Category: Sports

I had an incredible time at the ballpark tonight –and, yes, I’m in a good enough mood that I’m going to go ahead and refer to the Metrodome as a ballpark. It was a strange and amazing game, and a seriously gutty, inspired, and lucky performance by Carlos Silva. There was a point in the second or third inning where I was looking at my scorecard and going back over every batter in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California Angels lineup, certain I’d gotten so caught up in the fireworks on the field that I’d somehow missed three or four runs.

But, no, there it was: four runs.

The next thing I knew the Twins had tied it up, then taken the lead, and, finally, coasted to the victory.

A bunch of other thrilling stuff happened at the game tonight, which I may or may not tell you about one way or another eventually. I’m too fried right now. It was a long day, and I walked back to my car from the Dome feeling tremendous but completely drained. I was –in accordance with a lopsided agreement I’d made over a month ago– expecting my old pal Uncle Jumbo to take me off the hook tonight. He was going to handle Fridays. That was the deal.

Instead I came home to a rambling phone message from a clearly intoxicated Jumbo. This tirade, apparently, was in lieu of a column, although early in his heavily slurred monologue I think he said something like, “Write this down. My machine is broken.” I couldn’t make it all the way through his tantrum –I absolutely wasn’t in the mood– but I can tell you that there was a long-winded diatribe about Justin Morneau.

Justin Morneau. The guy who went 3-4 and scored two runs in a 7-4 victory that was Minnesota’s fourth-straight win. The guy who is now hitting .432.

“I can’t believe what I’m seeing!” Jumbo shouted into the phone. It sounded like he had a mouthful of potato chips. “Those morons have turned Justin Morneau into a fucking banjo hitter! The cursed and diseased Canadian who along with that other big white kid was supposed to be the Great Very-White Hope, who was supposed to hit forty homeruns! They’ve given the big bastard a Tony Gwynn makeover! This team is hopeless!”

I listened for about five minutes, and then I hung up the phone. I’ll try to gut out the rest of the message in the morning, and if there’s anything of interest to report I’ll let you know.

Back in the day –this was in 1987– I used to have this Nancy and Sluggo tee-shirt that I believed was some sort of magic talisman for the Twins. Whenever I wore it to a game the Twins won, and somehow I figured out, or thought I figured out, that when I didn’t wear it they would inevitably lose. I know all sorts of fans have these crazy superstitions, but the thing was, mine was real. It actually worked. I started making notations in my scorebook (an ‘N/S’ next to the date of the game) on the days I wore the tee-shirt, and the Twins were something like 18-0 from the time I started wearing it religiously. This included the four straight World Series wins at home against the Cardinals.

The next year the spell seemed to be broken. The Twins lost three straight when I donned the Nancy and Sluggo shirt, and the thing was starting to get pretty ratty so I tucked it away in a drawer and sort of forgot about it.

I got wigged out during the 1991 Series when Atlanta came back to take a three games to two lead, and in an act of manic desperation I remembered the talismanic tee, and dug it out for the final games at the Dome.

And: Abracadabra, of course. Just what the doctor ordered.

I didn’t really retire Nancy and Sluggo so much as the damn thing eventually fell apart. In 2002 I scoured the Twin Cities for a replacement to no avail, and seriously considered having Nancy and Sluggo tattooed on my arm. In hindsight I probably should have gotten the tattoo. I might yet have to.

You may have noticed that earlier this season I wrote a tepidly hopeful appraisal of Luis Rivas, in which I pointed out that he was still relatively young and had once been regarded as a promising and fundamentally sound player. It wasn’t too late, I said, for Luis to turn things around.

I was guilty of wishful thinking. I can see that now. No dice for poor Luis.

A couple weeks ago I took a pull at the wishbone again, this time in defense of Kyle Lohse. I parroted all the things people in the Twins organization have been saying to me about Lohse for several years. The guy had great stuff, a terrific arm; he just needed to learn how to pitch. I might have predicted that he would lead the team in innings pitched and win sixteen games. I might have. I don’t care to look back, actually, and see what sort of nonsense I might have written about Lohse. Because I was apparently wrong, and I’m man enough to admit that.

Either that, or maybe I’m to blame. Perhaps these poor bastards just can’t bear up under the weight of my expectations.

