Twins at Chicago. Weekend Round-up.
Friday. Bitch Sox 3, Twins 1.
Saturday. Bitch Sox 8, Twins 1.
Sunday. Bitch Sox 4, Twins 1.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
--W.B. Yeats

What Willie is saying here is that that really, truly sucked. It would have sucked apocalyptically if we weren't well past the End Times now. The thing is, after the apocalypse hits, you'd think all the sucking would stop. You'd think that after everything's already gone down, after the moon turns to blood and the seas boil and your kitties are stricken with incurable kitty blackheads, and you've gone through the whole oh-the-world-is-ending-that-wasn't-in-my-plans-"I-would-have-liked-to-have-seen-Montana" thing, there's not really anything else anyone can do to you. You would be wrong.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T.S. Eliot

I don't know what I was expecting. Why I thought things would be different now. Why I thought when the Twins couldn't be motivated by a Quest for the Postseason or a Quest for Batgirl's Sanity that they would suddenly really get themselves together for a Quest for .500

I had recently suggested that the Sucking Force operating on the Bitch Sox was greater than the one operating on us. That is not true. Math has never been Batgirl's strong suit. I think I've got it worked out into a simple equation. Will may need to help me out here, but I think I'm correct:

If "x" is the Twins Sucking Force and "y" is the Bitch Sox Sucking Force and "K" is a Johan Santana start, then you get: x+K < y

x-K though? That gets you this weekend.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I hit a pop fly
And that has made all the difference.
-R. Frost

I guess the point is, really, Batgirl gives and she gives, and she does not complain, at least some days, at least a couple of them, there must have been a game or two in there where Batgirl has not complained about all her relentless giving. And she doesn't ask for much—or at least everything she's asked for (The division championship, the wildcard, four runs a game, victory for El Presidente, some shred of dignity, a reason to live) has been utterly and totally rejected. Which is totally fine, really, it's totally fine, and BG's had this twitching disorder her whole life, really. But in the last few games of the season, Batgirl does have a request, a very simple one, really, best summed up in an excerpt from "September, 2005:"

I would like very much if we hit
Some bleepin' blargin' dingers.
--W.H. Auden