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Category: Baseball

The Minnesota Twins are Good at Baseball

I enjoy watching baseball. I’d call myself a casual fan, not because I only watch when they’re good, but because I’m not one of those folks who can tell you all the reasons why they are good or what they should do to get even better. I just like watching baseball. It’s a reliable presence with an even tempo and also there’s a lot of statistics.

As the Twins have been leading their division, league and even all of baseball quite frequently this season, my cousin started tweeting whenever they had the best record in baseball. Of course that got tedious so he inquired about automating it. I thought that sounded like a fun project. And if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing, so I made a ruby gem that includes the leader executable that’s useful for determining whether or not your favorite team is leading their division, league or all of baseball. It can also report to you which team is leading baseball, a league, or a division as well as print out a nice leaderboard with sort and filtering options.

Some results:

$ leader is minnesota-twins -l && t update "Today is the 27th of June and the Minnesota Twins have the best record in the American League."
Today, the 27th day of June, 2019:
The Minnesota Twins are the leaders of the AL C division.
The Minnesota Twins are the leaders of the AL.
The Minnesota Twins are not the best team in baseball. They are #2.
Tweet posted by @schlazor.

Run `t delete status 1144439948352692224` to delete.

Using it isn’t quite as straightforward as installing an app on your phone, but keep reading and I’ll walk you through it if you’re interested.

Crustimoney Proceedcake

Hallo, Pooh,” he said. “How’s things?”

“Terrible and Sad,” said Pooh, “because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine, has lost his tail. And he’s Moping about it. So could you very kindly tell me how to find it for him?”

“Well,” said Owl, “the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.”

“What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?” said Pooh. “For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.”

Iver has been laser focused on this particular chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh (Chapter IV, In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One). Repetition is not something I cherish in bedtime stories, but I know it’s huge for kids and he laughs at Crustimoney Proceedcake every time we read it.

Two and Oh

I’m a baseball fan in general, and a fan of the Minnesota Twins in particular. It was not always thus. I grew up with generic notions of local sport team fandom as most children in a city with (usually) four major sports teams probably do, with the most fondness for the Twins. This was likely due to being 5 and 9 years old when they won their two World Series’. Baseball is the sort of game that’s easy enough for a young child to understand on the surface, and I have very fond memories watching those ’87 and ’91 teams make their championship run.

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