A Game to Remember

I don’t get to go to many Twins games but Friday night my mother-in-law got my wife and me tickets to watch the Minnesota Twins host the Boston Redsox at the Metrodome and what a game it turned out to be. It was special to us since we are expecting our first child so this was technically our baby’s first Twins’ game. I think it’s safe to say our baby is a Twins fan and a good luck charm. At first things looked pretty good for the Twins as they got out to an early lead. Boof Bonser couldn’t hold it though and ended up giving the lead back. He didn’t pitch as bad as his line of 6 runs in 4 plus innings would indicated but in the end it just wasn’t good enough. It seemed like there were plenty of little things (like batter reaching on a strikeout that Joe Mauer couldn’t find) that prolonged innings for him so that was too bad. Good teams like Boston usually take advantage of things like that and they did.

“Oh well,” I figured. At least it had been an exciting game. Plus we had decent seats down the first base line except for the incredible number of people who don’t understand the idea of only leaving or returning to their seats between innings. One gal in front of us apologized at least 4 or 5 times for having to stand up to let people by her during the game. It really wasn’t her fault of course but was nice of her to say. Things did get exciting in our area as the t-shirt the mascot shoots into the stands between innings landed just out of my reach a row behind me. Then I had an even better shot at catching a foul ball a couple innings later. Matt Tolbert lined one our way and I stood up and reached out both hands to pull it in. Instead of the ball I got the person’s hand who was sitting in front of me. He had stuck his hand up at the last minute otherwise I would have had a nice souvenir for our baby’s first game.

Once the seventh inning stretch came we decided to go get some food before they closed up the vending stands and we ended up walking around the concourse all the way to centerfield. We figured we might as well watch the last couple of innings from out there so spread out in what seemed to be our own personal section which was really kind of nice. Then came the bottom of the ninth with the Twins still down by a run. Delmon Young led off the inning. He had nearly scored to tie the game a few innings prior only to get thrown out at the plate on a close play. Once again he got on base with a sharp single to center. Next up was Matt Tolbert. I knew we weren’t going to get ball from him where we were sitting now but still felt a little uneasy when I saw him lay down a sacrifice bunt. He did it well but next up was Adam Evertt who even with a couple of nice hits early seemed unlikely to get a hit off of Redsox closer Jonathan Papelbon. Sure enough he popped out almost immediately leaving the fate of the game in the hands of the exciting yet young Carlos Gomez. Young stole third meaning all we needed was a base hit to tie the game up and Gomez took some tough pitches that early this year he would have swung at and ended up walking. Then he stole second putting us into position to win the game on a base hit. Mike Lamb came to the plate and looked overmatched on the first two pitches. My wife was unfamiliar with Lamb since he’s a new player on the team and asked if he was good. My look told her otherwise but after fowling off a couple of pitches he dumped a 1-2 pitch down the left field line for a walk of base hit. The dome went pretty crazy for a couple of minute and we gave each other a big high five and hug as the Twins celebrated on the field.

This was easily the most memorable Twins game I’ve seen in person and one I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. It was interesting to me that the come back and even most of the earlier runs came from the bats of the new Twins’ players. Tonight as Minnesota fans made some memories with the new Twins’ players we made some of our own with our newest addition. Definitely will make for some good memories to tell our child down the road who I’m sure will be a Twins’ fan as well.