This bizarre collection of comics takes a microscopic look at the world of infectious bacteria and offers, among other things, a germ’s eye view of the atrocities we humans commit every time we pump a dollop of sanitizer onto our hands or take a dose of penicillin.

Other highlights include several visits to the home of germaphobes Stew and Berryl Sterrel as they struggle to remain germ-free despite the best efforts of their baby and a comical retelling of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds.

Overall, this collection carries a strong underground comics vibe – none of the offerings more so than the Mark McGinty penned and Lupi McGinty illustrated “Perched on the Denim Slope,” a graphic homage to JG Ballard’s “The Drowned Giant” whose art is reminiscent of Charles Burns and the Hernandez brothers.

Bizarre, funny, and kind of gross, Germ Warfare is the perfect gift for the germ warrior in your life!

 -Review by Marc Schuster

The book contains dozens of family photos and an index with over 750 entries, most of them names of McGinty family members going as far back as the mid 1700’s and including both blood relatives and family members who had married-in. An excellent reference for researchers of family ancestry and students of Irish-American history.

Our McGinty Family in America will be available on December 10th, 2011. To order a copy contact the author Jerry McGinty at mcgintyboy@aol.com

Also available on Amazon Kindle!

Our McGinty Family in America

Gerald K. McGinty Sr.

Genealogy/Reference

List $29.95

276 Pages 6.14 x 9.21 B&W hardcover

ISBN: : 978-0-9838854-1-2

Seventh Avenue Productions

Media kits, advance review copies and interviews are available upon request.
Contact: Mark McGinty at mmcginty_32@yahoo.com or Jerry at mcgintyboy@aol.com

Seventh Avenue Productions is a small press publisher of books, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Call 612-224-1852.

Germ Warfare

Germ Warfare is now available from Seventh Avenue Productions! An anthology of comics about germs and their generous human hosts features an army of Twin Cities-based cartoonists and the artwork of Ryan Dow, Andy Singer, Lance Ward, James Powell, Danno Klonowski, Vas Littlecrow, Nicholas Straight, David Cohen, Jon Sloan, Jeremy Olson, Mark McGinty, and Athena Currier. Edited by Lupi.

This is a humorous and charming collection of comics by a group of talented artists. The book is now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and also from Seventh Avenue Productions.

The book will make its official debut at MIX, the Minneapolis Indie Xpo November 5-6, 2011 at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis. The event is free and open to the public on both days from 10:00am to 5:00pm.

Please visit and like our page:

And take a look at some of the artwork right here….

But baseball is a game of moments. You don’t go to the game for the slow periods. You go because no matter whether it’s the Major Leagues or the Little League, you’re guaranteed to see something you have never seen before, and something you will never see again. Baseball is all about these moments. There are at least five or six of them in every game, sometimes more. Sometimes many more. A line drive bounces off first base and skips into foul territory, a fan makes a great catch, an unknown pitcher freezes an All Star slugger with a looping curve, the manager and the home plate umpire find themselves in an epic argument. Then there are the diving catches, the towering homers, the wild pitches and those unforgettable close plays at the plate.  Sure, you’ve seen these things before, but have you seen a 300-pound pitcher lumber off the mound, dive across the grass and nab a pop-up bunt? Have you seen a skinny 5’10” rookie shortstop with no home runs to his credit smash a 420-foot blast over the center field wall? Have you seen two players collide in shallow center field and nearly drop a pop-up until a third fielder dove between them to catch the ball before it hit the ground?

Have you seen any of these things?

I have. Or maybe I haven’t. I’m not sure. They certainly all sound familiar, and all are certainly possible. But baseball is a game of the impossible, which means that seeing all of these things is entirely possible.

I saw a one-handed pitcher throw a no-hitter. I saw a squirrel sprint across home plate as a pitcher wound up and threw home – during a playoff game. I saw a fly ball bounce off a right fielder’s head and land over the fence in right for a home run. I saw baseball’s all time strikeout leader punch out the all-time stolen base leader to log his 5000^th strikeout. I saw a girl with big boobs rush the field and hug one of the outfielders. And I saw Bo Jackson break a bat over his knee after striking out. Sure, other guys have done that, but none of them did it like Bo.

