Best baseball game I’ve ever been to. Ever.
No, seriously.
On my way to my end-of-summer trek to Minnesota, I took advantage of the baseball schedule and stopped off in Chicago to visit an old friend from high school and catch the first game of the Twins/White Sox series. To set things up a bit for those who haven’t been paying attention, the Twins entered tonight’s game a half-game back of the White Sox in the wild card race — a win and the lead flips to the Twins, a loss and they’re that much further behind.
After exploring Millennium Park and Michigan Avenue this afternoon, we caught the El to the south side and U.S. Cellular Field. (As an aside, I really miss being able to take public transportation to ballgames.) Our seats were way up on the 500 level behind the left field foul pole — but on the plus side, they were in the front row along the aisle. While I saw a few Twins hats on the way in, there didn’t to seem to be that many until we got to our seats. It was almost as if the online ticketing agent could sense that I was a Twins fan and dumped me in this section, which was about half Minnesotans. We did the obligatory “Hey, nice hat — go Twins!” with a few folks and the game got under way.
It started bleak for the boys from the Land O’ Lakes. Brad Radke gave up four hits and three runs in the first two innings, including a two run blast from Paul Konerko, before Gardenhire sat him down and brought in Matt Guerrier to start the third. In the meantime, the Twins could only manage three hits in the first five innings. There seemed to be a slight ray of hope in the third when Jason “Not Related to a Fictional President” Bartlett got hit by a pitch and stole second. When Luis Castillo singled to center, Bartlett took a wide turn at third and looked ready to score, but third base coach Scott Ullger held him up instead. Nick Punto followed with a inning ending double play and the Twins hopes of a run were dashed.
I think it was in about the fourth inning that my friend turned to me and said, “So the Twins are gonna lose, huh?” I explained to her that you never say such things in baseball, and she responded by saying that she was bored and going to go use the bathroom and get us some hot dogs. While she was gone, I made a new friend — a drunken Twins fan. Impressed that I was both a Twins fan and keeping score he started chatting with me about the game. He mentioned that he had played baseball in high school for Roseville and had played against Joe Mauer. “He was good and all, but I wasn’t that much worse. I could be out there now if I had wanted to.” Um, right, buddy. But shortly before he returned to his seat came the true wisdom of Drunken Twins Fan. “Don’t worry about this game. [Starting White Sox pitcher] Vazquez always gives up runs during his third time through the line-up. This is only the second. Just wait, you’ll see. Twins will win 4-3.” And then as quickly as he had appeared, he vanished leaving me with his prediction.
And he was right — almost.
The third time through the line-up came in the top of the sixth. Nick Punto led off with a solo homer to right and the Twins had their first run. After Mauer lined out to first, Michael Cuddyer singled to left and Ozzie Guillen pulled his starter. Justin “32 homeruns” Morneau followed with another single and the Sox made another pitching change.
“Hey, this is kind of exciting now,” my friend said.
“Yep, the go-ahead run is at the plate.”
“What does that mean?” (Give her break — she’s primarily a football fan.)
“That means that if Torii Hunter hits a homerun right now, the Twins will be ahead.”
I should say things like that more often. Just like that, the Twins went up 4-3 and my section (and pretty much just my section) went nuts. But then, almost as quickly, A.J. Pierzynski, who used to be a Twin, hit a homerun to lead off the bottom of the inning to bring the score to an even 4-4. This is about the moment when I realized I was watching an amazing game.
The 7th and 8th flew by, with Jesse Crain pitching outstanding relief for the Twins and neither team able to come with any more than a harmless single and a stranded runner. The atmosphere in the stadium was tense — every at bat was crucial and every batter had the potential to be a hero.
Then came the ninth. “What happens if the score is still tied after the 9th inning?” my friend asked.
“They play more innings until the score isn’t tied anymore. It’s like overtime in football.”
“Oh. Then the Twins better score here because I don’t want to stay too late.”
Apparently they heard her. Hunter singled, Rondell White beat the double play ball to first and Lew Ford came into run for him. And when Jason Tyner hit a ground ball to the pitcher, Lew ran to second. With two outs in the ninth, up came the number nine hitter, Jason Bartlett — the unlikeliest of heroes. (Okay, that’s not really true. Drunken Twins Fan would probably be the unlikeliest of heroes here, but it’s more dramatic to write that than to mention Bartlett’s .347 batting average.) After a first pitch strike (and much cheering from the Chicago crowd), Bartlett singled to right, Lew ran all the way home, and I jumped up and cheered and screamed.
Joe Nathan, the Twins star closer, came in to finish of the Sox in the 9th. Half of the Twins fans in my section left — “Nathan’s going to finish it. We want to beat the crowd to the subway,” they said as they left. What kind of fans are they? But as it turns out, they were right, though the third and final out bears a special mention. It’s marked in the scorebook as “3-F.I.” because I have no idea how else you score it when the first baseman would have caught the ball, but a fan interfered, and the ump called it an out anyway. I actually couldn’t see the play from our seats (though I just watched the replay on SportsCenter). All I know is, I saw the ump jerk his thumb back and declare the out and let out a squeal of delight — literally a squeal. My throat was too sore from cheering to let out anything gutteral.
And now… the Twins are atop the wild card standings.
See? Best. Game. Ever.
(There will be photos posted eventually… as soon as I find the cord to put them on my laptop.)

