Game 126: Minnesota Twins @ Chicago White Sox

First Pitch: 7:10 PM. Vegas odds: -150 MIN / CHW +140

Weather: Calm Wind, No Rain, Start Temp 72°

TV: FSN. Radio: Sears Tower Broadcasts Radio, But It's The "Willis Tower" Now

Opponent's SB site: South Side Sox

A late riff during last night's gamethread got me puzzling:

Why is Han Solo such a crappy liar?

You'll remember that the rescue plot of Star Wars involves Luke and Han wearing stormtrooper outfits, and trying to sneak Leia out of Space Jail. It goes terribly. First they screw up convincing the prison guards, and have to laser them all to death. Then the ruckus causes security officers to phone in, Han tries to BS his way out of it, security doesn't buy this for a second, and Han lasers the Space Phone. (This is equivalent to cops calling about a noise complaint, and you shooting the landline to show them yer tarred uv ahl dare bool sheet.)

But the thing is, he's supposed to be a smuggler. One assumes the professional skills necessary for smuggling would include being calm in stressful situations and extensive experience at smooth lying. (Also MS Office, although that's not relevant here.)

Has Han never been caught before? Yeah, he's got hidden compartments for illegal booty in his Space RV, yet it almost seems like he's never had to explain to a customs officer what's definitely, totally, not hidden in there. "Oh, we're completely law-abiding, yes ma'am. Looking forward to getting away from all that smuggling going on in the Pretonxus Nebula. Bad folks, smugglers, huh? But I guess you'd know all about that, hahaha!"

Later on, we hear stormtroopers protecting the tractor beam talking shop about some new Space Gizmo, so I'm thinking most troopers are good ol' boys and the officers are pretty used to this. (Professional skills necessary for officer position on Death Star? British accent, that seems to be about it.)

Perhaps Han's best ploy after lasering the prison guards might have been "whoopie! Y'all know me and Dale was just havin' ourselves some fun up in here. We'll keep it down to a dull roar now, you betcha, sir." Put some extra sarcasm into the "sir."

Then the officers would merely roll their eyes and think, it's every day. It's every damn day. I could have started that restaurant, but no, I took the safe job, and now I deal with these idiots.

This is the stuff TwinkieTown inspires in my head. Now you know it. Onto baseball.

-----

James Shields was part of that amazing Shields/Price duo the Devil Rays had once, before they were both sold off for prospects, since that always works. He's still got the strikeout mojo going, although his once-deadly cutter has dropped off badly from 2015 on. That's made his walk ratio super-high, yet he still has enough pitches (curve, change, sinker) to get batters out if more than one pitch is really working on any given night.

Ervin Santana you know and love and are occasionally frustrated by. Still, you love him anyway, for the nature of love is to experience joy and grief and forgiving the presence of toe lint. Digits:

Hopefully the Twins' lefties can go to town tonight.