder why the hell they’ve been given a tchotchke bearing Martin’s likeness in a Twins uniform.
Billy Martin was, is and always will be associated with the New York Yankees. He was the feisty second baseman on four World Series championship teams in the 1950’s and he was the famous Bronx Zoo manager of the Yankee championship clubs of the late 1970’s. Don’t take our favorite son and pass him off as your own, you history-stealing losers!
No comments:
Post a Comment