Look, it’s great when the Twins take two out of three in Baltimore like they’ve done. It’s fun when they finish it off with a blowout. It’s even more promising when you consider that this was with the bottom of their rotation. But it doesn’t really help any when the White Sox take the last two in Detroit with a blowout of their own — the Twins are still a half game back in the wild card. My first Tigers series where I’m really actively rooting for the hometown team and they go and disappoint me.
But tomorrow… tomorrow both teams can’t win. Tomorrow the Twins go to Chicago and I will meet them there. Jim Thome will be on the DL, silencing a big bat for the Bad Sox and Brad Radke will be on the mound… and the last time I saw bradke pitch on the road, he didn’t disappoint. I sense good things for my first visit to U.S. Cellular Field (and I’ll spare you my rant on stadiums with corporate names).
And next Tuesday I have tentative plans to catch the Twins in the giant sterile bubble that is the Metrodome. This will make three Twins games in three different stadiums within the span of one month.
(Oh, and the Red Sox are up 2-0 in the 7th against Anaheim. But we are still on a break, so I don’t care. Really.)

Dear Red Sox,
This is difficult to write, but I think I have to be done cheering for you this season. For the first time in your history, you have allowed 12+ runs in three consecutive games, putting yourselves 4.5 games back of the Yankees in the AL East. While this is not an insurmountable lead, you have now put yourself in contention for the Wild Card instead and my loyalties lie elsewhere in that race — the Twins are going to have enough to contend with in fighting off that other Sox team. Plus, it’s difficult to respect you when you get swept by Kansas “.363” City.
When David Ortiz hit his sac fly in the fifth to tie things up, I thought maybe we could salvage this. It’s seems that Papi has always been the glue that keeps us together. But then Josh Beckett blew up on the mound in the sixth, and I knew we were in trouble and that this relationship was beyond repair.
Should things change in September and the Yankees really start to choke, then perhaps I’ll re-examine things. But for now, I think we need a break. Let’s try again next season.
We’ll always have 2004,
Rhode

• Yankees 26, Good Sox 15 — Okay, it was spread over two games, but still… 26 runs in one day? And that second game was the longest nine inning game in MLB history — 4 hours and 45 minutes. I could have fit in nearly three viewings of Snakes on a Plane in that time*. The Red Sox are going to have to be careful — if the Yankees get too far ahead in the division and the Sox find themselves actively chasing the Wild Card against the Twins instead of gunning for the Yankees, my loyalties are going to stick with Joe Mauer over Big Papi.
• Twins 7, Bad Sox 3 — See, this was an outcome I liked — with Boof Bonser as the starting pitcher, no less. Now the Twins are back within 1 of the wild card and they’ve got Radke, who’s been on fire recently, and Santana, who’s always on fire, going against the Sox tomorrow and Sunday. It’s possible they could be in the lead after the weekend is over (unless I just jinxed that).

Of course, as much fun as the end of season pennant races can get… I’m still opposed to the wild card, in theory. Just like I’m still theoretically opposed to cell phones.
* — By the way, anyone who thinks that I, with my paralyzing fear of snakes, would ever see that movie is crazy. I’ve already lived through Snakes in My Bedroom and Snake Crawling Across My Face During Hide and Go Seek, so no thank you.

