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Monday Morning Minnesota: Keep waiting edition

No Donaldson, but I did my best to dig you up some good reads anyway.

Sports Contributor Archive 2019
No real reason to use this picture, I just like it.
Photo by Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images

I’m considering digging a hole and then burying myself in it until my body remembers how to sleep, but before that I thought I would bring you all some of those “sweet links” you love so much. Bonus rambling a the end, yay?!

Previously on Twinkle Town:

Elsewhere in Twins Territory:

Around the World in Bases and Ballzzzzzzz

Old-Timey Baseballer of the Week:

Damn, what a glorious transition in the glorious return of this column. I’m so great at this writing thing.

Anyway, James Francis “Pud” Galvin was born in 1856 in the Irish neighborhood of Kerry Patch in St. Louis Missouri, and because all the best stories star 19th century Irishmen, little Pud was to be destined for both greatness and infamy.

Pud made his pro debut in 1875 for the St. Louis Brown Stockings (Eww.) Showing no loyalty to his home town, Pud switched teams the next season and played for the Buffalo Bisons, which is one hell of a confusing name. It was with the Bisons Buffalo that lil’ Pud made history, becoming the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter on the road, achieving the feat against the, sigh, Worcester Worcesters. Apparently naming a team something not dumb wasn’t invented until the 1900s.

Pud, whose nickname came from how his pitches made hitters look “like pudding” - whatever the crap that means - would have an illustrious career, winning 365 games (the first player to reach 300 wins) and landing himself in the hall of fame. No one cares about that, though. His wins will be forever shrouded by something else he’s known for.

300 Wins wasn’t his only first, Puddy Buddy was also the first player to try performance enhancing drugs. Galvin used an “elixir” concocted by Mauritanian physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, and yes I did have to copy and past that name. What was in this mighty elixir you ask? Why extract from monkey testicles of course. Sounds rad, inject me up bro. (Please don’t fire me for this, TJ.)

In his time no one cared about this, presumably because everyone was injecting various animal ball-juice into themselves and/or too busy worrying about dying of dysentery and becoming a member of the, ugh, brown stockings.

One last note on our hero before we go. You might not have imagined him too vividly in your head, but trust me, he looks EXACTLY like he should.

Anyway, here’s Crazy Bus.