Baltimore at Twins. Twins 7, Orioles 4.

Imagine if you will a season, not so long ago, and when you picture this season you see one moment of perfect joy bookended by two pieces of total crap, the second piece 100 times crappier than the first, which seems to you like a very bad bookend, because the whole point of bookends is symmetry, unless you're going for some avant-garde sort of thing, which you're really not, you're just trying to watch baseball, which has nothing to do with the avant-garde except perhaps in certain people's pitching delivery and most of the content of Pulling a Blyleven, and everything to do with seeking that one rare moment of perfect happiness, like when your team ascends from the ashes of truly spectacular crapitude to win the division title on the very last day of the season with just a little help from the Kansas City Royals and you jump up and down and probably initiate the premature labor you experience just a few months later, and your chest opens up and a great pillar of light bursts out and travels up to the very heavens where Bob Casey is waiting to announce its arrival, and it seems that there has never been before, norever will be again, such happiness. Like that.

And then some things happen that you’d rather not discuss, and your whole bookshelf topples over from the weight of that craptacular bookend, and it burns, it burns, oh how it burns, and finally a few months later you climb out of the wreckage of your soul and all the crap seems not to matter so much anymore, because there was Johan Santana—Cy Young, and Joe Mauer—Batting Champ, and Justin Morneau—MVP, and Torii Hunter—30 home runs, and other things, like Joe Nathan's perfection and DJ Cuddles' RBI benjamin and Sideshow Pat and the F-Bomb, and Brad Radke the one-armed man, and there was the moment you wait for all season, many seasons, sometimes your whole baseball fan career, and for one beautiful, perfect day it is yours—all yours.

And then you wait. And winter is cold and boring as crap, until you accidentally have a baby and then things get very interesting, and then suddenly its April, and Johan Santana is on the mound, and the Minnesota Twins take the field, and the ump shouts play ball, and the first thing Johan does is strike somebody out, and the first thing Joe Mauer does is get a hit, and the first thing Justin Morneau does, and the first thing Torii Hunter does, is crank the ball out of the park, and it seems, once again, like all things are possible, that that perfectly elusive moment is within our grasp—for the crappiness all fades off into the dark corners of memory and what keeps us going, year after year, is hope. We have the batting champ, the Cy Young, the MVP, and one of those people is Johan Santana, and it is the first day of baseball season and all things are possible.

Batgirl does not know what form this blog will take this year. She cannot possibly recap every game, or even the majority of games, with BabyDash who is as time consuming as he is magnificent. Batgirl is so very, very sleepy and hopes everyone understands, and is very forgiving of the various mistakes/typos/and brain freezes that will no doubt ensue. For the time being she will blog about once a week and give an occasional BOD and hope to feature excellent guest bloggers.