Exhibit –what is it? C? Yes, I think it’s C: Yesterday I wrote an appreciation of Jacque Jones that was probably unwise. Granted, it’s only been twenty-four hours, but Jones was 0-4 today with two strikeouts. He also stranded three runners. Granted, he did draw another walk, but I sense I’ve done him a terrible disservice.

As I pointed out yesterday, Jones burned me bad last year, and I have no idea when I’m going to learn from my mistakes. I won’t be at all surprised if his average dips below .250 by Memorial Day, and I’ll have no one to blame but myself.

My sincere apologies to anyone who might read this and might conceivably care. I think I’m going to start paying more attention to the National League.

Speaking of which, have you noticed that the Arizona Diamondbacks are now 14-8 and in first place in the NL West, this despite the fact that they’ve scored 100 runs and given up 105? That’s sort of interesting, don’t you think?

It’s not really a surprise to me, but Jacque Jones has quietly become a better player –certainly a better hitter, and I’d argue a better all-around player– than Torii Hunter. Jones is as competitive and driven as Hunter is easy going, and he works as hard as anybody on the team to get better. He can be moody and defensive in the clubhouse, but his moods are driven as much by team failure as personal frustration, and he can also be one of the most thoughtful and engaging guys in the game. In a clubhouse full of relatively mellow and gregarious characters, his passion for baseball and his determination to play hurt and be a better all-around player stick out like a sore thumb, and right now this team could use a lot more of his fiery personality.

I wrote those words on May 28th of last season, and Jones immediately proceeded to make me look like a complete idiot. I’m accustomed to looking like a complete idiot, but I was nonetheless disappointed in the extended swoon that ruined what was at the time looking like a breakout year for Jones.

I spent the rest of the season trying to figure out what went wrong. I picked Jacque’s brain, and talked about his struggles with Torii Hunter and hitting coach Scott Ullger. Everybody just kept saying he was going to turn it around, but from where I was sitting it looked like he slipped back into some bad habits. When Jones is heading into a slump you can see it coming from a mile away. Pitchers start working him in and out, get him tentative and off balance, and then when they get ahead in the count –and Jones is always trying to battle back from pitcher’s counts when he’s fighting himself– they get him to flail at fastballs up in his eyes or sliders in the dirt. When he did manage to work the count in his favor, pitchers knew they still didn’t have to throw him a strike because he was swinging at anything. It was an ugly thing to watch, particularly since I know how hard the guy works to get better and how frustrated he gets when he can’t seem to figure the game out.

Last year there were a number of aggravating circumstances that contributed to Jones’ rough season; his father was dying, he’d been the subject of trade rumors for two seasons, and Jason Kubel was breathing down his neck.

I’ve never liked to believe that impending free agency can somehow motivate guys to play better –or not necessarily motivate, because, sure, the motivation is certainly there, but actually push them to play better. That seems counter-intuitive to me, particularly for a guy like Jones, whose struggles have always seemed to be precisely a product of pressing. I’ve also seen Jones have enough hot streaks to know that it’s never a good idea to read too much into these stretches.

This year, though, seems to be different from other years. You sense that maybe something has finally clicked for him. It’s apparent in the clubhouse, and it’s becoming equally apparent on the field. The guy is tied for the team lead in walks (and has walked as often as he’s struck out), and I don’t ever recall a stretch where he’s taken so many pitches. He’s been terrific against lefties, and is more balanced at the plate than I’ve ever seen him. All of his old anxious movement is, at least for the time being, gone. He’s keeping his hands still, and staying behind the ball, rather than jumping at pitches out of the strike zone. Watch the way he keeps his head down right up until the moment he starts his swing. This approach has resulted in a much quicker bat, and the ability to hit the ball where it’s pitched.

Particularly encouraging has been the way he follows a bad at-bat –and he had a couple rough trips to the plate tonight– with a good at-bat. He’s still diving for those balls on the outside corner in the dirt, but I can’t recall an occasion so far where he’s screwed himself into the ground trying to handle that high and tight pitch. There have been times in the last few seasons, extended periods, when you pretty much could gauge the kind of game Jones was going to have after his first at-bat. So far he looks like a completely different player from the guy we saw in the second half last year. It’s been fun to watch, and I’d be thrilled to see him put it all together and sustain this kind of productivity over a full season, even if it ultimately means he goes somewhere else to make his millions.

