This one wasn’t even fun to watch.
I wanted Brad Radke to have the final start of his career that movies are made of. I wanted him shut down the offense. I wanted the rest of the team to be so fired up to support him that they’d give him run support galore. I wanted to be able to watch Twins baseball tomorrow.
Today was clearly not the day for getting what I wanted. The brooms were out in Oakland, and the Athletics used them to finish up the sweep. I could argue that the ump made the wrong call at the plate when Hunter came around and failed to score. And while he very clearly did, that wasn’t really what today’s came hinged on. No, the Twins just had the same problems they’ve had for the past two games — no momentum. Watching the games on ESPN, I find it hard to believe that this is the same team I saw in Cleveland a few weeks ago and Chicago a few weeks before that. It’s like someone cut out their heart and soul.
But here’s a final salute to Brad Radke… the last guy left on the team to have played with #34. The guy went out there and did his damnedest, broken shoulder or not, and finished off a twelve year career with his head held high. And here’s to Torii Hunter, who with his homerun and gutsy slide that should have been safe looked like a one man machine that refused to give up. And Joe Mauer… yeah, we are so over. Enjoy your Miss USA — I’m marrying Justin Morneau instead.
Time to cheer for Tigers against the Yankees, I guess. Go Tigers, she meekly waves.
Oh and, Anand? Shut up.

Uh, that sucked.
A lot.
Once again, the starting pitching did pretty well, but the Twins had no offense outside a pair of back-to-back solo homers by Cuddyer and Morneau. Admittedly, those were fun to watch, but I’ve never really thought of homeruns as great momentum builders. Mauer once again proved his worthlessness in clutch situations and the piranhas lacked bite. Well, except for Punto’s outstanding catch in foul territory — but good defense doesn’t score runs.
In the 7th, with the score tied at two apiece, Torii Hunter tried to be a hero and came up empty handed… literally. And in the meantime, Kotsay just kept running — all the way home for an inside-the-parker. That was the moment when I knew it was over.
But Friday will be a new day. Let’s hope the boys go to Oakland and rally around Radke’s bionic arm and actually, you know, generate some offense.

ALDS Game 1
You want to know a secret? Despite the fact that he’s my favorite player and all, when the game is on the line and there are two outs and runners on base, Joe Mauer is pretty much the last guy in a Twins uniform that I want to see at the plate. .347 BA or not, the guy is not clutch. I’ve seen him ground out and line out in key situations more times than I care to remember this season — and I watched him do it again today.
But there were good things for the Twins today. Outside of the second inning, Santana was on fire, and pitched out of a few jams that the uncharacteristically sloppy defense got him into — he just got no run support in the other half of the innings. And while the Twins botched a few defensive plays here and there, Nick Punto made an outstanding leaping catch into some netting on the third base side that had me sitting up (which is no easy feat, given that I have the flu). Michael Cuddyer utilized the homefield advantage that is the worst stadium in baseball when he made it all the way to third on a ball that Milton Bradley couldn’t find in the dome ceiling. When Torii Hunter hit him home, I thought maybe they had a chance to come back in the ninth. But no…
Because you see, the A’s have Frank “The Big Hurt” Thomas. And those two homeruns of his really did hurt.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!
I sat in my room peeling apples for some delicious homemade applesauce with the Twins game on the game channel and the Tigers game on TV. Going into the day, Minnesota and Detroit were tied for the Central Division lead. Because the Tigers had won the season series between the two teams, if the Twins wanted the division title, they needed to win today and the Tigers needed to lose. This seemed somewhat unlikely, given that the Tigers were facing 100-game losers Kansas City and the Twins were facing a more formidable opponent in the Chicago White Sox. But in a season full of unlikely surprises, that’s exactly what happened as the Tigers choked big in KC.
The fourth inning of today’s game pretty much represented everything that is offensively awesome about the Twins — a double by Joe Mauer, a double by Justin Morneau, and the 31st homerun of the year for Torii Hunter. Oh, and did I mention that by going 2 for 4 today while over in New York Derek Jeter managed only a paltry 1 for 5 that Joe Mauer is the AL batting champ? Oh, wait… not only that, he’s the MLB batting champ — the first catcher ever to do so. How d’you like them apples, Derek?
And now that the season’s over, it’s official that Johan Santana, who’ll be going on Tuesday in game 1 of the ALDS, has won the MLB pitching triple crown — 2.77 ERA, 19 wins, and 245 strikeouts. If he doesn’t win the Cy Young unanimously, I’ll eat my hat. And photograph it and put it on this blog.
So bring on the A’s… the Twins have the momentum and a division title and the piranhas are ready to fight this postseason.