That is what baseball is about. Those moments. The unexpected, spectacular, one-of-a-kind events that change the course of a game, alter the outcome of a season and define a player’s career. A World Series lost on a ground ball through the legs, another one won with an unprecedented 10-inning shutout in Game 7. These are things we will probably never see again, but if we do, they will be slightly different the next time. Could a hobbling player with two bad knees pinch hit in the bottom of the 9^th inning and hit a 2-out game winning home run? Could a no-frills pitcher with one pitch log more saves than any human to ever toe the rubber in the 9^th? Could a pinch running Red Sock steal second base and spark the game’s greatest comeback since now, then and forever?

Yeah, all of these impossible things happen. They happen all the time. The little ones happen in almost every game and the big ones get talked about for years and years and years. Sure, you might have to wait a few minutes while the pitcher shakes off a few signs and the batter takes three pitches in a row. But just be patient – it will happen.

September 28th, 2011, the last of the 2011 baseball season and the most exciting day in the history of the game, yet it was a day that never should have happened in the first place. The Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves had a 9 and 8.5 game lead in their respective races at the beginning of September.  They should have both walked into the playoffs smoking cigars, wearing tuxedos, and carrying champagne bottles. There was no way anyone could blow that kind of a lead in September. It had never happened before. But on September 28th, 2011, it happened.

Twice.

It started with a couple inconsequential day games. The tension built slowly throughout the day when a batting title was decided, and by nightfall, baseball fans across the country were tracking 4 separate games, 4 epic battles for 2 playoff spots. 3 of those games saw 9th inning leads disappear with 2 outs, 2 games went extra innings and 2 were decided on the last at-bat, mere minutes apart, with the last of these four games ending with a home run that completed an impossible comeback from a 7-run 8th inning deficit.

What made this so amazing was that two teams had started the month of September with easy tickets to the post season were in danger of losing their playoff spots. Both of those teams, Boston and Atlanta, seemed to have scripted, organized and executed their own funerals. And it seemed like every baseball fan in America somehow managed to sit through and capture every simultaneous moment of every excruciatingly tense game.

That’s the best part: all of this shit was happening at the exact same time. Here’s how it all went down…

Both wild cards were in play. Four teams, two playoff spots.  Boston and Tampa were tied in the standings. So were Atlanta and St. Louis. On this fateful day, the Cardinals rolled to an easy 8-0 victory against the Houston Astros and returned to their locker room to find chilled champagne and beer sitting on the table, plastic sheets covering the lockers, ski goggles everywhere, and the Braves on TV. They had done their part now all they could do was wait. Boston was in Baltimore hoping to halt their skid against the last place Orioles. Tampa was playing the American League’s toughest team: the New York Yankees. Atlanta needed to stop Major League Baseball’s top-winning Philadelphia Phillies. Around the league, Texas and Detroit for trying to work out home field advantage in their playoff games while Milwaukee and Arizona sat waiting for their opponents to be decided.

The stage had been set. Everyone knew there was a possibility of 2 one-game playoffs the next day. Imagine a day with two game 163s! Calendars were cleared across the country while baseball fans salivated at the thought of a Friday night sudden-death, do-or-die playoff game. Or maybe two of them. What a great day that would be! Turns out, no 163s were needed. And we’re lucky with that, because nothing will ever top what happened instead.

Boston took an early 1-0 lead in the 3rd inning but then J.J. Hardy jacked his 30th homer of a season, a 2-run shot that put Baltimore up 2-1. It Atlanta, Philly scored in the first inning but Atlanta got it right back before Dan Uggla hit a 2-run bomb to put the Braves up 3-1. Down in Tampa it wasn’t so close. David Price gave up a 2nd inning grand slam to Mark Teixeira giving the Yankees a 5-0 lead. The Yanks would add two more and by the 5th inning, the Rays were down 7-0. Red Sox fans were able to breathe. It looked good so far. Tampa was losing badly which provided insurance against a Boston loss. But if Boston was able to hold on and win, the wild card would be theirs and Tampa’s impossible September surge would be quickly forgotten.

Around the league, Texas locked up home-field advantage in round one with a victory against the Angels. Milwaukee would win its game against Pittsburgh while Arizona was just getting started in their finale vs. the Dodgers. And in Minnesota, the disastrous Twins, a usual playoff presence were able to avoid a 100-loss season with a 9th inning walk-off win against the Royals. Carl Pavano pitched a 5-hit shutout and legendary Twins broadcaster John Gordon signed off for the last time with a heartfelt and emotional “Touch ‘em all, Twins fans!”

