It's time to take back those off-base tweets

The internet, they say, is forever — which seems pretty optimistic, but for the purposes of our lifetime it is at least fairly apt.

The things we post on social media probably won't outlive, say, the sun. But they do offer a seemingly permanent record of our thoughts, some of them stream-of-consciousness rants that probably would be best off disappearing into the wind instead of archived (and searchable) for future generations, friends and bosses to see.

But here's the thing: The internet is actually less permanent than we might think. In a previous generation, if you wrote something down on paper and distributed it to any significant number of people, you couldn't really take it back. But if you write something on Twitter that you regret? You can delete it. Pretty much gone from your lifetime record.

So here's some advice to Minnesota sports fans: You might want to go back and search for some of your hot Twitter takes about these three subjects. And, you know, delete those tweets? I'm not going to name names, but all the tweets below are real:

"Jake Cave is terrible. Twins must have somebody better in AAA."

That was from August, a month that started with Cave playing in Rochester before being brought back up to replace the injured Byron Buxton. Cave had a .193 batting average and .621 OPS at the time of his recall.

But he was one of the Twins' hottest hitters in August, batting .361 with a 1.123 OPS. He entered Monday with 20 homers and an .802 OPS in 432 career at bats — pretty nice numbers for a reserve outfielder who won't even be arbitration-eligible until 2022.

In response to a tweet about Luis Arraez and all the amazing things he was doing as a rookie, sent on the afternoon of Aug. 16. Later that evening, Jonathan Schoop hit a huge, two-run homer in a 4-3 win at Texas. He had a 1.407 OPS for the rest of August, while Arraez cooled off (.239 batting average, and a .555 OPS during the same stretch).

There are too many tweets to mention here, but rest assured that as the Twins were in the process of losing an 11.5-game division lead and actually falling a half-game behind Cleveland for a moment plenty of antsy fans put their chances of rallying to claim the AL Central at less than zero.

Is there any way the Vikings will keep Kaare Vedvik as both the kicker and punter?"

OK, in fairness this was a seemingly reasonable question to ask in mid-August, not long after the Vikings dealt a 2020 fifth-round pick to Baltimore for Vedvik and let him compete for both spots. Reporters even asked this very question of Vikings coaches.

It seems laughable now, though — just evidence of the Vedvik mania that briefly swept through Vikings nation. After a shaky preseason, the Vedvik Era with the Vikings lasted just three weeks when he was cut. The oral history of how he is neither the kicker nor punter will be written on a Post-it note.