Game 76: Minnesota Twins @ Boston Red Sox

First Pitch: 6:10 PM. Vegas odds: -170 BOS / MIN +150

Weather: Mostly Sunny, Start Temp 76°

TV: FSN. Radio: Gotta Keep It Together When Your Friends Come By

Opponent's SB site: OverTheMonster

I have to apologize for not caring much about baseball today. I just got fired from my job, because my Nazi boss was stealing, blaming it on the clerks, and heads had to roll. The store's owners are Russians, rather polite and kindly men, but I suspect something you learn in Russia at an early age is "not to look to closely into anything that smells fiscally shifty, especially if a very large, intimidating bully is the prime suspect." My Nazi boss was quite large and quite intimidating.

Still, getting fired for nothing you did wrong is incredibly demoralizing. It's, I'm sure, the awful experience ballplayers go through when somebody with worse season stats is called up from AAA. Yes, they're considered a high-upside prospect and you're not. But didn't you do everything you could to prove your worth?

Another example is adolescence, where everybody's had the experience of crushing madly on someone, daring to voice it, and being ridiculed because you are not the football star/homecoming queen Alpha Dog on top of the dating pile. (Eventually, you learn to have new crushes on the people who find popular kids boring.)

That you knew this wasn't going to work out doesn't make it any less crushing. We'd all rather quit in a huff than be canned. At some point I'll remember the positive things I learned from this experience (like that quinine glows under black light) and forget the negative ones. Still, it's fresh, and it stings, and I can't summon my usual enthusiasm for a Twins game.

Here's hoping you are enthusiastic for the game, and it ends in a Twins win.