Chicago Cubs at Twins. Weekend Round-Up. Sweeeep.
Friday. Twins 7, Cubs 2.
Saturday. Twins 3, Cubs 0.
Sunday. Twins 8, Cubs 1.

I don't want to take anything away from the Twins this weekend. Cynics might say there's nothing impressive about sweeping a team as hapless as these Chicago Cubs, but anyone who's paid attention to the Twins over the last year knows we could be held scoreless by a bunch of monkeys playing Wiffle Ball. And the fact is, this whole streak of awesomeness started against the Boston Red Sox, who, last time Batgirl checked, were Good at Baseball. And if you look back over the course of our season you might find us decidedly not sweeping teams of the Cubs' caliber. (Or you know, on second thought, maybe you shouldn't look back. We're having such a nice time here, and it's Monday morning and it's Freedom Week and everything, why hurt ourselves so?) And what we had here was good defense, timely hitting, great pitching, and big ol' boom boom sticks. Friday was Justin "is Good" Morneau and Johan Santana combining for another Canezuela gem, on Saturday the Rochester Red Wings showed rookies are doing it for themselves, and on Sunday Bradke and just about all of the offense combined to turn the Cubbies into Batgirl's 10th grade volleyball team, minus the spunk and Bangles tapes. It is, after all, just another manic Monday.

The Twins tried to put an end to the Cubbies' suffering but there was only so much they could do. The North Siders kept finding new and creative ways to screw up—like Todd Walker and Phil Nevin sipping tea and munching on cucumber sandwiches as a ball rolled slowly between them—and no matter how hard the Twins tried, they couldn't get out. Torii Hunter did his best to hit into a double play with RISP but ended up scoring a run anyway. "I did my best, man," he would say regretfully after the game. "They just suck really, really hard." Little Nicky Punto felt so bad about it that after scoring he paused to mount catcher Henry "Cranko" Blanco comfortingly. (Goober: See, that's a difference between playing the Bitch Sox and the Cubs. When you score on the Bitch Sox you try to take their catcher's heads off, when you score on the Baby Bears you take the chance to have a nice snuggle.)

Watching Dusty Baker's face during the three game series was rather like reading "De Profundis," but without the profundity. Each time they cut to him, the mélange of emotions on his face was slightly different—here disappointment tinged with frustration, here anger with a note of agony, here dismay with a soupcon of psychosis. You got the impression the FSN director's default was to cut to Baker on every play given it was more likely his team would do something painful. It was like a three-day long Tums commercial (but without the profundity.)

Batgirl's not making fun of the Cubs by any means. She knows suffering. She knows what it is to scream things at the TV like "CALL FOR THE FRACKIN' BALL YOU NUMBNUT SHITBRAINS!" She knows what it is to tear the TV out of the wall and put her head through it. She knows the garment-rending and the eyeball gouging. We were there not so long ago. But the Twins have found their mojo, the future is bright, and BG's feeling so chipper she's going to challenge the Wiffle-Ball-playing-monkeys to a rematch. That's right. Next off day in Kenwood Park on BG's old t-ball field, we're going to do this thing. Oh, it's on, you bitch monkeys.