Lisa mentioned seeing this happen, but I never got to see it myself. Now with the wonders of youtube… Baby fan of the game pukes on Mom.
Edit: More Twins videos on youtube… I’m not ashamed to admit that this one made me tear up a little, cheesy though it may be. It’s especially recommended for my dad. Non-Twins fans probably won’t be as touched.
My second game this weekend played out similarly to the first. The Indians scored quickly in the first and the Twins starting pitcher, this time Scott Baker, looked unsteady until the second, when he mowed the opposition down 1-2-3 and proceeded to pitch superbly for six innings, followed by some excellent bullpen relief. And like yesterday, the Twins quickly got the first run back on a Torii Hunter hit in second.
No, wait. It wasn’t a hit, it was an E-3 that the Twins later capitalized on. Defense was the name of today’s game and the Twins knew how to play it and the Indians didn’t. Cleveland made a total of three errors that cost them at least one, if not two or three Twins runs. In the meantime, the Twins made five double plays (one on an incredible fielding play by Nick Punto at third), which saved who knows how many Indians runs.
All in all, an exciting weekend for me. Jacob’s Field gets two thumbs up as a stadium, the Crowne Plaza hotel gets two thumbs up for damn comfortable beds, and the Twins get two thumbs and two big toes up for winning two games. There will be pictures… eventually.
Tonight was the first of my planned two games in Cleveland to catch the Twins take on the Tribe. My housemate, Patty, joined me for the three hour drive this afternoon and the subsequent game and current night’s stay at the Crowne Plaza in downtown Cleveland.* It was 80’s night at Jacob’s Field, and in honor of that event, all of the fans were given free Cleveland Indians Rubik’s Cubes. I solved mine quickly (okay, fine, they came solved… but I messed it up and retraced my steps quickly).
After Patty checked out the pro shop and picked up a jersey for her boyfriend, a German who roots for the Indians because he loved the movie Major League, we took our seats in the very back row of the bleachers. I met a guy from Cleveland earlier in the summer who heard of my baseball travels and told me that I had to get to Jacob’s Field, because “there’s not a bad seat in the house.” Well, I can now at least vouch that the half-off-in-September bleacher seats have a good view of the field, though they lose a few points for having no view of the Jumbotron.
The game started out looking bleak for the Twins, with the Indians scoring quickly in the first off of a pair of hits and a fielder’s choice. Carlos Silva looked a little uneasy on the mound and I was a little nervous about the Twins’ chances. Surprisingly, the fans weren’t all that excited, even when their team was ahead. I’d forgotten how much lower the energy in a stadium can be when the team isn’t contending for a playoff spot. I was impressed with the guy next to me, however, when he proceeded to name the line-up of both the ’87 and ’91 World Champion Twins, despite the fact that he was a lifelong Indians fan.
And speaking of the Twins, while they were down early, they certainly weren’t out. They got the initial run back in the third on a pair of singles of their own, followed by a pair of sacrifices from Little Nicky Punto and Mike “Joe Mauer who?” Redman to score Jason “The Piranha” Bartlett. Torii “Gold Glove” Hunter hit a homerun in the fourth to put the Twins ahead by one, and the boys from Minnesota grabbed an insurance run in the fifth off a Redman double. In the meantime, my worries about Silva’s pitching were quickly allayed as he pitched another six solid innings, giving up only three more hits and no runs, including a five pitch seventh that was over before you could blink.
Redman earned himself another RBI in the top of the ninth, proving that the Twins can depend on their catcher for offense even when Mauer isn’t in the game. (Have I mentioned that Redman has signed my scorebook? Well, he has and tonight I’m pretty proud of that.) Joe “Even better than Rivera” Nathan came in in the bottom of the ninth and the stadium began to slowly empty, even before he sent the Indians down 1-2-3 to earn his 33rd save of the season.
* – Priceline is pretty awesome for setting your own hotel rate, and I don’t mind giving them free advertising. This is the same line of hotel I stayed at in San Francisco back in April, with the sleep CD and ridiculously comfortable beds, not to mention excellent location (walking distance to Jacob’s Field). The price? $60 a night, split between us.
The next time I go months without washing my car and it is covered in a thin film of grim and filth, I’m just going to tell people that I’m preparing it to be a work of art. Check out the gallery — it’s really amazing.
While filling out some paperwork, one of the department secretaries asked me to confirm that MN is the correct abbreviation for Minnesota. As I thought I about the other possibilities, it occurred to me that every other choice (where the choices are defined as the first letter of the state followed by a second letter occurring somewhere in the state’s name) is the abbreviation for another state. (MI = Michigan, ME = Maine, MS = Mississippi, MO = Missouri, MT = Montana, MA = Massachusetts) This is equally true of Maine and Montana, and no other states.
Of course, this bit of knowledge is completely useless. That’s why it’s called trivia.
First, last Friday I auditioned for the University of Michigan Women’s Glee Club and was officially informed today that I made it. (I was unofficially told this last Friday since there weren’t that many second altos auditioning — hurray for low voices.) I was one of two grad students auditioning and last year the group had no grad students — thus I find the following bit of information amusing:
Our second rehearsal will be Thursday from 4:30-6:30 in Aud. 4 of the MLB followed by a pizza party where you will meet your Big Sister.
I’m going to have at least three years on this “Big” sister. Awesome.