But at Tropicana Field, the night was slowly turning from the exciting to the improbable. Try and find a historical precedent for what happened. Just try. Or don’t try. Don’t even bother, because it’s not there. Down 7-0 in the 8th inning, Tampa scored 6 runs capped by an Evan Longoria 3-run shot. Still down by one, they were headed into the top of the 9th inning against a Yankees lineup filled with rookies and backups.

Atlanta and Philly were headed into extra innings after Chase Utley tied with game with a 1-out sac fly in the 9th and in Baltimore, Boston fans at Camden Yards gulped when they saw the scoreboard showed 7-6 Yankees. But it was still 3-2 Boston. Aceves and Bard would each hold serve and Papelbon would be coming out for the 9th to lock up the win. The Sox would head back to their dugout and catch the end of the Yankees-Rays game, and then hopefully head straight to their first playoff game soon after, never needing to worry about a game 163. Two games to decide the AL Wild Card and both were one run affairs in the 9th inning. Baseball fans knew they were watching something special.

No one would have guessed how dramatically it would end. Philadelphia and Atlanta would labor into the 13th inning until and exhausted Braves pitching staff finally ran out of gas and surrendered a single to Hunter Pence. David Hearndon would close it down in the 9th giving Philly their MLB-best 102nd win of the season and sending corks flying across the Cardinal’s locker room in Houston. Atlanta’s epic collapse was complete. The Cardinals would go to the playoffs in their place and Atlanta’s fall would be remembered as one of the greatest in baseball history if not for what was about to happen in the American League.

With two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning, Dan Johnson pinch hit for the Rays. Johnson, with a .108 batting average and 1 home run on the season. And he now had 2 strikes, presenting the Rays with their final pitch of the season. Boston was winning and if the Red Sox held on, Tampa would be eliminated. It was up to Dan Johnson. Bottom of the 9th inning, two outs and down by one, two strikes.

Dan Johnson hit a fucking home run and tied the game. It was one of those improbable baseball stories that makes every fan shake their head with wonder and admiration for a game filled with unfathomable moments. Tropicana Field became a mob scene of frenzied fans. Facebook pages blew up with updates like “no way!” “impossible” and “AMAZING!” while Boston fans sat deflated and unsure of which was worse: the reality of their team’s epic collapse or the fact that they had to root for the Yankees to beat the Rays in extra innings. But right now Sox fans had no choice – they had to root for the Yankees.

With clenched fists and scowld, they looked on as the 10th inning in Tampa was a scoreless affair and the 11th ended with the score still tied 7-7. But in the top of the 12th the Yankees put runners on first and third with no outs. Red Sox fans cringed and choked on their cheers as they rooted for a Yankee base hit, a sacrifice fly, a wild pitch, anything that would put a run across. But a young Yankee named Golson was caught too far from third after a Jorge Posada grounder and the next batter struck out. Then Brett Gardner grounded out to second and with that game still tied 7-7 and going ot the bottom of the 12th, the attention turned to Baltimore where Jonathan Papelbon took the mound in teh 9th with a 3-2 lead.

He struck out the first two batters and Red Sox fans, their fingers crossed with white knuckles and their hair turning gray on the spot, sat tensely whispering “One more…just one more out.” But Chris Davis doubled into the right field corner. Baltimore had life. Hoping for the ultimate spoiler, the Baltimore Orioles players stood along their dugout railing while the Red Sox players waited tensely in the field hoping Papelbon would blow the next batter away so they could all retire to their locker room and watch the outcome of the Rays game.

But Nolan Reimold doubled to right-center, a ground-ruler that bounced into the stands and tied the game. Baltimore was ecstatic. Boston couldn’t believe it. It was about to happen. They were about to blow it – not only this game but an entire season. But if they could just get one more out they could win it in extras. Or perhaps these reluctant Yankee fans would see the Rays lose their game. In that case, even if Boston lost they still had a chance to save their dignity in a one-game playoff the following day. A game that would never happen.

In Tampa, the game was tied in the bottom of the 12th inning. B.J. Upston stuck out and Evan Longoria came to the plate. He had already homered dramatically in the 8th inning rally and now Rays fans took to their feet and cheered when they saw a number on the scoreboard change from a 3 to a 4. An F appeared beside the score and the crowd went wild.

