You might have missed the interview in ESPN The Magazine this week, where Wild defenseman Nick Schultz plays the now-vacant role of Dan Patrick, and asks Justin Morneau a bunch of random questions. If so, you missed this exchange:
NS: Last one: Why are the girls who wear your jersey never good-looking?Apart from commenting on the sort of female usually seen in a Schultz sweater, it got me thinking: the jersey that you choose to wear does say something about you. Below, I present my list of possibilities, in a piece we're calling "What your Twins jersey says about YOU."
JM: That's harsh. That's brutal.
NS: I'll take that as "no comment."
Nick Punto: You have been to 15 games this year, and you can't remember one thing that happened nor one Twins opponent. Quite simply, you haven't been paying attention, and there's a pretty good chance you've been drunk by the fourth inning of every game.
Joe Mauer: You are the type of person who screams in a high voice every time Joey McSideburns comes to the plate. This is true whether you are male or female. If it's not true, then you're the type of person who has a favorite player in every sport, and it's always the team's biggest star; you probably also own replica jerseys for Kevin Garnett, Kirby Puckett, Randy Moss, Marian Gaborik, and some non-specific ones for the University of Michigan. You admire Derek Jeter, whether in secret or not.
Kent Hrbek: You have excellent taste. Also, you don't like to leave Minnesota for any reason. Your favorite three holidays of the year: deer opener, duck opener, fishing opener.
Francisco Liriano: You own an iPhone, a first-generation iPod, an HD-DVD player, and two out of three of the PlayStation 3, the XBox 360, and the Nintendo Wii. You are angry that everybody is now buying Adrian Peterson jerseys, when you were clearly ahead of the curve. Every once in awhile, you take your Willie Banks, Pat Mahomes, and David McCarty jerseys out of the back of the closet, and reminisce about what might have been.
Harmon Killebrew: If the jersey was made in the last five years (or worse, if it's the current style, but with the Killer's name on the back), then you're the type of person that enjoys reading the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, and possibly the World Book Encyclopedia, "for fun." If the jersey is actually the only surviving replica from the 1960s, you're either an antique nut or the most die-hard Twins fan ever.
If you're over 80 and/or refer to Killebrew as "that Harmon kid," you are awarded one million bonus points for being awesome.
Justin Morneau: You make it to equal numbers of Twins and Wild games every year. You have, at some point in your past, laughed at or made fun of the "popular kids." You feel a twinge of disgust every time someone in a Joe Mauer T-shirt jersey walks by.
Johan Santana: Either you have a deep appreciation for excellence, or you think Johan looks cuddly. I've yet to see an exception to this one.
Lew Ford: You once locked your keys in the car. While it was running. And still in drive.
Loek Van Mil: Your friends secretly despise you for your need to always be so far ahead of the curve that nobody understands a thing you're talking about.
Carlos Silva: You enjoy being the only one to own something, whether it be a rare car or a Twins jersey.
Kirby Puckett: You still list the 1987 and 1991 World Series as "high points in my life." And you always hated that fat pig Hrbek. (There is also a strong possibility that you claim to be the biggest Twins fan ever, were under the age of 20 for both World Series titles, and can't name a single Twin besides Puckett from either team.)
Pat Neshek: You can recite all the technical specifications of your computer, but have trouble remembering the year, make, and model of your car.
Glen Perkins: Your ZIP code is 55082.
Kevin Slowey: Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Slowey!
Mike Redmond: You do all of your own home and automobile repairs. You refuse to drink "light" beer, and consider it to be a sin to mix "perfectly good" hard alcohol with pop or juice. You have a better-than-average chance of having a tobacco-juice stain on your jersey. You close all of your cuts with Superglue, including some that might have caused the doctor to faint dead away, anyway.
Mike Fetters: Your love of ironic humor apparently has a blind spot.
Tim Laudner: You either play catcher on your company softball team, or you play catcher on your company softball team and can't hit worth crap.
Bret Boone: Your name is Bret Boone.
Bert Blyleven: You enjoy lighting the footwear of others on fire. You have procured packing peanuts to fill something that normally would not have been filled with packing peanuts. Nobody wants you to be the best man in their wedding because they are afraid of what you'll do to the car.
Dan Gladden: You have a mullet, or did in 1987.
Chuck Knoblauch: You have fallen on some very hard financial times since the early-90s.
Any member of the '87 or '91 Twins not mentioned above: Either you have a funny story about how so-and-so became your favorite player, or YOUR name is Davis, Mack, Harper, Viola, Atherton, Guthrie, etc.
Ron Davis: At some point in your life, Ron Davis owed you money.
Butch Huskey: You buy a new jersey every year... but you've got to wash the rest of them sometime.
(For those of you who actually own some of these jerseys, I was talking about someone else, not you.)