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.

Baseball: It’s all relative

After suffering through two devastating losses by the Minnesota Twins the last couple nights, I’ve tried to step back and look at the big picture. A month ago before the season started most people would probably have looked at the upcoming two game series against the Detroit Tigers and figured they would be tough games to win. Not that you ever want to expect to loose but the Tigers are clearly the better team on paper and loosing two games in a row to them in April shouldn’t be that devastating. It’s all relative though as before playing the Twins, the Tigers had the worst record in baseball and looked like a team the Twins should be able to take advantage of. Thus my expectations were raised going into the series and the defeats are harder to take.

It’s also worth noting that had we won those two games (and we nearly did both nights) then the majority of Twin’s fans would be declaring this team was on a roll as our bat’s were really coming alive. And they definitely were as Joe Mauer broke out of his mini slump along with the rest of the team as the Twins scored 14 runs between the two games. Instead of being excited about our newfound offense though the main thing I find myself dwelling on is how the wheels came off our bullpen who surrendered leads in the eighth inning each night. Even if Pat Neshek had been able to stop the bleeding without giving up the go-ahead run we most likely would overlook all the other runs they gave up.

To be fair as poorly as the pen pitched against the Tigers the offense never gave up and even came close to mounting rallies in the ninth inning both nights. That’s good to see and as much as it hurts to say it, I feel better seeing the bullpen struggle then had our offense struggled and we lost a couple of low scoring games. The reason is because the Twin’s bullpen was clearly there strength coming into this season and a couple of bad outings aren’t going to change that. The offense is a much bigger question mark but if they can keep hitting the ball well, the pen will come around and the wins will start coming.

Right now the Twins are rebuilding and even after a couple of tough losses, the rebuilding process seems to be taking steps forward. A lot of these young guys are only going to get better the more they play together. And if you take away the final score (thanks to our bullpen) the future is looking bright. As long as they can stay around 500 for the first few months of this year they are going to have a shot at making some noise which should be fun.

Twins loose but there's plenty to be excited about

The Twins lost the game and the four game series with the Angels this afternoon but there really was plenty to be excited about.

• Joe Mauer was swinging the bat pretty good...so good that they gave him an intentional walk in the ninth when he represented the tying run.
• Matt Tolbert looked really good in his pinch hit at bat in the ninth taking so tough pitches and fowling others off.
• Jason Kubel crushed the ball into the upperdeck for the Twin's first homerun of the year.
• Many of the Twins hitters including Cuddyer, Lamb and Young were hitting the ball hard but right at people.
• Best of all the pitching looked pretty solid today as Slowey was off to a pretty good start (hopefully his injury isn't serious), Bass pitch a few good innings before running out of gas and the rest of the pen looked good too.

Of course I'd feel better if the Twins had won the game but this season has to be looked at as a growing experience and in that regard things are looking pretty good. In fact as good as our pitching has looked so far it's quite possible that the team might be closer to making some noise then all those experts think. To early to know yet so we'll just have to keep watching.