My blog post is one of the three finalists over at Twinkie Town.
Go vote for me!

The Twins blog I follow, Twinkie Town, is having a contest tomorrow for the best “fan post.” I wrote the following earlier tonight, while 30,000 feet in the air and will submit it in the morning…

Target Field as viewed from my plane leaving Minneapolis on Wednesday — if you look at the larger version, you can see the ALDS logo on the Jumbotron!
Back in July, I decided it was time to knock a location off my bucket list and made plans to visit Alaska. Unfortunately, when I made these plans, I failed to consult the post-season schedule. And thus, it came to be that I, already a long-distance Twins fan living in Boston, am stuck on a plane between Minneapolis and Anchorage while the Twins take on the Yankees in the ALDS Game 1. But I am a resourceful Twins fan — despite living in Boston, I’ve seen the Twins play nine times this year: twice close to home at Fenway, once during a trip to New York at Yankee Stadium, once while visiting a friend in Philadelphia (comeback game!), once during another trip to New York to see Johan Santana’s first game against the Twins at CitiField, once in a crazy single day down-and-back trip to Baltimore in the sweltering sun, and three glorious times at Target Field on three different trips back home, including one where we surprised my mother with a scoreboard message and my presence.
So you see, I am not the kind of fan who is content to get on the plane and wait until I land to hear the score. Thus, I have come up with a plan — if I can’t be at Target Field or even watch it on TV, I will bring Target Field to my seat on the plane. But how, you ask?
First, and most important, I need access to the game in some way from 30,000 feet above it. To accomplish this, I plan on using a combination of inflight wireless and my MLB.tv subscription. I know my subscription won’t get me the live video of playoff games, but I also know that the inflight wireless network wasn’t built for streaming video anyway. Thus, I’ve decided to settle for the radio broadcast. I tested it on my first leg from Boston to Minneapolis by listening to the Texas – Tampa Bay game and it worked like charm — success! Step one is in place.
Second, I need some Minnesota magic to help me cheer the boys on. I brought a few things in my carry-on, namely, a Homer Hanky from 2002, the last time the Twins won a division series, and my Twins hat. The hat is not just any hat either — it was signed by Tony Oliva at this year’s State Fair where I saw him eating cheese curds at the Twins booth while he was taking a break from pitching wiffle balls to kids. I’m also wearing my new “Jim Thome speaks softly…” shirt courtesy of the fine folks at Twinkie Town. I thought about bringing the Kirby Puckett bobblehead doll, but decided that might be going overboard. The good luck charm department is well covered here.
Third, I need some Target Field ambience. This was going to be the trickiest part of the plan to pull off, but I’ve managed with the help of my one hour layover in Minneapolis, wherein I purchased the day’s copy of the StarTribune, including the special 12 page ALDS section. I have strategically placed the playoff section, with its beautiful color front page spread of Target Field, in the window adjacent to my seat. It looks just as if Target Field is right out the window… well, almost!
Fourth, I need some ballpark food. The options in the for-purchase meals in coach don’t include a hot dog or walleye on a stick or a malt cup, but they do include a Cuban sandwich… just like the Tony O’s Cuban I ate at Target Field back in September. Only it turns out the sandwich on the plane is cold and not quite as good — but close enough!
And now, with the ambience, magic, and food all laid out, it’s almost 7:30 central time — time to log on and queue up the game in my own little Target Field flying over Canada on my way to the only state more north than the North Star state.
Wait.
Canada?
$#!^$#!^$#!^
Always read the fine print when carrying out a master plan — turns out inflight wireless only works over the continental United States. My beautiful plan is foiled!
And so, here I sit on a plane, wondering if Jim Thome is mashing taters while Liriano strikes out Derek Jeter or if C.C. Sabathia is shutting the boys down. It’s the Schrodinger’s Cat of baseball games, and it’s driving me crazy!

My little Target Field in the sky

I attempted to go to last Friday’s Red Sox-Yankees game (courtesy of the roommate’s season tickets) with a co-worker. Unfortunately, these plans were foiled by the weather and we sat in the rain for four hours instead. I suppose the people watching and Thriller dancing made it okay — plus I talked to some guys about my upcoming trip to Alaska and got (more!) tips on what to do there. However, I wanted to see some baseball!
Well, thanks to the nationally televised game scheduled for Saturday at 4 pm, rescheduling a second game for a make-up that day proved tricky. Four is too early to have a game before hand and too late for a nice 7:00 or 8:00 start. And so, the make up was scheduled for 9:05 pm the next day. Figuring that the T would no longer be running at the end of the game, once my co-worker told me she was out for Saturday I strategically invited a friend who can see Fenway from her apartment — on the condition that I get to crash there at the end of the game!
And it worked out well for both of us… she got to see the game and I had a place to sleep once it ended at 1:23 AM after 10 innings. The game itself was pretty exciting even though the bench was starting for both teams, a result of the fact that the first game had ended only 30 minutes before this one started. There were a few Little League-type plays — key being when the Yankees started arguing a call with the umps without calling time. Daniel Nava, standing on third base for the Sox, smartly took off for home. Robinson Cano started waving his arms and running at Lance Berkman who was holding the ball and arguing with the umpire at first base. By the time Berkman realized what was happening, all he could muster was an overthrow home. Josh Reddick, the Red Sox base runner at first, took this opportunity to take off and eventually wound up at third before it was all over. Given that the game wound up tied (and eventually won in extra innings by the Sox), this comic run proved to be a crucial play for the outcome of the game.
The other highlight of the evening was bantering with the men behind us. A Red Sox season ticket holder had lost a bet and had to bring his three Yankee fan friends/fellow Little League coaches to the game. These weren’t the New York centered baseball followers I’ve come to expect from Yankee fans — we even had a brief chat about Jack Morris and Frank Viola. (I was quizzed — who pitched game 7 when the Twins won the World Series? “Which one? Morris in ’91 or Viola in ’87” was my correct answer. I even brought up Sandy Koufax in ’65 just to show off. Unfortunately, I don’t actually know which Twins pitcher lost that game.) They had not planned around the T, however, and had to leave at midnight, just after the 7th inning.
I think I can easily say that 1:23 AM is the latest I’ve ever been at a ballpark.