Papelbon had worked Andino into a 1-1 count before the Oriole smacked a sinking line drive to left field. Carl Crawford, the Ray of a year before charged for the ball and slid along the grass with his glove opened and welcoming the ball. The inning was over, the game would remain 3-3 and go to a 10th inning. The Red Sox charged back to their dugout and grabbed their batting helmets and bats and got ready for an extra-inning showdown.

Sadly for Red Sox fans, it was all a dream. A mirage. The Red Sox never charged into their dugout ready for the 10th inning. They didn’t switch from caps to batting helmets or replace their mits with their bats. It was a 10th inning that never happened. Crawford didn’t come up with the ball. He ran, he slid, he reached for it. The ball hit his glove, and then fell out. And as the ball fell to the grass, thousands of Red Sox fans felt their hearts fall with it. The game would be over in seconds. Crawford jumped to his feet and desperately threw the ball to the plate but it was too late. Reimold scored and the Orioles stormed the field like they’d just won the World Series.

Red Sox manager Terry Francona immediately turned and disappeared into the dugout tunnel and Papelbon walked off the field with his head hanging while Baltimore fans yelled wildly all around him. It had become one of baseball’s great spoils, and only because of what happened mere seconds later.

Moments after the scoreboard in Tampa flickered to reveal a 4-3 Baltimore victory, Evan Longoria hit a line drive home run over the left field wall. And just like that it was over.

The Rays rushed the field and before the Boston Red Sox even had time to process their 9th inning  loss to the worst team in their division, they had been eliminated. The mighty Boston Red Sox, the team that some said would rival the 1927 Yankees would not even have time to return to their locker room and decompress before watching the end of the Rays-Yankees game. It was already over. Just like that.

The baseball world went nuts. “You can’t make this up!” said hundreds of Twitter feeds. “AMAZING! SIMPLY AMAZING!” said about 50,000 Facebook posts. Phones rang all over the country with shouts of congratulations and exclamations of outright disgust. Two teams had fallen terribly while two others had completed remarkable, storybook-style comebacks. And all in the span of a few minutes. Never in baseball has so much been decided in such a short period of time and in such dramatic fashion. Amazing, simply amazing. The best night of baseball in modern history, and probably forever. September 28th, 2011. The last day of the 2011 regular season. A day I will never forget.

Watch an amazing highlight reel, with all the action broken down chronologically right here:

Chapter 22

Japanese Airspace

August 8^th, 1945 10:11 am

“I thought I had done nothing wrong. I thought my actions were honorable, meant to serve the Emperor, for the good of Japan. How can such noble work be beyond redemption?”

Masaru only scowled, his eyes fixed at some point over my shoulder. I could have slapped him across the head with a stick and his gaze wouldn’t have moved.

I pulled at my handcuffs to test their bond, the metal rings dug into my wrists. I rested my back against the wall of the fuselage, closed my eyes and thought of Kimiko and my son, alone in Nagasaki with no knowledge of my situation. Kimiko expected me to return home in a matter of days, to gather the family and leave Japan for good. As I headed to Tokyo, I wished I could get a message to them and advise them to go now. That I would catch up with them, probably in the afterlife.

I thought of the cyanide capsule in my pocket.

The plane lurched and my body seemed weightless for a moment, held in place by the safety belt buckled across my chest. Then I caught up to my seat and felt the weight of the plane pushing me up from below. I looked across the plane to Masaru, who seemed suddenly frightened, his eyes now pointed towards the cockpit.

I imagined a young, inexperienced pilot flying this broken cargo plane, which was probably low on fuel and behind on its maintenance. Such was the case with all Japanese aircraft at this point in the war – rundown leftovers and castaways flown by inexperienced pilots and hardly any fuel.

The ground began to bounce under my feet and soon the metal tube where we sat violently vibrated back and forth. I was weightless again, the straps of my harness dug into my shoulders and kept me in place but we were no longer on a flat trajectory, we were going down.

One of the soldiers beside me shouted towards the cockpit but I could not understand what he said as the plane became a noisy mess of vibrating metal, grinding engines and rocky, violent flight. I thought of a go-cart I once built with my father and my first bumpy, out-of-control ride down a rocky hill.

Suddenly the bottom fell from below our feet and an alarm siren started to buzz. We were losing altitude quickly and with my hands still cuffed, I could do nothing but grasp the straps of my harness and squeeze until the material cut into my burned and blistered palms.

