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…

Still hanging around Target Field waiting for the post-game fireworks. The Twins pulled out a close victory, despite being out hit 14-5, on the heels of a beautiful sacrifice squeeze bunt from Drew Butera to score Danny Valencia.
But enough about the game… now for why I’m here at all.
Monday is my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary. In honor, my father bought four tickets to tonight’s game, one for each of my parents, one for my sister, and the final one, unbeknownst to my mother, for me. And so, I flew into Minneapolis this morning and wandered around Minnehaha Falls and the Mall of America (basically, wherever I could get on the light rail), waiting for my cousin to call me to hand off the ticket. Earlier in the week, she had gotten our garage door code from my sister and “broken in” to our house to take the fourth ticket while my parents were at the lake.
After a successful handoff, I headed over to the stadium (where I met my old friends from New York mentioned in the last post) and waited around for the rest of my family to show up. After about 45 minutes, I heard my mother’s voice calling my name in disbelief. Mission accomplished — she had no idea I was coming, despite the fact that pretty much everyone else did.
That would have been surprise enough, but in the 5th inning, the finishing touches of my dad’s plan came into place with a big screen announcement wishing her a happy 30th anniversary. Mission accomplished again — she wasn’t expecting that one either.

Check out the Twins-O-Gram in the lower right!
And for the cherry on the sundae, the Twins won to stay atop the AL Central.
(Unfortunately for my dad, my mom claims to have not gotten him anything yet. She has a lot to do to catch up with this one!)

Remember when I posted that I had taken a tour of Target Field and memorized the username and password for the wireless network that was posted in the visitors locker room? No? Well, I did, and they haven’t changed the password.
So, while the Twins are currently beating Oakland 4-2 in the 7th, here’s my small world story from earlier in the day.
I got to the ballpark about an hour and a half before the game started to wait for my family to meet me. (Why I was meeting them there is a longer story for another post… probably the next one.) I wandered down towards the field and saw two guys, one in his 50s or so, one in his 20s — probably father and son — looking at me.
“Is that her? I think that’s her,” I hear them say.
I look over at them, but don’t recognize them at all.
“It is her!”
Now I’m confused because I really don’t recognize them.
“Hey, you were at Yankee Stadium, right?”
“Um, yeah…”
“We were sitting right behind you.”
“Oh yeah!”
“Were you at the Mall of America earlier? My son swore he saw you and
I figured he was wrong, but here you are!”
“Yeah, I was!”
They had (also) flown in just for the game (they live in New York). Upon further discussion, we were all also at the same games in Philadelphia and Citi Field. We chatted for a bit and before parting ways again.
Small world, indeed!
Joe Mauer’s up now with two outs and runners on the corners… and he grounds out to second to end the inning. Full game report with the story of how we managed to really surprise my mother coming later.

Last night I got a chance to see my former local team, the Detroit Tigers, take on the Boston Red Sox. I wanted the Tigers to lose because they’re a little too close to the Twins in the AL Central standings, but when the Tigers scored quickly in the first, I found myself wanting to join the Michigan loyals just a little bit in cheering them on. And after all, I was wearing a Toledo Mudhens shirt, the Tigers AAA team — and at least three of the Tigers had been playing for Toledo earlier in the week.
But the oddest part of the game was who was sitting next to us. I went with my co-worker who speaks fluent French and Spanish, so I asked her to help me figure out what language the guys next to us were speaking. It turns out, it was French, but not quite the French she spoke — it was Quebecois French. Later in the game, when I pointed out to her the Rod Carew Twins jersey a few rows in front of us, one of the Canadians started talking to me (in English) about Rod Carew. (Oddly enough, I later saw a Harmon Killebrew Twins jersey while waiting for the bathroom.)
It turns out these guys were real life Montreal baseball fans. They had been Expos fans for years, but now are sort of baseball nomads. Generally, they drive to either Boston or Toronto (the two closest cities) to see games, but they also go all over the States when they get a chance — one of them is going to Wrigley next weekend. We swapped stories about ballparks and I asked them if they cheered for the Nationals or had been to a game there. “No, absolutely not!” they said, almost in unison.
As for the game itself, the Tigers appeared to be walking away with it with a 6-1 lead in the 9th. But Tigers pitcher Jose Valverde gave up three consecutive walks to load the bases with Big Papi coming to the plate. Fenway got loud as Ortiz fouled the first pitch and took a ball for the second pitch. Then suddenly… *bam* Grand slam, deep to right. Two batters later, Adrian Beltre doubled and it looked like the Red Sox might pull off the come back with two outs in the 9th with J.D. Drew pinch hitting in classic “Mighty Casey at the Bat” scenario. But then the Tigers turned chicken and intentionally walked Drew to face Mike Cameron… who struck out to end the game.