Last night, I went to the Twins game in which they played the $(&%)! Yankees. I had a great time.
Johan came out firing. He was hitting 94 on the radar gun. When Cairo was up, he struck him out with a 53 mph change-up. I thought maybe the light that would have completed the 6 was broken, but later when I saw an 8, I realized it wasn't. I can't belief he threw a 53 mph change-up. That's 43% slower than his fastball. My dad and I were dumbfounded.
To lead off the night for the Twins, Shannon Stewart hit a blast right at me. I got one hand on the ball, but it was a little short. The guy one row up got it. I couldn't believe it. I almost caught a home run ball. I didn't know whether to be upset I didn't catch it, or happy that we had a 1-0 lead after one batter. Any bitterness I may have harbored quickly went away.
Some uneventful innings passed, with Johan telling the Yankees to "Sit Down, Bitch!" being about the only noteworthy thing. And then the beachballs came out. At first there were a few in the upperdeck. Then a few more, then a couple in the lowerdeck. The ushers were scrambling to try to stop them. Whenever a ball was kept away a tremendous yell went up from the seats. Once in awhile, someone would give the usher the ball, and the fans let them have it. I always enjoyed the ideas of beachballs at games. I think part of me wants to "Stick it to the Man", and this is my little rebellion. One kid, I'm guessing was about 10ish, caught a ball and gave it to the usher. The fans let him have it, but I felt bad for the kid. He was following the rules. He was the only ball-giver-backer that I didn't boo. When the next ball floated towards him, someone yelled "Not to that kid again!" and everyone who heard it laughed.
Some people weren't smart enough to keep the ball in the stands. One guy was like 3 rows back and spiked it as hard as he could onto the field. He made Shannon run over to get the ball. He got booed for being a moron. After that every time a ball went too close to the field, everyone yelled "BACK!".
The Twins cranked up the scoring again when my boy Lew Ford got hit by a pitch and scored along with our friend from the North Corey Koskie on Guzie's double. Shannon doubled in Guzie to boot. This whole time, not a single person got off the bench in the Yankee bullpen. I figured Joe Torre would have at least warmed someone up in case things got out of hand.
The two innings later, I witnessed what may have been a certifiable baseball miracle. Henry Blanco led off with a shot to the gap. He hustled out of the box, like a good baseball player, and flew around first base. Everyone in the park was thinking "double" the whole time, except Henry. When he rounded second headed for third, everyone was kind of confused at first. There was a slight moment of "Isn't he the catcher?" on everyone's mind. That quickly passed and led to cheers of encouragement. As he neared the bag a lot of people around me (me included) yelled "SLIDE!". Al Newman was down on his knees with the slide sign, practically begging Blanco to slide. When the umpire signaled "safe" people erupted. The baseball gods reached down and just killed the ball. That thing absolutely died when it hit the wall, temporarily freezing the Yankee outfielders who were waiting for the carom. Bernie and Hideki were no where to be seen.
Blanco scored on a double play that Shannon grounded into, the only thing Stewart did wrong all night. Jacque homered later in the inning and Newbie singled in Torii for a little mini-two out rally. I guess it wasn't really a rally, we were already up. By this time, Mussina had been pulled for the incomparable Tanyon Sturtze. During and after the schlacking, Torre again refused to get anyone up in the pen. By this time he must have just given up on any comeback. I mean, with an offense like the Yankees' there is no way to score 6 or 8 runs, is there? The Yankees, being down 7-0 until the late innings actually used fewer pitchers than the Twins (2 - 3).
Every time Derek Jeter came up to bat, he got booed. I've written about Jeter before. I generally like the guy, but tonight he was a Yankee, not Derek Jeter. As the face of the Yankees, he got it the hardest. I would have rather booed Alex Rodriguez, but Torre sat him in favor of the always exciting Miguel Cairo. During his first at-bat, Johan let one fly so that he appeared to be giving Jeter a complementary shaving. Jeter jumped back with such force that he ended up on the dirt. That was the biggest roar from the crowd all night. In the later innings, once a liberal amount of alcohol had been flowing, the "Yankees Suck!" chant started up, several times. The Wave started going. Then all the sudden, a whole load of beachballs appeared out of nowhere. The only word I can think of to describe the booing, chanting, waving, beachballing is rowdy. The Twins fans were fired up and were ready for a good time. Twins fans are among the best in the country. People say St. Louis fans are because they know so much about the game. I've been to St. Louis, they are like corpses comparatively, which makes LA fans look like pieces of wood.
When the beachballs came back out, it was hilarious. The once zealous ushers didn't give a crap. Some of them stood at the wall to make sure that they didn't go onto the field, but besides that, there was no pursuit. We had crushed the ushers' will to perform their sworn duties of beachball suppression. It was like in The Last Samurai when Tom Cruise lays there during the first battle. He laid there and looked defeated, and when the Red Warrior came to finish him off he pulled out a beachball and set it loose upon the lowerdeck. Ok, seriously, Tom Cruise stabs him in the neck. We didn't stab any ushers in the neck, but the idea is the same.
When Lanky Joe Nathan came in to shut down the Yankees, it wasn't a save situation. Gardy told everyone in the stadium that we weren't going to take any crap from anybody. Joe came in to shut the game down. We just weren't going to win, we were going to win right now. After a leadoff double off the baggie by Hideki Matsui, Lanky was unhittable. He was throwing 96 mph gas with the occasional low-80's changeup that had batters screwing themselves into the ground with their mighty whiffs. Matsui never got past second base.
When Shannon came up for the last time, I tried to start the "Trip-le! Trip-le!" chant reminiscent of the "Darr-yl!" chants of the 1986 World Series, but only a few caught on. I think the beachballs kept people from realizing that Shannon was on the verge of the cycle. I was thinking "Hell, Blanco got a triple, why can't Shannon?" My dad took the opportunity to remind me for the billionth time that he saw Andre Dawson hit for the cycle at Wrigley while he was in college. It's a good story, the first million times.
After the game, there were concerns about the winds outside the stadium, so we had to leave via revolving door. This was no fun at all. As my friend Rich said about the Metrodome - "That place sucks, except when you leave. That was awesome." Rich, the lucky bastard, lives in San Diego and visits the brand spanking new Padres Park (see here on why I called it Padres Park) on a regular basis. This lack of doors created a huge bottleneck. In the crowd to get out, an unfortunate occurence happened. A Dome Dog apparently got the best of some fellows digestive system, because an odd odor wafted through the concourse. It was awful.
Outside the stadium, we passed some people talking smack. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until a guy with a Yankees hat threw his stuff to the ground and proclaimed to another "You just make the biggest f---king mistake of your f---ing life!" However, it was in the end that he made the mistake. See, the Yankee fan apparently took offense to a "Yankees Suck" yelled by a very large college student. This Yankees Fan was probably closing in on 40 years old, while this college kid and all 6 of his buddies were very young and very ripped. Undeterred, the Yankees fan still took a swing at the Twins faithful, at which point he got a pretty stern lesson. Nothing serious, but enough to say "Don't mess with me or my friends again. Ever."
Homers: Shannon, Jacque
Triples: Henry Blanco
Now for everyone's favorite part:
"Sit Down, Bitch!" Tracker: Johan struck out 6 tonight, bring him up to 196 for the year. I
predicted 219 +/- 4.
