Dear Joe Buck,
It’s pronounced “Mor-neau” (stress on the second syllable). Your “Morn-eau” mispronunciation is driving me crazy.
Dear All-Stars,
It’s 1:32 in the AM. I have to get up early tomorrow. Please end this game soon (preferably with the AL winning) — 15 innings is more than plenty.
Dear Bud Selig,
Don’t be a punk and call a tie. That was lame in 2002 and would still be lame today.
Edit: Yayyyyy!!!!! And my future husband scored the winning run!!!! Of course this means Joe Buck is (still) mispronouncing his name all over the place. 4 hours, 50 minutes… wow.

As I referenced in my last post, I consider Justin Morneau to be my future husband. And tonight he did me proud, winning the 2008 Homerun Derby. Josh Hamilton, the comeback kid, actually hit more total homeruns throughout the competition with an astonishing 28 homeruns in the first round alone. (That’s a 74% homerun percentage, for those who didn’t want to do the math themselves.) But the totals didn’t carry over to the last round where Justin took advantage of Josh’s tiredness to win in a 5-3 victory.
But most importantly? I edited Morneau’s wikipedia page within seconds of Hamilton’s final out. Within a few minutes, someone else had already edited my edit. Such is the way with wikipedia… maybe I should edit it to add the fact that we are engaged. Or maybe not — I should probably tell him first.
And boo on the announcers… “The winner’s not going to be remembered with Hamilton’s performance overshadowing it.” Not so — I’ll always remember you, Morneau!

Now that was a Twins game that was fun to come home and catch the end of. (I’m sort of glad that I didn’t get to see yesterday’s 18-5 disaster. In my completely biased and uninformed opinion, I’m confident that the triple play should have stood.)
Today, I turned on the TV and found the local Tigers affiliate when Detroit was up 6-2. But the Twins dribbled back to tie the game up in the 9th. My future husband went 5-5 and hit what should have been called a homerun in the 8th, but had to settle for a double. It turned out to be okay though — Morneau scored on a sacrifice and then hit a homerun (that counted) to win the game in the 11th.
Interestingly enough, I was on the phone with my dad at the end of the game and discovered that, even through whatever delay the phone has, WCCO radio in Minneapolis has about a 3 second jump on FSN Detroit broadcasting in Sault Ste Marie, MI.
It sounds like I’ll be up here for the duration of the weekend — at least there will be baseball to watch!
Edit: Dear Jim Leyland, regarding your Tigers Post Game Interview: It was a four run lead you couldn’t hold on to, not just three.

Nail-biter of a game in which neither team seemed to be able to capitalize on some big hits until the Red Sox lucked out in the 8th… alas, for this is one of the few a times in the year that I was rooting against them. I’ll echo my dad’s sentiments and say that the Twins lost it by pinch hitting Monroe for Kubel with bases loaded and one out in the 8th.
But enough about the game itself… sitting here at the northern tip of Michigan, I was lucky enough to watch my two favorite teams because it happened to be ESPN’s Monday Night Game. And boy, did their New England bias come through. In the top of the fifth, the announcers managed to spend the entire half inning prattling on about whether Schilling, Pedro, or Mussina belongs in the Hall of Fame without once commenting on the play going on on the field. Here I was watching the Twins with a runner on first and one out in a very tight game with a limited amount of base runners and the play-by-play guys decided that it was more important to talk about three players (two with Red Sox affiliations, one Yankee) who aren’t playing in the game that’s going on right in front of them. And in the bottom of the inning when the Sox came to bat, suddenly it was all about whether or not Boston could score… despite the fact that they went down 1-2-3.
If anyone wants to know why I occasionally talk about how the Red Sox and Yankees aren’t liked in the middle of the country, this kind of implicit bias is exactly why!
Edit: On Baseball Tonight, the daily webgems have an absurd number of Boston plays. (And I missed the first few, but I didn’t see Denard Span’s catch at the wall in any of those, which was at least as impressive, if not more so, than some of those Boston plays.) But John Kruk is calling them out on the “east coast bias”, so at least someone over there notices.

