WORZALA'S WEDNESDAY WORD 9-20-06

Today's Wednesday Word is "19" as in "19 is actually a number, but it's a word if you spell it out, like this, n-i-n-e-t-e-e-n. Also, dash spelling is a pain to type."

19 is the number of hits Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer needs to get by October 1st for me to win $10 from my co-workers. The Minnesota Twins, for those of you in the audience who don't know (which is mostly just Tani [however, Tani is the majority of my audience so I'll humor her]), is a baseball team. Baseball is the sport with nine fielders and a batter. Kinda like cricket but with fewer tea breaks and more corked bat incidents. Have they ever even tried to cork a cricket bat? I bet not. Darn lazy English, that's how you lost your empire. Lack of initiative.

But the global ramifications of The British Isles' work ethic is not the point here. The point is this, I have $5 of my own money riding on Joe Mauer hitting .346 or better by the end of this season and he only needs, by my math, 19 more hits to accomplish this.

Joe Mauer, for those of you who don't know, was having a heck of a summer this season. By the end of June he was hitting .392, slugging .540 and his on base percentage was .458. That means, statistically, every game he was in he was all but guarenteed to get at least one hit and get on base every other at bat. Those are phenominal numbers, especially for catchers, who normally are lucky to hit somewhere in the low .200s. (Unless you've played catcher for the Brewers in the last decade, in which case your batting average was probably neck and neck with the Bat Boy's.) With his numbers this high, there was rabid speculation on whether or not he would be the first person to finish a season batting .400 since Ted Williams did it back in 1941. As is often the case with rabid speculation, people started laying money down on the outcome.

I'm currently in a bet with two of my co-workers on what Mauer's final batting average will be. Jeff bet he would finish at .369, I bet .349 and Jim bet .341. Since making this bet Mauer has gone into an absolute tailspin. He hasn't batted better than .300 for an entire month since, and as a result, his overall average is sinking like a well thrown, well, sinker. This quickly put Jeff out of the running as Mauer was resigned to the mid .350's by the middle of August. I have been in the driver's seat since, waiting for the end of the season to cash out. Unfortunately, Mauer continues to refuse to hit the ball regularly and his average has now zipped through my metaphorical strike zone into Jim's ratty catcher's glove.

Mauer currently sits at .343 with 12 games left in the season for the Twins. At best Mauer will probably see another 48 at bats, giving him a season total of 532 plate apperances. He currently has 166 hits. He only needs 185 total hits to finish the season with a .346 average, hanging ten sweet dollars in my wheel house for me to drive into the gap. And by "gap" I mean "wallet".

That's 19 hits in 12 games. Not an impossible feat for the once great Joe Mauer, but possibly daunting for the shadow of his former self that he has become. That's why I need all of you, my Star Worz-iors, to send all of your good vibes, good karma and prayers to Joe Mauer and his bat, so that I may walk away victorious with $10 I'll have earned, by gravy training on the accomplishments of others far more talented than myself.

God Bless America.