… and I want you to attend my baseball school.

I know you’ve always wanted to learn the game from a major leaguer who plays the game my way and is surrounded by teammates who are coming of age doing things, as we say in Tampa Bay, the Ray way. And because you’re in Minnesota, you’ve seen just what I’m talking about.

I’ll teach you how to make a diving, skidding catch in foul territory with a runner on third and one out in the eighth inning of a tie game. And I’ll teach you how to make it within feet of the other team’s closer, one of the best in the game, while he’s warming up for the ninth inning. In no position to make the throw home? No big deal, my friend. You’ll even get the other team’s radio guy to mutter, “Catch it! Catch it!” because even he wants you to succeed!

I’ll teach you to say things like: “I still figured it was just one run. Hopefully we could come back and score two runs. … I wasn’t worried about that run too much but I understand what I did.”

And if that’s not enough I’ll teach you to run the bases! Remember last year at the Dome? A 2-2 tie and Ben Zobrist led off with a single. Then I came to bat and hit the ball high, hard and far to right field. Remember that? I ran head down to third base, thrilled with my good fortune. Of course, Ben had stopped at third and we both ended up being tagged out. We lost that game by one run, too!

I have teammates and special guests who used to play for us (We call them x-Rays) who will teach you too. Defensive whiz B.J. Upton will show you how to ignore a cut-off man while throwing the absolute tar out of the ball so that any batter can take an extra base! Our new shortstop Jason Bartlett (Remember him, Twins fans?) will teach you how to pi$$ off your pitcher by skipping a throw on a two-out ground ball. And x-Ray Brendan (Mitt) Harris will teach you the ol’ grounder-rolled-up-my arm trick, which turns potential 1-2-3 innings into game-tying adventures.

And there’s more! Jonny Gomes, who’s been thrown out 40 percent of the time when trying to steal during his career, will teach you how to test Joe Mauer’s arm — and how to run in from right field to start a fight during an exhibition game! And my manager, Joe Maddon, will do his ever-popular seminar on “playing the percentages the Ray way,” which means pulling the lefty reliever and bringing in the right-hander to face Mauer and Justin Morneau. How can something that seems so wrong turn out so right?

Camp will end with my ever-popular seminar on throwing former teammates under the bus. I could never figure out which one was Elijah Dukes and which one was Delmon Young. So after they got traded I ripped both of their sorry behinds when I reported to spring training and they were x-Rays who were far, far away.

Part old skool, part contemporary baseball! It’s the Tampa Bay Ray way and it’s here to stay because, after all, we’re always a year or two away.

other people are here too

I was out of town for a couple of nights and then decided there were needs more pressing than watching this weekend’s games. That’s what happens when you’re following the progress on a game with half an eye on the ESPN bottom-of-the-screen crawl. Angels 2, Twins 1… Angels 6, Twins 1, click. Saturday morning: Angels 10, Twins 1.

So help me out here and fill in the blanks. (Copy the text below into the comment field and have at it.) Creativity is a plus; coarse language is a minus.

The winner, who will receive a fabulous prize, will be announced later this week.

Demoralized and distressed from losing 2 of 3 games in Kansas City to start their road trip, the Twins flew to Anaheim, hoping in their hearts to _____________, while knowing in their heads that _______________.

“Hey, guys, look! It’s Disneyland!” exclaimed ____________, as the plane landed. “Maybe Terry Ryan can find a bat there. I hear that ________________ is available.”

“Bah!” groused the the ghost of Jeff Cirillo. “I might have only come to play once every 3 or 4 days. But at least I had a clue when I was in the batter’s box. Not like ____________ , __________ and __________.”

All talk in the plane came to a halt upon hearing a voice the Twins thought was in their past. The silence lasted about a minute, or about the same length of time as some of the team’s batting innings have lasted recently.

“Hey, Jeffrey Happypants,” said Johan Santana, breaking the quiet while looking in the general direction of the ghost’s voice. “Three at-bats in 12 days with the D-backs, huh? They must be thrilled to have you, pal. I sent Terry an IM when you left that said ‘+ by -. Not like losing Castillo.’ ”

But Cirillo’s ghost was a bad omen. After the 1-0 loss in Kansas City, the Twins lost the opener in Anaheim 10-1 when their light-hitting second baseman smoked a grand slam and they won 4-3 night when their light-hitting second baseman hit a two-run homer.

Meanwhile, the Angels taunted the Twins on Sunday by having their light-hitting second baseman be the DH for the first time this season. They won 6-2. Asked about it afterward, Angels hitting coach Mickey Hatcher laughed, played with his Rally Monkey and told reporters: “_______________.”

It was a disspirited group of Twins who got on the plane Sunday night for the trip to Seattle, where they will play 3 games against the Mariners and start off by facing the King, Felix Hernandez, on Monday night. Michael Cuddyer, who is hitless in 6 of his last 8 starts, said that as soon as the team arrived in Seattle, he was going to visit Kurt Cobain’s grave and _______________ in an attempt to find some hits.

