Dear Mr. Ryan,

Hi! We haven't spoken in a while, and I know you're really busy right now. It's just, well, the trade deadline's coming up and I have something really important to talk to you about. I know everyone wants a real third baseman and/or a right-handed power bat, preferably available for the major league minimum. And I'm totally in support of that. It's just, you may have noticed that the Twins have some other deficiencies too. Over the past few years, we've suffered a serious net Player Personality deficit, and I think it's time we address it.

See, I'm dying here. Bat-girl.com lives and dies on the personalities of the players, and the guys we have now are so worried about playing baseball they just don't give a Batgirl anything to work with. If we don't up our team OPS (Overall Percentage of Sass) soon, I'm going to run out of material.

I mean, let's look at what's happened here in the past few years. Like, in the outfield:

Now, don't get me wrong—Shannon Stewart saved our team in '03 and some days he provides the only offense we have, but all that consistency and competence? Boooo-ring. The working out all the time thing is great, dude,—but why don't you let your freak flag fly once in a while? I mean, he calls Gardy Ron. What am I supposed to do with that?

Oh, and then this:

Look, no offense to Young Master Grip and Go, but AJ wasn't just an ass-master, he was the sass master. You just don't see Our Lad Joe razzing opposing hitters during the game, inciting other pitchers to throw at him, getting his face plastered on dartboards all over major league baseball—why, there's nary a "boo-yah" with Mauer. We can't even get the kid to don a wife-beater shirt. Honestly.

And this one hurt a lot:

We couldn't get Dougie to shut up, but Justin, he doesn't talk at all. He never blows bubbles when he plays, and his hat doesn't have any pine tar on it. Would it kill you, Justin, to be just a little stickier?

And then, well, I don't even like to talk about it, but…

On the surface, Koskie seemed to have no personality at all, but, oh, the depths to plumb! He likes Minnesota because it's "like an extension of Canada." He talks funny. He puts peanut butter in people's undies. He likes to smash chairs. And I've seen a lot of heart from our motley crew of third base people, but a distinct lack of chair smashing.

Now, Mr. Ryan, I know you've tried. A Kris Benson acquisition would have done a lot for the team. And Bret Boone is proving to be quite a hothead, though he seems to be better at smashing the bat against the ground that at using it to hit the ball. It's not your fault that some people got more interesting after they left. But the rest of our guys, well, they're just so normal. We already have Torii Hunter to be a paragon of all that is good and pure about the world. I'm sure there's some personality out there, just waiting to be blogged about.

Love,
BG