…and a 2-1 victory against the Royals should probably go in the loss column, but what the hell, we’ll take it. Don’t knock yourselves out trying to score a few runs for your pitchers, though, fellas.

Didn’t you pretty much know that two runs was all it was going to take tonight? I did, right out of the blocks. Two runs should be all it takes most nights against KC, but with Santana on the mound, and Nathan fresh in the pen, it was a done deal the moment Lew Ford’s little bloop dropped into the no man’s land behind second base.

And now Santana has won a whole bunch of games without a defeat (I’ve heard something about it over the last couple weeks, and Dick and Bert might have mentioned the subject at some point tonight, but I was sort of in a no man’s land of my own –what is it? Thirty games? More? Less? Am I even warm?). I do know that he’s now struck out forty-eight batters and walked only three, including the intentional pass tonight. I think the kid’s got a chance to be a halfway decent pitcher.

I see, though, that Chicago is winning again out in Oakland. My God, and I thought Hawk Harrelson was insufferable when the White Sox played like garbage wrapped in skin. Have you subjected yourself to the yammering of that jackass in the last couple weeks? I’m not an advocate of violence, but I wish one of you people who is would please do me a huge favor and rip the guy’s lungs out the next time he’s in town. Seriously, the man is inhumane. He deserves to spend the rest of his life locked in a broadcast booth –or, better yet, a hotel sauna– with Tim McCarver. (Talk about a No Exit scenario. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.)

Ooh, Oakland just tied it up….Anyway, have you looked at the numbers for the White Sox? It’s pretty unreal, quite honestly. They were 16-4 going into tonight, including 10-2 on the road, and they’d won eight straight. They’d scored more runs than the Twins, and allowed fewer. The five pitchers in the White Sox rotation had a combined 2.84 ERA (and none of them was higher than 3.48).

That’s all pretty good. Chicago’s had a remarkable start, no doubt about it, and without Frank Thomas, etc. But here’s where things don’t look so good for the Sox (and exactly where things didn’t look so good for Cleveland last year when they were making like they were going to give the Twins a run for their money): Despite that 2.84 ERA (and a 10-3 record), Chicago’s starters have only 75 strikeouts (versus 40 walks) in 132-and-two-third innings pitched. The whole pitching staff has recorded 126 K/64 BB in 186 IP.

That ratio for the starters would be a borderline survival number for most individual major league starters, and when you compare it with the numbers for Minnesota’s rotation (85 K/11 BB in 118 IP) it’s even more glaring. Chicago’s starters have given up fewer hits than innings pitched (by a considerable margin so far), but I’d expect that number to start to climb as they leave the Central behind. As I said a couple weeks back, I do think they’re a much more balanced team; they’ve got two horses in Buehrle and Garcia, and their bullpen is improved with Hermanson and Marte capable of taking some of the heat off Takatsu. Garland is young and should only get better; Hernandez is Hernandez, and we’ve already seen what he can do when he’s dealing. He could also blow up at any time.

The bottom line is that the White Sox are a better team than they were last year. They’re probably going to be a pretty good team. But, holy shit, 16-4 (maybe, by the time you read this, 17-4)? They’re not that damn good.

What the hell was that? I am sorely in need of some consolation, brothers and sisters. A weekend without baseball, followed by a train wreck in the Motor City, has left me sitting here listening to Skip James with my head in my hands (well, my head was in my hands, but I had to lift it up momentarily to type; as soon as I’m finished it’s going right back down).

It’s bad, you know. Six stinking hits. A couple errors. A shaky afternoon for the bullpen, and, most alarmingly, for J.C. Romero, who seems to have gone feral on us again. Once again the bottom of the order looked like, well, the bottom of the order. Some of these fellas need to be taken out behind the woodshed and given a good ass thrashing.