I came back to Ann Arbor for the 4th of July whereupon I discovered that neither Ann Arbor or the neighboring town of Ypsilanti does fireworks. (This was actually my first 4th in AA, as I’ve previously always gone out of town.) Thus, to satiate the fireworks craving, my roommate Maggie and I headed down to Toledo to catch some minor league baseball, complete with post-game fireworks. (Nate said he’d come with us, and then bailed because he had “too much work.” But he still had time to spend his afternoon watching a Lifetime movie. Nathan Crockett is lame and I want the Internet to know it.)
Being a holiday weekend, tickets were hard to come by, so Maggie and I had to settle for two seats in the same section, but different rows. Knowing that we would probably be wandering a little looking for adjacent seating we might be able to snare elsewhere, I did an amazing thing.
I did not keep score.
This was the first baseball game I’ve been to since 2004 in which I didn’t record every pitch. I felt like I was doing something wrong when the line-up was called and I didn’t record it. (I did crack eventually and wrote the line-up and the box score on a random receipt from my purse.) It was remarkably freeing to be able to get up and walk around and get food and meet the Mudonna the Mudhen.
Plus, remarkably, a very nice usher asked if we had standing room only seats. When Maggie (wrongly) said yes, we did, he offered us seats right behind homeplate. In the middle of our first inning in our new seats, he offered to bump us up to six rows behind homeplate. As off as I felt, if I had been keeping score, that never would have happened.
The game itself was an exciting one… the Mudhens were never ahead, but down two in the 9th, they managed to score a run. With a runner on second, Mike Hessman, who had been the hero in the 5th inning with a three run homer (his 28th of the season!), came up to the plate. But in true “Casey at the Bat” style, there was no joy in Mudhensville — the Mighty Hessman did strike out.
The box score is below and the full set of pictures are here.

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These are for Sarah,
Who is up in Alaska,
And asked me to blog.
We have no snow here,
In fact, it is quite nice out,
Unlike at Toolik.
The Detroit Tigers
massacred Minnesota
in Saturday’s game.
But I was away
watching Indiana Jones
under the night sky
with Dave and Martine
at the old Starlite Drive-In
in Cincinnati.
Now Kansas City
is where the Twins are playing.
Easy victories.
Red Sox road trip slump.
Can Manny hit five-hundred?
Not in Seattle…
Maybe Baltimore
is where the Sox can catch up
to the Devil Rays.

It took all the way to May to get me to the ballpark this year — the latest for a first game since 2004, when I waited until June. I had some nebulous plans to attend the Twins-Tigers series back in April, but a family emergency had me, coincidentally, back in Minnesota for that week. And thus, my inaugural ballgame of the year was tonight’s Red Sox-Tigers game at Comerica Park.
And it was a good game for a Sox fan. Boston scored three runs in the 2nd inning and never looked back, winning 5-1. Looking at the starting pitchers, Beckett and Verlander, I thought it might be a pitcher’s duel, but then I talked to a pair of guys sitting next to me and it turns out that Verlander hasn’t been the no-hitter throwing Verlander of last year. So instead, the game itself was pretty non-exciting. My observation of the evening (which I’m sure I’ve made before) is that if the home team is never really in contention, the crowd is pretty blah leading to a dull atmosphere at the ballpark.
However, I did have some amusing snippets of conversation with the two guys sitting next to me. For starters, we bought our tickets from the same scalper official ticket booth, and they actually bargained the guy down $10 cheaper than I paid. Note to self — never accept the first offer, even if it is cheaper than face value. Second, being a Red Sox fan pretty much sets you up to be hated outside of Fenway Park. (And arguably with good reason, but I’ll not go there.) However, declaring that your first allegiance is to another Central Division team actually redeems you quite a bit. And being able to remember the name Archibald “Moonlight” Graham will redeem you even further.