It was during this freefall that I noticed the cargo alongside our seats had not been secured and was flying freely across the fuselage. A small metal crate was thrown my direction from the front of the plane and I ducked my head slightly to avoid being hit. Pens and screwdrivers, tiny tools and boxes of matches seemed to be circling through the air as if caught in a tornado. I could not avoid being agitated by the free-flying debris.

The metallic banging continued, the heinous alarm kept screeching and our bumpy fall from the sky made me close my eyes and recite a short prayer, my fingers still choking my harness. Then a terrible thud and the soldier to my left fell across my body, his hat knocked off and his head pouring blood from where he had been struck by some flying canister.

I glanced to the soldier beside me, his face pale, his eyes closed and his lips quivering from his own private prayer. The banging and violent back and forth of the plane made it hard to focus on Masaru but I could see him clutching his safety harness, gritting his teeth and looking towards the cockpit half expecting a dead pilot to fall from the seat and land lifeless on the floor.

I looked through the window over Masaru’s shoulder and became terrified by what I saw outside. Land appeared and rose upward at a startling pace. We were near the water, and descending quickly towards a sandy beach. I wondered how much control the pilot had over the plane and if he would attempt a crash landing or simply brace the controls and close his eyes hoping death would greet him swiftly and without pain.

We hit the ground with a blow so hard that it knocked me unconscious. I blacked out completely and cannot recall the impact or anything that happened immediately after.

When I came to I was still strapped to my harness, the wounded soldier on my left lay dead across my legs, his head hemorrhaging blood onto my lap. The soldier to my right was upright but his eyes were closed and his mouth open. A line of blood ran from his temple, down his cheek and hung like tiny red icicles from his jaw.

Both were dead.

Masaru was across from me, hunched over with his face hovering above the ground and his hands still locked on his harness. It looked like he was about to be sick but he soon lifted his head groggily and opened his eyes, took a moment to focus and still hunched over, looked up to see me staring back.

His face was just a foot from my boots and invited me to take swift action. I lifted my knees to my chest and thrust my feet towards Masaru’s face, connecting squarely with a double face-kick that snapped Masaru’s head back and sent him crashing against the wall behind him.

His nose was broken, blood poured from his nostrils.

The solder beside him was barely awake and when he saw me kick Masaru, he was instantly alert. I reached to my chest and unbuckled my harness then lunged across the plane towards the soldier, surprising him with an elbow to the jaw. He slumped to the side and I was immediately on top of him, the chain of my handcuffs wrapped around his neck, squeezing all life from his stunned and wounded body.

Masaru groaned beside me, the sting from my boot-kick starting to fade as Masaru realized he had survived the crash and now had an escaping prisoner to subdue. He would not have a chance to do more than become aware of his situation as I released the soldier from my handcuffs and turned them on Masaru.

“No!” his muffled voice shouted as I attacked him head-on, driving the chain of my handcuffs into his mouth like a gag and using my fingers to claw at his cheeks. I used the weight of my body to push him to the ground and then rolled on top to suffocate him.

I noticed a sharp pain in my left arm and realized I had broken at least one bone during the crash and now sensing my pain, realized that my wounds were extensive. Blood flowed into my eyes, my ears echoed with a quiet, distant buzz and my head hurt so badly it forced my eyes closed. For a moment I thought I would pass out.

But I had Masaru trapped below me, the three soldiers had been killed and only the pilot – if he had survived – could stop me. I clasped my hands together to form one giant fist and then drove it down towards Masaru’s bloody face with all my strength. He groaned and coughed blood as I rolled off his body and found myself staring at the utility belt of one of the dead soldiers.

Keys.

I reached out and took them from his belt, fumbled for the small one that would unlock my handcuffs and slipped it into the hole. Seconds later I threw my handcuffs across Masaru’s body. Ready to take my path to freedom, I stopped myself and looked down to Masaru’s bloody face, his broken body writhing on the floor, and considered handcuffing him to some railing inside the plane, confining him to the wreck until a rescue party arrived.

Instead I knelt beside him and whispered, “No matter his sins, no man is ever beyond redemption. Not even you, my friend.”

I rose and turned toward the cockpit. The door was still closed and I wondered if the pilot had been killed. Not taking the time to find out, I kicked the plane’s door open and fell onto a sunny and sandy beach.

The wings of the plane had broken off miles away and the body of the plane had slid across the sand, carving a trench in the dunes as it ground itself to a stop. Black smoke rose from the wreckage and I could see columns of smoke rising from the dunes up range.