The New York Yankees are the only AL team going to the playoffs that doesn’t feature a big white T on a blue background in their logo.
(Twins, Texas, Tampa Bay)
I don’t know if this is a good or bad sign… it remains to be seen if the T stands for “Terrific” or “Terrible.” (And based on how the Twins have been playing since they clinched (and actually, all four teams), I’m inclined to go with terrible.)
Also, who bought a plane ticket to Alaska and will be flying over Canada during game 1 of the ALDS? That would be me! Poor planning…

I finally pulled the photos off my camera from last week’s Red Sox/Orioles game. Apparently I took nearly 600 photos (burst mode!). The vast majority are pretty terrible (burst mode!). Here are three that aren’t too bad… the thumbnails link to larger versions.

Brian Roberts connects for the first hit of the game. What makes this photo so amazing is that a) you can see the ball about to hit the bat and b) it was taken from way off in right field.

A panorama of Fenway Park, mid-game, taken with the “panorama assist” mode. I stitched the three photos together myself in Gimp instead of using the stitching software that came with the camera. It’s not the greatest job in the world — the seams are pretty obvious, especially in the larger version — but it’s still a reasonable perspective of where we were sitting when I took the other two photos.

Felix Pie (pronounced Pee-ay) catches the final out of the game in front of a giant reminder of the AL East standings where his team is 31 games back.

It’s been almost a week since I last went to baseball game and didn’t blog it. Whoops. It was a blow out for the Orioles… which really says something about a) how bad the Sox are this season and b) how good Buck Showalter has been in turning the Orioles from the worst team in the American League to the second worst team in the American League (sorry, Seattle Mariners fans). The Sox scored first in the second, and for awhile it looked like it might be a quiet 1-0 game. But then the Orioles struck back in the 6th inning… and the 7th… and the 8th… and just to rub it in, another 4 runs in the 9th.
I was wearing my Twins hat, and the guy next to me on the bus said he was envious of me having a team worth cheering for this year. When’s the last time a Red Sox fan said that to a Twins fan? Oh yeah, 2006.
The tickets came from my old friend Lisa, also known as Spaczke (pronounced “Spazz-key”), who secretly moved to Boston without telling me. The game was “sold out” but she had managed to get tickets off of StubHub for $17… not bad considering the face value was $45. It was good timing — in preparation for my upcoming trip to Alaska (in a week!), I bought a new fancy camera and this was my first chance to take some fancy action shots with it. Unfortunately, they’re all still on the camera. I’ll post the highlights here eventually…
(In the mean time, that same night the Twins won to bring the magic number to 1 and waited around for the White Sox to lose to Oakland, officially clinching the division. They’ve played like guys with massive hangovers ever since, but it’s probably because, well, they did some massive partying that night. But playoffs here they come…)

The Chicago White Sox have loaded the bases against the Twins 13 times this season. They have scored zero (0) runs in these situations. Which is to say, in bases loaded situations against the Twins, they have stranded all 52 runners.
After the White Sox folded their deck tonight (including Manny Ramirez striking out with the bases loaded and getting booed), the Twins magic number is now 12.
Also, I made an apple bourbon pie this weekend with scotch because that is what I had on hand. I highly recommend it.

I believe Thursday night marks the first time I was ever at a ballpark at midnight. The 13 inning marathon between the Twins and Detroit lasted over four and half hours, finally ending at 11:57 pm on the stadium clock when Michael Cuddyer lined out to second base, ending the Twins hopes for a comeback.
And really, it was reasonable to have hope, given that they had comeback to tie it after the Tigers had scored in the 11th. But alas, it was not to be.
Really, the comeback shouldn’t have been necessary given that the Twins were up 7-3 going into the 8th and 8-7 going into the 9th. However, it seems that the Twins pitchers heard my comment about having yet to see a homerun at Target Field. I guess I should have specified that I wanted to see a Twins homerun so that the Minnie and Paul sign would light up and shake hands. Instead, the Tigers hit five homeruns off of five different Twins pitchers — two of which were back to back in the eighth with a pitching change in between.
But it was an evening at the ballpark in Minneapolis and I got to try a bite of a Tony O’s Cuban sandwich. So, something good came out of it…