Meanwhile, Nick Punto made Joe Vavra promise that Vavra would come up to his hotel room and throw batting practice to him on Punto’s Wii, where Punto has created an buffed-up avatar named “Nicky Baseball” that looks suspiciously like _______________ and routinely sprays virtual line drives.

And Justin Morneau, who has as many RBI this month as Smalley, Coomer and Gladden, tried to put the situation in perspective.

“I know I’ve been swinging the suck-bat,” Morneau said. “But it could be even worse.”

Conversation stopped again as the Twins waited for him to continue.

“Well,” Morneau explained. “___________________________________________, eh”

…the young men made no attempt to hide their distraction. Glen Perkins, the young lefty, came off the mound after holding Norfolk to 1 run on 2 hits over 6 innings. He walked over to Matt Garza, who’d commandeered the remote control of the clubhouse TV, and asked: “So, how did Si…”

Garza cut him off in midsentence with raucous laughter: “You remember that Pat Travers’ song, the one my Dad used to sing to me when I’d get lit up in Little League?”

Kevin Slowey, who prides himself on his professorial grasp of things inside and outside of baseball, spoke up — or rather sang out — when he saw the blank look on Perkins’ face.

“BOOM! BOOM! OUT GO THE LIGHTS!” Slowey shouted, grabbing a bat from Matthew LeCroy’s locker and using it as a microphone.

“Hell, yeah,” Garza said.

“How bad was it?” Perkins asked.

“Eight runs, 10 hits, 5 2/3 innings.Two doubles. Two dingers. Down 5-nil after 2,” Garza recited in a clipped staccato that made each sentence fragment sound worse than the one before it. “Dude pitched like that Mike Smith guy from last year, right down to the bad hair. The only thing he had in common with Johan’s start on Sunday was that he threw the same number of pitches — 97.”

Perkins scoffed and spit in his glove. “Wonder if that bozo blogger from Section 220 thought Gardy should have kept Sidney in too.” 

The pitchers laughed the derisive laugh they save for those who have more prowess with their keyboarding fingers than their throwing arms. 

“I could tell it was bad,” said Scott Baker, who’d snuck an XM Radio into the bullpen so he could listen and tell the other guys what was going on. “Gordo was talking about a story he’d read on the Internet between innings and Gladden cut him off and said, ‘So that’s what you do when we get blown out?’ It was the second inning.”

“That bad, huh?” said Perkins, secretly relishing his excellent outing in Rochester’s 33-degree chill even more while fibbing out loud: “Really, I wanted Sidney to do well. He’s been through a lot and, well, you know…”

“I know something else,” said Baker, decided that telling all he knew was the only way to stop Perkins from spewing more BS. “There were a couple of plane tickets to Minneapolis on the clubhouse microwave. Saw ‘em when I went in to do Pilates with LeCroy.”

“Tickets!” Garza repeated excitedly. “For who?”

“Didn’t see,” Baker replied.

“Great job, Baker,” said Perkins, disgustedly. “It’s just like Gardy says about you. You show some promise and then you can’t finish anything off.”

The chatter ceased as the guys looked in their lockers, wondering how much time they would have to run home and pack if the Twins would be calling for them — if, in fact, the Twins had decided to cut off the Ponson experiment more quickly that anyone expected. They tried not to be obvious about it, but in trying so hard, they were giving themselves away.

Slowey broke the silence with a piece of news he’d picked up from the Blackberry he always carries in his high right sock (except on the days he pitches). “You guys hear that The Real Deal got picked by the Red Sox?”

“No effin’ way!” Garza replied. “He’s there and we’re here? Makes about as much sense as our Iraq pol…”

“NO POLITICS IN THE CLUBHOUSE, BOYS!” shouted LeCroy, who was amused by the conversation among the young pitchers, and a little happy inside because he’d gotten 2 hits in tonight’s game. The Pilates was helping his bat speed, just like Scott Ullger told him it would.

Just then, carrying their suitcases and the boxes of leftover matzah that a kindly fan had sent to the Red Wings’ Jewish players for Passover, Josh Rabe and Alexi Casilla walked through the clubhouse. Plane tickets were visible in their shirt pockets.

They were the ones flying to the Twin Cities to replace the injured veterans RonDL White and Jeff Cirillo.

The pitchers’ shoulders and spirits sagged.

LeCroy tried to be reassuring.

“Don’t worry, fellas. I caught Sidney a couple times in spring training,” the wise veteran said, trying to be reassuring. “I have a feeling it won’t be long for one or two of you.”

(*All resemblance to actual dialogue in the Rochester clubhouse is purely coincidental. All statistics cited in this report are purely true.)