With the Twins in town, I dragged four guys from my department out to Comerica last night to catch the second of the three game series. I had some coupons for half-price upper deck tickets from a scratch off ticket from an earlier game this season, but it could only be used at the gate. I figured, it was a Tuesday night game in Detroit. There should be no problem getting tickets. But then we got there — standing room only. Even if we only wanted one seat.
I swear I have an inverse curse following me around. Prior to my birth, the Twins had never won a World Series. Around the time I start to be cognizant of baseball, they start to turn things around and in ’87 they win the championship and repeat it in ’91. (As for the mid-90s Twins, apparently the curse wears off after awhile…) I move to Boston and when I first get there, walk up tickets are no problem and team is going through the most infamous championship drought in Major League history. After a few years — bam, another world series win and I can no longer easily get tickets to Fenway. Now I move to Michigan and the same thing starts to happen all over again — a team that sucked now has the best record in baseball and I’m stuck with standing room only because they’re suddenly popular again.
But it wasn’t really that uncomfortable. We parked ourselves in front of the Hank Greenberg statue in left center, where we had an excellent view of the bullpen and some room on the railing to lean against. The game started rough for the Twins with a Dmitri Young triple in the second that scored Magglio Ordonez, followed by a Sean Casey single to drive Young in. A good night for ex-Cincinnati Reds, observed the Ohio-native in our group.
But the Twins were not to be outdone last night, with a Nick Punto double and a sacrifice ground ball by my future husband, Joe Mauer*, driving in two runs in the top of the third to tie the game up at two. Things got a little hairy in the bottom of the fourth as Radke loaded the bases with no outs. But on a Craig Monroe fly ball to left, Ordonez tagged up on third and tried to score, but was no match for the arm of Jason Tyner who nailed him at home. Sean Casey flied out to center to end the inning and I was one of the few happy people in the stadium.
With that danger narrowly averted, the Twins took charge and picked up a run in the 5th on a pair of doubles by Punto and Mauer. In the top of the ninth they scored an insurance run to bring the final score up to 4-2.
Take that “Best Record in Baseball!”
* — Personal to Joe: Do you mind if we name our kids after members of the 2003 Red Sox? I made a promise.

A few days ago, Anand sent me a link to this article about an addition to the Milwaukee Brewers’ sausage races — El Picante the Chorizo. While many other stadiums have “races” such as the Great Tire Race at the Metrodome in Minneapolis and the Dunkin Donuts race in Detroit (not my picture, by the way), they’re just animated simulations up on the jumbotron. (Fenway, being the symbol of old school baseball purism that it is, has no such race. So for the Boston fans, the way these things work is that there are four characters each representing different sections (usually lower deck infield, lower deck outfield, upper deck infield, and upper deck outfield) and if the character representing your section wins, you get a dollar off at a local fast food eatery or something similar.)
I had previously thought that Milwaukee was the only stadium in which there was an actual physical race. But upon my recent travels out east for Jenn’s wedding, I was proven wrong not once, but twice.
The first game I attended was at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, PA, where the Pirates played host to the Colorado Rockies and won 6-5. They had this little animated pirate captain who would occassionally come on the jumbotron and say things in pirate-speak. (“Yarr, put down yer grog — it be time for the seventh inning stretch.”) He was mildly amusing at first, but after about the third inning, I really just wanted him to go away and never come back. But given his presence, I naturally would have assumed that if they were going to have a race it would be little animated pirate ships or some such. But no — they had pierogies! And not even animated — actual people in pierogie costumes running down the first base line. This seemed an obvious nod to the sausage race to me, but little did I know, a few days later I would see another such race.
Jenn, having the good sense to recognize that wedding rehearsal dinners are more fun when they are tailgate parties, treated the wedding party to a Washington Nationals game in RFK, where they hosted (and beat 7-6) the groom’s team of choice, the Chicago Cubs. (In hindsight, I kind of have to wonder… did they pick the wedding date around the baseball schedule?) While I managed to successfully keep score, I must admit that it was a little tricky, given that I was surrounded by good friends that I rarely see who were more interested in throwing peanut shells at lalopez and me than actually watching the game (hi, jrandall, dalexand, and adorai!). Thus, I almost missed my opportunity to photograph their race — the Rushmore presidents! Washington won, which seemed oddly appropriate given that we were in his city (and it looked pretty rigged to me as Roosevelt seemed to have an unbeatable jump out of the gate).
So these things turn out to be more common than I thought… at least in the National League. Next Tuesday I have plans to return the AL when the Twins come to Detroit for a three game series, so I will have to settle for those animated donuts instead.
(Yeah, I could blog about the games themselves, but I’m pretty sure none of you care, and at this point, I don’t really care either. Actually, they were both pretty good games.)

Since June 8, the Minnesota Twins have been playing not .500 baseball, not .600, not .700, but .800 (.810 to be exact). And yet they’re still only in a tie for second in the American League Central, and a half game back of the Yankees for the Wild Card.
That’s insane.