To help, Refrigerator Logic is providing a list of reasons to watch every Major League Baseball team for the 2008 season. Anyone that’s read all the team lists should be able to pull up the MLB schedule on any day in early June and find reasons to enjoy any contest on the board that night.

Please join in the comments to add your own reasons. Tell everyone why your team is worth three and a half hours of their lives on any given day. Make us care and we’ll be there with a tasty beverage and an appreciation for what you feel each time your team takes the field.

I Admire Your Notion of Fair Odds

When Joe Mauer found himself besieged on all sides by Tigers and Indians and the Royal guard and very ill-fitting Socks, he set out to find a new band of brothers to help him defend his baggy village after losing so many compatriots over the winter. When he returned, he presented to the villagers…

Joining him on the field of battle are:

• Justin Morneau (the Most Valuable Bat-slinger) and Michael Cuddyer (the gent standing well behind the Most Valuable Bat-slinger on the field) – Two valued warriors from old skirmishes
• Delmon Young – Quick to anger; quick to love; quick to smash the hell out of the baseball
• Mike Lamb and Adam Everett – Joe Mauer knows what the brains in Toronto do: it’s bad luck to break up the left side of the infield, so always import them in pairs (from Houston, in this case)
• Brendan Harris – Sparring with Little Nicky Punto(™ Bat-Girl Enterprises) for a spot on the horse, he has the distinct advantage of knowing which end of the weapon to hold
• Jason Pridie – Can never be photographed

As Mauer knows from painful experience, it matters more who returns from battle than who you go to battle with. Yet each of these men will defend the baggy village with honor… at least until the first lousy home plate umpire rolls into town.

Under Construction

This is what you will see in 2010 in Minnesota as the Twins are finally receiving the new ballpark of their dreams. It’s the Legends Club, one of the perks for Minnesota’s financial elite. It will cost $1,000 to belong to this club and season tickets ($4,000 or so) are extra. The luxury boxes will look like a kitchen model at Home Depot and the amenities will be as lavish as one would hope from a $420m playpen.

That’s one of the reasons why what you see on this field also feels like an unfinished product. You’re watching the player personnel version of a construction project. When the Twins have new funds coming in from their ballpark, the hope is that those funds will be plowed back into player acquisition and development. Also, the aging Tigers could be on the wane and no one outside the Indians in the AL Central seems ready to challenge in two years.

So enjoy the team in progress like you would one of those mesmerizing construction fast-forward videos, but don’t try to make it go any faster than that; quality takes time. (And money. Right, Carl?)

Reconstruction Site

This is young pitching phenom Francisco Liriano in 2005 at the World Series Club in Hartford, CT. This is a year before he exploded onto the scene in Minnesota with 121 innings of 2.19 ERA tossing and 144 strikeouts. It’s also one year before his elbow exploded in a similar manner because of his trademark reckless pitching style.

Only two years ago, he was expected to join Johan Santana as the 1-2 slugfest to carry the Twins through the playoffs and into the World Series. Now Santana is learning the names of Pedro Martinez’s children and Liriano is no longer very young, turning 25 this fall.

Still, the man’s a phenom and quite forgotten in all the reconstruction going on in his professional life. The Twins are telling all the correct tales about making minor changes in his motion without changing the Essential Liriano. If he does pull it together, though, Liriano’s starts will be appointment television once again.

Best Rebuilding News Yet

The I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in August just after the start of a Twins game, taking 13 lives and injuring dozens more, is on track for completion by the end of the year. (You can watch the progress at the Minnesota DOT Web site.) Pictured above is the current progress, conveniently labeled to help with your bridge construction scorecards.

Continued sympathies to the families affected by this and that all this new construction in Minneapolis leads to a better place for everyone.

Yes, officer.  We’ve been watching Bill Smith come in here to shop for months.  Usually, he just browses, which is what made us initially suspicious. People that just browse without buying every day for four months are usually casing the place.  Y’know, checking where the blind spots are in the camera arrangement, seeing which cashiers are attentive to ticket switching, etc.

We thought we were in the clear when he paid full price for all those prospects in the New York apparel aisles, though.  We did have li’l Timmy Kurkjian shadow him after awhile to let him know we were watching.  After all, we have a lot of shoppers to keep an eye on and we can’t keep wasting time on one guy that doesn’t seem to be doing anything, right?

Then I’m watching the cameras today and damned if I don’t see Smith back in the store again.  Before we can get anyone on the floor, he pulls open his oversized elastic pants, jams Livan Hernandez down the front, and yanks his huge coat down all the way.  Then he tries to make a break for the door, real casual, right?

We start moving towards the front door and he spots li’l Timmy.  He tries to run, but that’s a really big ticket item in his drawers.  He drags his feet and gasps for air.  Dude’s sweating like a sprinkler system just went off in his coat.

Still, we weren’t expecting him to move like that, so we were way behind him.  By the time we got to the door, we thought we had him, but damned if Boof Bonser’s not waiting out front of the store for him in a pickup truck.  Bill drags himself into the truck bed and they’re gone before we can even call you guys.

Yeah, I imagine we’ll catch him in July when he hauls Hernandez out to the flea market to flip him.  Still, that really pisses me off.  We could have sold him for $8m, easy.  That’s gonna ruin our stats for the year.