I paused to survey my surroundings, to calculate my location. We had been headed for Tokyo, northeast from Kokura and had been in the air for at least thirty minutes before we started to fall. No telling how far we had veered off course, or if we had ever been on course in the first place but I figured we were closer to Hiroshima than Tokyo, and probably father from Nagasaki than I had been two days ago.

It would be a long journey home.

I turned inland, to the west, away from the beach and the rising sun that reminded me of our flag, our Japanese glory. Then I noticed something I never expected to see this far from Nagasaki. I shook my head and wondered if the wreck was causing me to hallucinate, or my mind to play games with my eyes.

It was the Mount Otake, an active volcano I had visited as a child, nowhere near Tokyo and was in fact on the same island where I had grown up.

Masaru had lied to me. We had not been headed for Tokyo at all. He had no intentions of bringing me to the capital to stand trial. Instead he had taken me the opposite direction, towards the city of my family. To my initial destination, the one place in the world where I wanted to be.

Masaru had brought me home.

Mark McGinty is the author of The Cigar Maker. His work has appeared in Cigar City Magazine, Maybourne Magazine, La Gaceta. Contact him at mmcginty_32@yahoo.com.

#1 The Twins Have Won More Batting Titles

The Twins have won 14 batting titles, not counting 4 won when the franchise was called the Senators.

The Twins won 8 of the 10 awarded between 1969 and 1978. With names like Carew, Puckett, Oliva, and Mauer, era after era, the Twins have bested the Yankees for this award. The Yankees have won 9 batting titles, boasting names like Mantle, Gehrig, Ruth, DiMaggio and Mattingly. The last Yankee batting title belongs to Bernie Williams, who hit .339 in 1998. Twins Catcher Joe Mauer has won three batting titles since then and hit .365 in 2009.

#2 Carl Pavano

Starting pitcher Carl Pavano spent 4 seasons with the Yankees, won 9 games and was paid $38 million. He started 26 games threw 145 innings with a flat ERA of 5.00 and a WHIP of 1.455. He was hated by the New York fans (and according to some sources, a few of the players too) and was a complete bust. One of the worst signings ever.

But Pavano found his way to the Twins, grew a moustache, became a reliable workhorse and sparked his own T-shirt line. In less than 3 seasons with the Twins (and as of this writing) Pavano has started 60 games, thrown over 400 innings, won 27 games with an ERA around 4.00 and it’s only cost the Twins about $15 million dollars. More than double the production, at less than half the cost.

#3 The Twins Have a Better Stadium

An ESPN survey ranked Target Field the #1 fan experience in professional sports beating out 121 sports franchises for the title (including MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA). And since EPSN said it, that makes it fact. Yankee Stadium didn’t make it to the top 10. Do you disagree, having been to both stadiums? Well, the Twins stadium is newer, by one year, and that’s undisputed.

#4 The Twins Signed Joe Mauer

And the Yankees didn’t. After Mauer inked a deal for $23 million for 8 years, partisan Yankee fans said the Yankees didn’t want him anyway. But go back and read the blogs around the time the deal was being speculated. Mauer’s contract was going to be the next Yankees-Red Sox war. The Yankees hoped Mauer could fill the catcher position for the soon-to-be-retired Jorge Posada. In denial? Then why does a Google search of the phrase “Mauer is going to look great in pinstripes!” return 345,000 results?

#5 No Stigma of Steroids

The Mitchell Report, an independent investigation into the illegal use of steroids in Major League Baseball listed 24 Yankees as users of performance enhancing drugs, including all star names like Roger Clemens, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte, álex Rodríguez and Gary Sheffield. This is not something that gets swept under the rug, it has followed the Yankees and tainted their recent legacy. A-Rod and Pettitte both admitted to using steroids, which was the right choice, because Roger Clemens is currently on trial for lying about his drug use. As long as people like Clemens are in the news the steroid era won’t die.

Number of Minnesota Twins on the Mitchell Report: 4. Three of them (Chuck Knoblauch, Dan Naulty and Rondell White) also played for the Yankees. The lone non-Yankee Twin on the Mitchell Report was Chad Allen, who played in Minnesota from 1999-2001 and how hard have the Twins been fighting to protect his legacy?

#6 Twins Have Managers that Last

Sure, Yankee management stabilized under Joe Torre (who managed for 11 years) but in the last 30 years the Yankees have had 16 managers, including Billy Martin 3 times and Lou Pinella twice! Taking Torre out of the equation and that’s nearly one manager every year. The Twins in comparison have had 4 managers in the last 30 years, and only 2 since 1986: Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire.

