LAAAAAAA at Twins.
Friday, Twins 7, LAAAA 4.
Saturday, Twins 4, LAAAA 2.
Sunday, LAAAA 2, Twins 1.

Around two o' clock on Friday, the Twins started noticing that some of their things were missing. Nothing major at first—a shoe here, a towel there. Brad Radke couldn't find his Aveda Light Elements Detailing Mist Wax. A bucket of crawdads was missing from Matt LeCroy's locker. Lew Ford couldn't place his Queen Amidala (Naboo) action figure.

"Has anyone seen my volume of Rilke?" asked J.C. Romero.

"Has anyone seen my scalp Simoniz?" asked Torii Hunter.

"Has anyone seen my bench?" asked bench coach Steve Liddle.

Terry Mulholland, who had been napping in a corner, woke up to find all the players running around the clubhouse searching frantically in nook and cranny.

"What's going on?" asked Mulholland, rubbing his eyes. "Am I dreaming?"

"Oh," said Luis Rivas. "We're missing a bunch of stuff."

Mulholland raised a thick eyebrow. "You are?"

"Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen if Radke can't find his Detailing Mist. His hair's gonna, you know…" Rivas gesticulated wildly above his head.

Mulholland shook his head and sighed. "You're never going to find that stuff. It's Bartolo Colon. He eats everything."

A loud squeaking noise came from the direction of Little Nicky Punto's locker, then a disturbance moved through the air, as if something had just run at very great speed toward the clubhouse door.

Photo courtesy of kw

"Did you see something?" asked Mulholland.

"No," shrugged Rivas.

"So where was I? Oh, yeah, Colon. You should have seen it at Cleveland, with him and Captain Cheeseburger on the same team. You had to lock everything up or nail it down."

"Man," said Justin Morneau as the Twins gathered around Mulholland, sitting crosslegged at his feet.

"He ate my Detaling Mist?!" Radke said.

"He ate my Queen Amidala (Naboo)?!" Lew Ford exclaimed.

"He ate my crawdad bucket?!" said Big LeRoy.

"I'm afraid so. Why once he ate three players to be named later from the Pirates in a row. Finally, they stopped sending us guys."

All afternoon, Terry Mulholland told the Twins tales of Bartolo Colon and his exploits. He even took out his banjo and sang his original composition, "Bartolo Colon Eats Every Damn Thing, Every Damn Thing In the Whole Wide World," while the Twins clapped along.

Meanwhile, poor Little Nicky Punto had gone into Gardy's office and said he had some emergency and had to leave town PRONTO, but Gardy would have none of it.

"There's no emergency, Little Nicky Punto," said Gardy. "You're just scared of getting eaten. But you're the hot hand. I got to play the hot hand."

"But...," squeaked Little Nicky, "I don't wanna get eaten."

"Here, hold on." Gardy got up and moved toward the door. The last strains of "Joe Crede Likes To Stick His Elbow In Front Of The Pitch, But He Gets Called Back Every Damned Time" could be heard coming from the dugout. "Curly Locks," he shouted, "Come in here! I need you."

"I really prefer to be called Dr. Morneau," said Justin, entering Gardy's office.

"Whatever, Curly. Listen, Little Nicky Punto here is worried about getting eaten again."

"Eaten?' Morneau said, appalled. "AGAIN?"

"Yeah, sure," said Gardy. "He gets eaten a couple times a year. I guess you weren't here then…."

"No!" said Morneau, his eyes bugging out. "Why, that's awful. That makes me so mad! How dare they! Why don't they just pick on someone their own size!"

"I know," said Gardy. "It's a shame. So, anyway, will you watch over him?"

"Eaten!" exclaimed Morneau, his face bright purple. "Gosh! I mean! Arrgh!" With no other outlet for his rage, he picked up a bat and started smashing up Gardy's office. "YOU. SHOULDN'T. EAT. PEOPLE!"

"Okay, great," said Gardy, rolling his eyes. "Curly Locks will protect you, Little Nicky Punto." He ushered them out of his office and finished his download of "Crunk Juice."

So, when it was time to play on Friday, the Twins found themselves a little off their game at first. Carlos Silva had been keeping his Bangles t-shirt collection in his locker and, after much thought, before the game he put each shirt on under his uniform. "I didn't want it to get eaten," he would say later. But the resulting bulk threw him off for a few innings and before he could say, "Walk Like an Egyptian," he found himself behind 4-1.

But it didn't matter, for on Friday night Little Nicky Punto ran the bases like a man desperately trying not to get eaten (though when he dove into first for a head first slide, Gardy may have wanted to eat him himself) while Justin Morneau played the whole game in a fit of rage and hit the ball around as if it too were trying to eat LNP. Meanwhile, as the Twins began to catch up, Michael Cuddyer could be seen walking around the dugout wiggling his back oddly.

"What are you doing?" said Stewie.

"I feel really weird," Cuddy said. "Lighter all of a sudden."

"Hmmm," said Shannon Stewart. "Maybe it's because you're not carrying around that monkey anymore."

"I'm not?" Cuddy looked at his back.

"Nope. Did you leave it at home?"

"No, man," said Cuddy. "Hey! I bet Colon ate it!"

"Hey, that's pretty cool,' said Stewie. "Maybe you won't play like such ass-crap now!"

"Yeah!" exclaimed Cuddy.

And indeed, the very next inning, Cuddy hit in the go-ahead run, and two innings later, he knocked in the go-ahead-more run and the go-ahead-lots run with a ground rule double, and when he came back into the clubhouse, he beamed, "Man, it's sure easier to hit without that damn monkey!"

Saturday, things were much the same, for Colon had eaten Brad Radke's first inning problems as well as Juan Rincon's wildness, meanwhile LNP continued to stay in everyone's sight while Justin Morneau pretended the ball was Colon's face, hitting it approximately 96 moose antlers into the upper deck.

The whole thing went very well for the Twins, until they faced Colon himself on Sunday, for they had concentrated so much on his voracious appetite, they forgot that he can be a pretty damn good pitcher as well. Poor Johan Santana gave up two gopher balls while Colon had already eaten all the gophers in his range and as the batters came back into the dugout, one by one, shaking their heads, Gardy could be heard to mutter to himself, "Man, he's just eating us alive out there." And if Little Nicky Punto muttered under his breath, "See how YOU like it!" you could probably forgive him.

After the game, the Twins were a little dejected, especially Big LeRoy who found that he swings at bad pitches when not fueled by the power of crawdad bucket, but Terry Mulholland called them all around him again, and said, "Look, boys, we got the series win against a great team...we can feel good."

"But Johan's streak!" protested Juan Castro, hanging his head.

"Awwww, it's okay, boys," said Johan. "I'll just get another winning streak. Longer this time. Really, what's most important is the series victory, and that no one got eaten."

"A-men," said Littly Nicky Punto.

"That's right, Johan," said Mulholland. "You know, I have a song for just this occasion." He reached behind him, and then started to look wildly around. "Hey!" he exclaimed, "has anyone seen my banjo?"

Posted by Batgirl at May 1, 2005 10:07 PM