Courtesy of Twinkie Town.
Whoever posted the video is calling it “cheating.” Does anyone know if this is actually illegal, poor form on Joe Mauer’s part, or just a clever way for Mauer to help the Twins out? I know A-Rod was accused of tipping pitches to opponents as some sort of supposed you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours ruse to get pitches tipped back to him — and abetting the other team definitely seems to be against the spirit of the game, so I can understand why that was called “cheating.”
But in Mauer’s case, he’s helping his own team out by stealing signs — how is this “cheating?” Stealing signs, as immoral as some might think it is, has been a part of baseball for years. And since he’s clearly doing it with his naked eye, it’s not against any official rules.
In other news, the magic number is now 2 for the Tigers… if the Twins lose tonight, that’s it for them. On the plus side, that will mean that yes, I will be at the last regular season Metrodome game.
Update: The original poster of the video has changed the title from “Joe Mauer Tipping Pitches (Cheating)” to “Joe Mauer Stealing Signs (Not Cheating)” and left the following comment explaining the change:

Sorry, I titled it Sign Stealing instead of Tipping (I did know the difference) and I agree it’s NOT cheating, but it is a little against the ‘code’ especially for a catcher to do it. If a batter looks back at a catchers sign, he’ll take some chin music. If the Tigers wanted to, they would be within their rights of the ‘code’ to throw a player and/or take out a middle infielder, cleats up sometime in the future.

Ha — I am vindicated!

Sarah’s comment about the fact that I haven’t posted in awhile spurred me to sneak this in nearly two weeks after the fact. On September 17, Chris Morse finally managed to invite me to a game that did not occur on the same day as a downpour. (In his defense, he sold me tickets to two other games which had nice weather and took me to Paul McCartney, for which he will forever be my hero.)
In the bottom of the 7th, Varitek came up to bat with the game tied at three at it looked like this:

Varitek did nothing memorable in this at bat (scorebook is at home). However, earlier in the game, he did allow a third strike to go between his legs and thus, instead of the third out to end the inning, the Angels scored Kendrick from third on the passed ball. (Fun fact for the internet, Yahoo! Sports forgets to log this run.) This run turned out to be key as the Angels only won by one. Thus, thanks to this play, and because it’s the only photo I took that was any good, Varitek gets to be the highlighted player of the game… the game which happened two weeks ago and no one cares about any more.

Today my father is a year older than he was yesterday. Which is to say… older.
Back in 1981 when the Twins played their final game in old Met Stadium (now known as “The Mall of America”), my dad was there while I waited patiently in my mother’s uterus at home. Somewhere in the off-season before the Twins opened their first game in the Metrodome, I was born. (He was also at the Vikings final game at Met Stadium in December of ’81 — wait, apparently I was alive for that. And I wasn’t taken along because… ?)
Throughout the years I have attended countless games at the Metrodome, most of them with my dad. In 1987, he dragged us out for the impromptu homecoming after the Twins won the ALCS. We went and saw Paul Molitor’s 2,997th and 2,998th hits in 1996 (and saw him go 0-something the next day — hit 3,000 had to wait until a road trip to Kansas City). We were there for Kirby Puckett Appreciation Day shortly after he announced his retirement and he took me back a few years later for photo day. We saw Johan Santana break the Twins’ strikeout record two years ago. We have numerous free Dairy Queen sponsored Twins hats in our front closet, mini “autographed” baseball bats in the basement, and couple of Homer Hankies floating around — all from free Dome giveaways. Not to mention that pretty much our entire casual drinkware collection has been furnished by the Metrodome’s concession stands. (As an aside, the quality of those cups has gone way down since the early 90s.)
This season will be the Twins last in the “Homer Dome.” Even though it’s the worst MLB stadium I’ve been to, it’s the only home field I’ve known the Twins to have. So, in order to put him in what is sure to be a very small segment of people who were at the Twins last games in both of their stadiums, for his birthday I bought my dad two tickets to the final game against Kansas City this October. Because my mother will likely be out of town for her brother’s birthday that weekend, I did the only logical thing and bought myself a plane ticket home in order to join him at the park.
Happy Birthday, Dad! I love you!

I was having a hard time finding an official site with updated stats on tonight’s Homerun Derby. Finally it occurred to me that wikipedia and its OCD editors would probably be up to date with real time. Then I checked it out…

… it keeps up with real time, but I’m not sure I’d call it correct. (Oddly enough, the 2010 stats are correct for the 2009 derby up through the middle of Pujols first round turn.)
*sigh* Mauer couldn’t hit one in the swing off. No Twins champion this year.

