Minnesota Twins: just when you think it can’t get any worse

Great news from Twins Territory: Ervin Santana busted for failing a drug test and banned for half the season.

He says: “I am very disappointed that I tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug. I am frustrated that I can’t pinpoint how the substance in question entered my body.”

You’re frustrated, Ervin? Try being a Twins fan who thought that maybe you would be the guy to add some experience to the pitching staff and help us turn a four-year-old corner and actually win a few baseball games this year and make us less of a joke if you want to know frustration. And you don’t know how the “substance in question” got into your body but then go onto blame it on something you took in your home country? Seriously? So what, someone just gives you a pill and you gobble it down no questions asked? Pardon me while I go bang my head against a wall. And while I’m doing that maybe you can tell me if you have any awareness of your body or the things you do to it.

For what it’s worth, Ervin, I know people who work out, hobbyists/enthusiasts, who aren’t professional athletes but who are simply interested in body building and physical fitness, and who take supplements. These people take pre-workout supplements and they take post-workout supplements and they take supplements to supplement the supplements and they can tell you exactly what they’re putting in their bodies at any moment of any day. Yet you, a professional athlete, a man who makes his living with his body and an athlete who makes $13.5 million dollars a year, can’t say how a banned substance got into your body. Where’s that wall again?

If there’s anything worse than buying a ticket to help pay the salary of an overpaid athlete, it’s being lied to and treated like an idiot by one of those overpaid athletes. If anyone asks me I think the Ervin Santana suspension should be changed from 80 games to a lifetime suspension.

I have a friend who believes that Twins General Manager Terry Ryan may have special bonuses written into his contract that go into effect the lower the payroll gets. This way the Twins owner, Jim Pohlad, can look good by telling the media that he’s giving Ryan free reign to go out and buy free agents, but Ryan goes about his business the old fashioned way – drafting and spending five years to develop farm league talent – and picking up aging, bargain-basement free agents, and then he gets to pocket the bonus cash. In light of this it starts to make sense.

I love baseball but it gets really old being frustrated year after year after year. Sure, it’s still fun to follow the good teams but I want it to be fun to follow my team.