Second, it was sprinkling this morning, so I put on my MIT Ice Hockey jacket as I left the house. When I got on the bus, I woman I didn’t recognize approached me. “MIT ice hockey? I have that exact same jacket. When did you play?” Turns out her final season was the season before I got there and I recognized her name as one of the old captains. We chatted a bit about people we both knew — it didn’t surprise her at all to hear that ktfilion had coerced me into playing. How completely random…
Third, I’m planning on going to Cleveland this weekend to catch one, and possibly two games of the Twins-Indians series. I have one housemate who’s equally excited about this prospect. Hurray for finding people who favor baseball over Michigan football! And hurray for five Twins games in five stadiums in the past month and a half!
Well, Johan Santana pitches 7 scoreless, 2 hit innings, Joe Mauer goes two for three with two doubles and two RBI, and the Twins clobber the Tigers to come within two games of the Central Division lead and to go up a game and half over the White Sox (who lost to Cleveland today) for the Wild Card lead. And since I’m in the Detroit area, you’d think that I’d get to watch this game, right?
Wrong.
I really hate football. And professional poker. And the “Detroit Sports Report,” which FSN decided to air instead of, you know, actual Detroit sports.
Watching the Yahoo! GameChannel means I have no chance of watching the announcer drop the f-bomb — twice. (Go watch it, even if you don’t like baseball… the look on Blyleven’s face after he realizes he was live is priceless.)
That would be the River City Rascals (Missouri) and the Florence Freedom (Kentucky), members of the Frontier League. I extended my journey across the middle of the country an extra night in order to attend a minor league ballgame in an open air suite, courtesy of Dave Zitt’s boss. For the first time in over two years, I didn’t score the game. Well, not the entire game — I did score the last three innings in someone else’s scorebook while she borrowed my special “Upstairs Guest” bracelet and took advantage of our catered ribs. However, I did get a free shirt (thanks, Evan) and the opportunity to participate in the “Diamond Dig.”
What really makes minor league games fun is all of the crazy promotional stuff that goes on beyond the game itself — and last night was no exception. Three diamond necklaces were hidden somewhere in the infield dirt and the first 500 women over the age of 16 who attended last Friday’s game were given little plastic shovels and the opportunity to literally dig for diamonds — but then it rained on Friday and the three necklaces were left buried in the field. (Okay, rumor has it that the necklaces weren’t actually buried, only the velvet boxes and a little slip of paper that guaranteed you a necklace.)
Just our luck, the dig was rescheduled for last night, the last game of the Frontier League season. Instead of giving shirts and shovels to the first 500 women, shirts were randomly thrown into the stand and any woman wearing a shirt was allowed to dig after the game. I’d like to say that I made some sort of heroic catch to get my shirt, but by the end, they had so many leftover shirts that they were walking up and down the aisles looking for women to pass them to and Evan was paying attention, and thus secured two shirts for me and Martine.
The dig itself wasn’t all that exciting. They herded us around the infield like cattle, lining us up along the grass and then yelled go. Five hundred women dropped to their knees and just began digging like little kids in a sandbox while strains of the Bangles “Manic Monday” played over the loudspeaker — only the sand in a sand box isn’t rock hard and impossible to dig into. My strategy quickly became to search for a patch of softer dirt and search for the diamond that way. I have no idea if that was the correct strategy, because three women found necklaces before I could figure it out.
Oh well… at least I got a free shirt and plastic shovel out of the deal.
“Our state fair is a great state fair…”
Okay, the bulleted list of today’s highlights of my annual visit to the Minnesota State Fair:
I love the fair.
Well, that sucked. I went from the best game ever to pretty much the worst game ever. Last night’s game was one of those games non-baseball fans use as an example of how “Baseball is boring.” Other than the 2 run fifth inning, Garza pitched pretty well and held the Royals at bay. Unfortunately, the Twins really couldn’t get anything going offensively the entire game. Kudos to Royals pitcher (and former Twin) Mark Redman for the shutout, but you were supposed to pitch like that when you pitched for Minnesota, not against them.
And I was inside the whole time, which brings me to my second point and rant.
Yesterday Hennepin County passed whatever it is they needed to pass to approve the sales tax that gives the new Twins stadium the green light. Great news for Minnesota baseball fans, right? Well as a Twins fan, I would think so, but today at the Great Minnesota Get Together, I discovered that there are fans who like the Dome. I was standing in line to get fair tickets when I heard the following conversation behind me:
“… I can’t believe they’re going to build a stadium without a roof. What will they do if it rains? And you know, it still snows in April so they’re going to have problems with that too. It’s all these young people… they want the outdoor stadium so they can drink their beer and take their shirts off. They don’t care about the game.”
ARE YOU &*^%$# INSANE, RANDOM FAIRGOER?!?!?!?
Now, I’ve been to six major league baseball stadiums this year, nine in the past two years. The Metrodome, despite being the stadium I grew up with, remains firmly at the bottom of my stadium rankings, even when you throw in AAA Toledo, primarily because it is indoors. It’s dull and lifeless in there, even when the crowd gets going (which it did on a few occassions last night — mostly on great defensive plays, since as I said before, there was pretty much no Twins offense). Upper deck seats, which I’ve come to enjoy at other stadiums because of the birds eye view, are even worse than the rest of the dome because you can practically reach up and touch the ceiling.
It’s an outdoor sport. It’s supposed to be played outside. You’re not supposed to be in a giant bubble where you don’t notice the sunset. When it rains, you schedule a rain date. When it snows, then I suppose you schedule a snow date. This works for every other team in the league — I don’t see why it’s not going to work for the Twins.
And I’m not even going to touch the comment about young people just wanting to take their shirts off. That’s just a whole new level of absurd.
Be upset because there’s a new tax that will cost you approximately $17 a year if you want. But don’t be upset because you think indoor baseball is better. That’s just wrong.
End rant.
Colossus of Rhode 