While the real story of this game is the return of Brad “My arm didn’t fall off” Radke and his five innings of 3 hit ball despite a broken shoulder, I’ll just direct you to two other blogs if you’re interested in that. Although it is worth mentioning that Bradke’s ability to play through the pain all season is right up there with Curt Schilling’s bloody sock in the 2004 World Series.
The second story of tonight’s game? With the Tigers loss earlier in the day, the Twins are now tied for first in the AL Central. This is the first time they’ve been in first place for more than five hours since 2005 — maybe even 2004. But I don’t particularly want to cover that either. Especially since I tend to agree with the pundits who say that the Twins best chance to get to the World Series is to face the Yankees in a five game ALDS instead of a seven game ALCS. (And all of the pundits are in agreement that the Yanks are the AL team to beat right now, and that the Twins have the best chance of being the ones to beat them.)
No, what I want to figure out is if the score of this game is what it should be.
Here’s what happened… While Bradke was pitching his arm off (not literally, though it was in question for awhile), the Twins generated no offense until Joe “Mr. St. Paul” Mauer’s homer in the ninth to tie it up and send the game to extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, the Twins manage to load the bases with one out and Jason “Not the fake president” Bartlett comes up to bat. Bartlett hits the ball to deep center field and it bounces over the fence for a ground rule double.
Under normal circumstances, each runner advances two bases on a ground rule double, meaning that both Morneau at third and Ford at second would score and the Twins would get two runs out of the deal. However, this is the bottom of the last inning. Once the winning run scores, the game is over, so in this case, only Morneau scores and Bartlett is only credited with a single.
Except, and here’s where it gets tricky, if Bartlett had hit a homerun instead of a GRD, all four runs would have been allowed to score. Since a GRD also has an automatic awarding of bases with the ball gone out of play, why aren’t the two runs allowed to score much in the same way? So I’ve consulted the rules…

4.11(c) If the home team scores the winning run in its half of the ninth inning (or its half of an extra inning after a tie), the game ends immediately when the winning run is scored. EXCEPTION: If the last batter in a game hits a home run out of the playing field, the batter-runner and all runners on base are permitted to score, in accordance with the base-running rules, and the game ends when the batter-runner touches home plate.

… and it turns out, the rules don’t actually help answer the question at hand, except to specifically state that the exception holds for homeruns only. I really think the rulebook should be amended here to add the exception for GRDs. Because at the end of the day, Bartlett hit a double, not a single, and the scorebook should reflect that.

Good things that happened tonight in baseball land:

• The Twins won and the White Sox lost, shrinking the Twins magic number to zero. 0. A goose egg. Playoffs, here we (and by we, I mean they) come!
• My future husband, Joe Mauer, went 2 for 3, upping his batting average to the still-AL-leading .349.
• Torii Hunter hit his 30th homerun of the season. Justin Morneau hit his 34th. This marks the first time since 1987 that multiple Twins had 30 homer seasons. (And incidently, no Twin has had 30 homers since then.) Do you know what else happened in 1987? The Twins beat the Tigers in the ALCS and went on to win the World Series. I sense good things for this post season. Good things.

Oh, and the Red Sox lost to Toronto, 5-0.

I’m posting this before the game ends so that I can relish the fact that the Twins are atop the Central Division right now. Especially because it doesn’t look like it’s going to stay that way. Johan “Unbeatable in the Second Half of the Season” Santana had an uncharacteristic blow up on the mound in the second inning. It sort of made me queasy when he bobbled that bunt. And then there was Papi…
Oh man, I can stop cheering for the Sox, but I can’t stop cheering for David Ortiz. His swing is just so sweet. He’s like a big teddy bear that hits homeruns. And I’d like you all to note that I was a fan of his long before he was the Boston favorite and MVP hopeful that he is now — I was a fan of his when he was a Twin. (And let’s not rip on Terry Ryan for “letting him go.” That was in fact a strategic favor to me as I moved to Boston and needed some Twins to come with me.) But he’s Boston’s now… all-time Red Sox single season homerun leader with 52 and counting. And he doesn’t share that title with anyone.

Some open letters to my two favorite baseball teams…
Dear Red Sox,
I’m sorry you were eliminated from the AL East title today. Even though we’re still on a break, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to know that the Yankees are going to be in the playoffs (again) instead of you. But Papi, congrats on number 50… if I wasn’t so opposed to DHs winning the MVP, I’d vote for you.
Rhode

Dear Twins,
You boys make me so happy. For about an hour tonight, you were tied for the Central Division lead and I was actually rooting for the Bad Sox in Chicago so that you could have that lead out right. But instead, you’ll have to settle for shrinking the Wild Card magic number to 6. And Justin Morneau, you do get my MVP vote — because you play defense and you have 125 RBI with a .325 batting average.
Rhode
PS – Don’t worry about my still being friendly with the Good Sox — you’ll always be my true love.