#7 Chuck Knoblauch

I know, this is a touchy subject for some but let’s admit that Knoblauch’s best years were with the Twins. Knoblauch won AL Rookie of the Year in 1991 (with the Twins), was a four-time All Star (all with the Twins), won two silver slugger awards (both with the Twins), a gold glove (with the Twins), and four World Series rings (the first was with the 1991 Twins). Knoblauch’s other 3 World Series rings came with the 1998, 1999 and 2000 Yankees, after Knoblauch ditched the Twins and became hated throughout all of Minnesota,

The Twins had Knoblauch before he forgot how to throw from 2^nd to 1^st. Before he got into legal trouble, doing whatever he did. With the Twins Knoblauch batted .304 with an OPS of .807. With the Yankees it dropped to .272 and .768. As a gold glove infielder for the Twins Knoblauch made 66 errors in 4734 chances, a fielding percentage of .987. In half the time with the Yankees that included a discomforting move to the outfield Knoblauch committed 64 errors in only 2091 chances, a fielding percentage of .969.

Then there’s that whole steroids thing.

#8 Lower Expectations

The New York Yankees are expected to win the World Series every single year. If they don’t at least make it to the World Series, their season is discarded as a failure, no matter how many regular season games, they win, no matter how many records they set, no matter what. With a payroll over $200 million, it’s all or nothing for the Bronx Bombers.

In 2006, the Yankees won 97 games and the AL East by 10 games, drew over 4 million fans and made the playoffs for the 12^th consecutive season. But after losing the ALDS to the Detroit Tigers, Steinbrenner issued a statement that included the following nugget: “Rest assured, we will work immediately to right this sad failure…”

Without a World Series appearance, 97 wins, a division title and 4+ million fans is nothing but a sad failure. That’s pretty sad.

On the other hand, the Twins are never expected to win the World Series. They aren’t even expected to make it to the World Series. Winning 94 games and a division title in 2010 was looked on fondly as a successful year (even if they were swept out of the first round of the playoffs…yeah, yeah, yeah, we know…). They still get to hang a flag in their new stadium and sell hats and T-shirts with a championship logo. It’s not the Series but they’ll take it. And lower expectations will make that next World Series appearance so much sweeter.

#9 A Handful of Franchise Records Go to the Twins

Statistics hounds and some diligent cherry picking through the record books will uncover several places where the Twins’ franchise has bested the Yankees’. Here are a few nuggets:

• Most doubles: the 2002 Twins hold the Twins’ team record with 348. The Yankees’ team record is 327, in 2006.
• Most hits in a season by one player: Rod Carew’s 239 hits in 1977 are the most by any Twin ever. The Yankees are one short, with Don Mattingly’s 238 in 1986.
• Most strikeouts in a season by a pitcher: Johan Santana K’ed 265 batters in 2004. Ron Guidry holds the Yankee record with 248 in 1978.

There are plenty more but you’ll have to dig for them. Have fun!

#10 Jason Kubel Hit a Grand Slam off Mariano Rivera in Yankee Stadium

Sorry, but I had to throw that one in. It was just an awesome moment for the Twins, the only grand slam Rivera has given up at Yankee Stadium as closer, and I only needed one more to get to #10. Watch it here.

Mark McGinty is the author of The Cigar Maker. His work has appeared in Cigar City Magazine, Maybourne Magazine, La Gaceta. Contact him at mmcginty_32@yahoo.com.

The Cigar Maker is the story of a Cuban cigar maker who battles labor strife and vigilante violence in 1900′s Tampa Florida. It is based on true events. This is the fifth award for The Cigar Maker.

The complete list of winners can be found on the Independent Publisher official site.

The “IPPY” Awards, launched in 1996, are designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers. Established as the first awards program open exclusively to independents, over 2,500 “IPPYs” have been awarded to authors and publishers around the world. The Awards recognize 12 Outstanding Books of the Year in categories such as Most Inspirational to Youth and Most Likely To Save the Planet, and to gold, silver and gold medal winners in 69 categories, ranging from non-fiction categories like Architecture and Religion, to fiction categories like Multicultural and Horror.