Well, I knew it would happen eventually, but I wasn’t prepared for it to be the NY Mets. Actually, if Santana was to be traded at all, I’m glad it’s for a National League team. I wouldn’t feel right cheering for him as a player if he played for the Yankees and I wouldn’t feel right cheering for the Red Sox knowing that, thanks to unbalanced market shares, they took the Twins’ top performer. (And yes, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Santana was more valuable to the Twins than, say, Torii Hunter, who isn’t a Twin anymore either, or Justin Morneau, who is thankfully still around.)
Alas, it looks like 2006 really should have been the season for the Twins. Everything was in place, right up until they choked in the ALDS. And now all of those pieces are crumbling away to other teams. Such is the fate of a small market team.
At least I got to be there for Santana’s best pitching performance (as a Twin). Greatest pitching performance I’ve ever personally been in attendance for.
Edit: The New York Times has a pretty decent article about the trade and why being a baseball fan from Minnesota isn’t as easy as being one from the East Coast.

I didn’t blog anything about Game 3 because we were throwing a Halloween party. I still watched the game — just didn’t have much in the way of commentary.
10:33 pm, top 7th inning Okay, it’s nice that Mike Lowell hit a homerun — go Red Sox, whoo hoo and all. But this World Series is officially the least interesting World Series I’ve watched in a long time. The Rockies never seem to be able to generate offense and it hardly seems like a fair fight. I realize that saying this now may jinx things for the Sox, but at this point, I can’t even pretend to myself that I care. I’m actually rooting for Colorado to pull off some sort of miracle in their last three innings and turn things around, just so that there’s something interesting to watch.
Sweeps are boring. Go Rockies.
10:48 pm, bottom 7th Hey, Brad Hawpe, one of my fantasy players, knocked it out of the park! Now it’s 3-1… maybe I did jinx things after all. I can only hope.
11:08 pm, top 8th Bobby Kielty hits a pinch hit homerun. That would be exciting if the Red Sox had ever been down… in the entire series. (Am I right about that? Have the Red Sox been ahead for the entire series? … Apparently, no. The Rockies led from the top of the first until the bottom of the fourth in Game 2.)
11:36 pm, bottom 8th Go, Garrett Atkins! A two-run homer brings the Rockies to within one. Now the game is finally interesting.
12:00 am, bottom 9th Okay, now that it’s midnight, I’ll switch back into Red Sox fan mode… begrudgingly. Two more outs, Papelbon!
12:02 am, bottom 9th Oh, Jamey Carroll… so close to being a hero. So close, yet so far. Now it’s just down to one out for the title.
12:06 am The Boston Red Sox are baseball’s World Champions! I’m happy for the Boston squad… truly. Just wish the World Series had been as exciting as the ALCS. (That was true in 2004 too, come to think of it.)
12:07 am Prediction: Jacoby Ellsbury for series MVP. You heard it here first.
12:09 am I noted that VariTeX took the final out ball and put it in his back pocket. Do you think he’ll pull a Doug Mientkiewicz with it?
12:19 am Mike Lowell? Really? I mean, he did well… but Ellsbury had a higher average (.438 vs .400). Looking back, I guess Ellsbury just had the big game 3… and the first run tonight. And the taco thing. I’ll give him the SMVP award (second most valuable player).

11:28 pm, bottom 7th I had a rehearsal tonight, so no real live blogging. (Hey… I sing in a vocal jazz octet called Midnight Blue now. Did I tell people that?) I’m also trying to write something up for my advisor tomorrow. However, I’ll take a short break to mention that Jonathan Papelbon strikes me as someone with ADHD who was never given Ritalin… and the world is better for it!
12:07 am, top 9th 9th inning… 2 outs… 1 run game. Who can focus on a write-up? Oh, Brad Hawpe, while you were on my failed fantasy team this year, that love is over and I hope you strike out.
12:09 am, end Thanks, Brad! And now it’s on to Colorado for some wholesome Christian baseball at high altitude.
12:25 am Oh, and don’t forget to get your free taco on Tuesday.