The umpire calls strike three on Jack Cust for the second out in the ninth

Why, yes, I was just at Fenway on Saturday sitting in Chris Morse’s seats while he was out of town. Why, yes, I was back again tonight in the same situation… only this time I took Forrest instead of Harvey. We made a pact to make dinner plans more often because it seems that every time we do, someone offers me Red Sox tickets.
It rained for most of the day, but cleared up just in time for the game… and stayed perfect ballgame weather until the 9th inning. Luckily for those of us in attendance, the Red Sox were up 5-2 at this point and Papelbon was in from the bullpen to quickly mow down the A’s with three strikeouts to end the game. As soon as he did, the grounds crew ran out the tarp — I’ve become very familiar with that tarp this season.
I’d like to nominate Aaron Bates for player of the game because, well, he could use the confidence boost. After two full major league games, he’s yet to get a hit. However, he does have a non-zero OBP thanks to a walk in the 6th inning. And because of this walk (as opposed to his usual strikeout), Pedroia was able to come up to bat in the same inning and single in Ellsbury for the Red Sox fifth run. And even though it was just an insurance run, I still think the kid deserves the confidence booster.

Thanks to Chris Morse being out of town and not being able to use his season tickets, I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon of Independence Day at Fenway Park watching some baseball with Harvey Jones, who managed to get to Boston from New York as soon as I mentioned that I had a spare ticket. As an added bonus, today was the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech. To honor Gehrig and ALS, we were treated to a (somewhat awkward) reading of the speech by Curt Schilling.
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, their luck was not as good as mine. While they jumped ahead quickly in the second off a two run blast by Captain VariTeX, the Mariners quickly chipped their way to a tie by the fifth inning. And tied the game remained, through the 7th inning stretch and the 8th inning rendition of “Sweet Caroline.”
But then Saito came in to pitch for the Sox in the top of the ninth and loaded up the bases on walks with only one out. Chris Woodward hit a Texas Leaguer to right for an RBI and, well, quite frankly, Saito is lucky he only gave up one run that whole inning. Despite a pinch hitting appearance by Big Papi that got the crowd going, the Red Sox went down 1-2-3 in the 9th… and we left with “Que Sera Sera” as our entrance music instead of “Dirty Water.”
But it was the 4th of July and there was baseball… not even a Red Sox loss could spoil this day.

I have the best boss ever.
Today, I, two co-workers, one coworker’s girlfriend, Forrest and Karolina, and Quinn and Keila were able to sit in the front row of Right Field Box 90 and watch a very exciting ball game… all because my boss couldn’t use the tickets. Great seats, great game, great weather… his loss, our gain!
It turns out this was Quinn and Keila’s first time at Fenway. At one point, Quinn remarked to her, “You know how all the tourists in Puerto Rico [her home] sound like idiots to you because they don’t know where anything is or what’s going on? That’s what we sound like to Rhode right now.” Yeah, that was true. But I was highly amused when he tried to explain to her that a grand slam was when a homerun was hit over the Green Monster.
At the other end of our group, Forrest may have been the only person in the stadium who appreciated the fact that I brought a Homer Hanky. (It’s in my baseball bag, which also generally includes my glove, a poncho, and my scorebook.) In return, he showed off his lucky red socks… the Red Sox have only lost one game that he’s ever attended while wearing those socks. And that game was against the Twins, so we figure they’re lucky.
The game itself was an excellent one with the lead see-sawing a bit at the beginning before settling into a tie from the top of the 6th to the bottom of the 8th. Then Papi almost hit his first homerun of the season… but settled for a double. He scored on a follow-up double by Jason Bay to put the Sox up 4-3, where the score remained going into the 9th. Then came Papelbon accompanied by the Dropkick Murphy’s “Shipping Up To Boston” (kind of like this). This resulted in my favorite quote of the night, courtesy of Keila: “Wow, people get so excited. I mean, I guess it could be worse — it could be golf.”
And I did say that Papelbon came in in the 9th… so you can fill in the rest pretty easily. The Rays snuck in a runner on third with no outs, but Papelbon responded with three consecutive strikeouts to end the game and send us out with “Dirty Water” serenading us (something like this, only it was almost midnight).

Some fans have too much time on their hands.
On the other hand, it’s been very useful for distributing the tickets my boss sold me yesterday to the rest of my co-workers.

My boss just stopped by my office for the following exchange…
Boss: Erin, do you have a second?
Me: Sure, what do you need?
Boss: Well, I know you’re a Twins fan and all, but my wife’s family is coming in to town this weekend and we have 8 tickets to Sunday’s Red Sox game, but now they’re all leaving early and I need to get rid of the tickets. Do you think you could use some or all of them?
Me: Well, I could definitely take one and I can probably find people for the other 7 as well.
Boss: Really? Great! I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get rid of them. They’re $50 seats, but I’ll give them to you for $40.
Five of the seven have already been taken by co-workers… and we haven’t even asked everyone in the office yet. I can’t believe he thought this would be a problem.

This girl is my new hero.