Penguin Books, 2010

320 pages Fiction

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Junior Thibodeau knows the year he’ll die—the exact month and day, the precise moment of his death (along with the complete destruction of the earth) “thirty-six years, one hundred sixty-eight days, fourteen hours, and twenty-three seconds” from the day he’s born. All this information is given to him while in utero. With that kind of information, a person could view a life without hope—ultimately pretty depressing. It helps that Junior is “the fourth smartest person” who ever lived (but certainly not the wisest). It helps he has these unidentifiable voices to tell him pieces and shadows of the future—some of which he’s able to use to his benefit, but most often not. They’re just a damned nuisance, for the most part.

Initially, Junior immaturely uses the mysterious voices (are they angels, God, aliens?) to his advantage to navigate his youth, but later becomes depressed when his high school sweetheart dumps him because he unwisely tells her of his apocalyptic whispers of the future. Yet these voices are just helpful enough to warn Junior of things such as his older brother Rodney’s addiction to cocaine and his father’s premarital tryst with a Vietnamese prostitute while at war.

Junior’s discouraging future looms, continues to press in on him, and he even considers becoming an accomplice to a domestic terrorist plot (pre 9/11, of course).Without giving too much of the plot away, Junior reunites with many of those he loves and begins to see his future as a pretty scary thing. In other words, he gets his act together…but not fully.

Currie borrows from enough historical happenings of the 20^th century to warrant this as a fun and epic period piece of sorts—culling nostalgia from familiar true-life events of the 70s, 80s and 90s. While journeying through the Thibodeau family saga, we experience Vietnam, the space shuttle Challenger disaster, various terrorist acts, and even secret governments plots.

While Junior is a sympathetic character to a degree, Junior’s father is the most sympathetic and often heroic character. He loves in the face of most of life’s challenges, even when those challenges come from his own stupid mistakes. In a sense, he knows his inevitable doom—somewhat better than Junior without the help— but does all that he can to love and care for his troubled and dysfunctional family, albeit imperfectly.

The novel succeeds because Currie delicately balances the looming doom with the hope of love and the joy of life. He shows us that a truly enjoyable life comes from finding ways to live, not avoiding death (and in this case horrible destruction). Yes, life isn’t so bad even when you know that death is close. The book has its ups and down, its slow moments and its absurdities, but ultimately we walk away from the last pages of this book mumbling to ourselves in a deep, philosophical manner that in life “everything matters”—really.

Everything Matters is available on Amazon.

Click here to visit the author’s website.

Reviewed by David Stucki, April 2011

Katherine Kellogg Heflin

Lulu, 2011

173 pages, Fiction

3 1/ 2 out of 5 stars

Here’s a new book by first time author Katherine Kellogg Heflin named Measure the Sea, a story about a colony of modern-day oracles struggling with their identity and the future of their colony. This is a quick read and the plot moves swiftly. Heflin never once forgets that she’s telling a story. We’re in the modern world, where a colony of oracles in Tennessee has become a sort of tourist trap. Outsiders visit the colony in droves and pay the staff of oracles for “listens” or for a prediction of the future. The listens have such a reputation for accuracy that even the President of the United States uses these oracles for advise on foreign policy.

But this thriving society has some secrets – what is making the aging oracles lose their memory? Is the traffic from the outside world polluting their colony and causing oracles to be sickened with disease? Can the leader of the society, a sage, Obi-Wanesque woman called the Pythian be trusted to protect the colony? One member of the enclave, a teenage girl named Emory is going to get to the bottom of it even if it means a life of exile.

The writing is sound and though the characters could be a little more developed, the significance of this book is how this fictional society reflects our own. They rely on technology to make a living, and exploit the marketplace to its full potential. They plan for their future by training a new generation of oracles yet when an oracle’s skills begin to decline  and they lose their memory, these elderly citizens are sequestered in a type of retirement home where they are quickly forgotten. It’s a world where the ideals of the young threaten to supplant the traditions of the old.

Part science fiction, part teen adventure, with an activist heroine that reminds you oddly of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games books (only not as annoying), Measure the Sea is an admirable first book from Heflin. I’ve heard through the rumor mill that a sequel is underway, which is necessary because the book ends with a few story threads unresolved. Whether this be accidental or intentional, Heflin succeeds in leaving the reader wanting more.

Measure the Sea is available in paperback or download from Lulu.

Reviewed by Mark McGinty, April 2011.

Mark McGinty is the award winning author of The Cigar Maker and Elvis and the Blue Moon Conspiracy. His work has appeared in Cigar City Magazine and La Gaceta.