As for Brad Radke, and that three-spot in the first inning, what the hell can I say? I already said it, but maybe it bears repeating:

There’s no rational explanation for the funny business in the first inning so far this year, at least so far as a team-wide phenomenon goes. Where Brad Radke is concerned, however, it goes back a lot further than this year, and is pretty easily explained by the kind of pitcher he is. Radke prides himself on throwing strikes, and isn’t a guy who ever seems comfortable wasting a pitch. He’s a deeply conservative operator, and at this point in his career isn’t going to change much. That said, he’s never had a single truly dominating pitch that allows him to get away with mistakes, and opposing teams know by now what he has, and that he’s pretty much always going to be around the plate. It seems like everybody he’s faced over the last couple years knows the book on Radke backwards and forwards, and they’re clearly being proactive in the early going and taking aggressive cuts. Hitting is incredibly difficult, but you give the other team a huge advantage when they know damn well you’re going to throw it somewhere over the plate and have a fairly limited bag of tricks at your disposal.

Radke’s a smart pitcher, and he generally does a good job of making little adjustments and settling in as the game goes along, but it sure seems like if he’d take a more unpredictable and even erratic approach right out of the gate he’d save himself the trouble of having to make those adjustments in the first place.

Right now I just hope like hell they get those games in in Kansas City, because I need to get this bad taste out of my mouth in a hurry.

The guy who pumps the music through the Metrodome speakers during Twins games is a fellow by the name of Kevin Dutcher. I have no idea how much attention people pay to that sort of thing during baseball games, but I started noticing a few years ago that the selection of tunes at the Dome was surprisingly eclectic and hip compared to any other baseball stadium I’ve visited. I love the ballpark organ as much as anyone, and I’ll admit there are times when I still get nostalgic for the days at the old Met when Ronnie Newman provided the bulk of the musical entertainment.

Newman died a couple years ago, but he still held down his post in the Dome’s organ loft pretty much right to the end, and though it sometimes gets lost in all the other stuff that now goes on during a baseball game the Twins did hire a replacement. These days, though, the bulk of the in-game music comes from Dutcher’s perch above the press box behind home plate.

Whenever I ask people if they notice the music during Twins games all anyone seems to recall is that wretched anthem of peckerwood patriotism that turned the seventh-inning stretch into an interlude of absolute brain-squeezing torture. I don’t even remember the faux-sodbuster’s name who warbles the damn thing (repression can be a wonderful survival tool), but I can assure you that he’s basically ripping off the incomparable C.S. Lewis, Jr. from the late, great Mr. Show.

If you aren’t paying attention, however, you’re missing some wonderful music. In the last year I’ve heard, among others, the Replacements, Outkast, Modest Mouse, the Ramones, Iggy Pop, Kiss, Chuck Berry, The Who, Devo, Weezer, the White Stripes, and Bush. That’s the sort of play list that’s earning MPR’s new The Current so much adoration (and cash). Dutcher, meanwhile, works in almost complete anonymity, and provides his own tunes to boot.

Each member of the Twins has the opportunity to select what Dutcher calls their “walk-up music.” These are the songs that get played when a player’s name is announced in the on-deck circle. Some guys are apparently very picky; others don’t give a rat’s ass. Jacque Jones, for instance, provides Dutcher with a number of selections, and likes to mix things up from time to time. For the players who don’t have any particular preference Dutcher chooses something he thinks seems appropriate. Last season he picked Joe Mauer’s music, alternating Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good” and the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button,” the latter, Dutcher said, because he figured “a twenty-one-year-old kid should like the White Stripes.”

I’ll run down the songs for this year’s starting line-up, and include some selections apparently beloved by former Twins, but first I’d like to make a personal plea to Ron Gardenhire: Gardie, please call your slumping third baseman into your office immediately and discuss with him what strikes me as a hugely inappropriate and emasculating song choice (OutKast’s “Behold A Lady”). This reminds me of the days when Dodger pitcher Robinson Checo’s appearances would be heralded by the playing of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” This, though, seems much, much worse.

Here’s the line-up:

Shannon Stewart: Last year Stewart used Usher’s “Yeah.” This season his walk-up music is an unnamed hip-hop instrumental that he provided to Dutcher.

Jason Bartlett: LCD Soundsystem, “Daft Punk is Playing at My House.” (Dutcher’s selection.)

Joe Mauer: The Game, “How We Do.” (Never heard of it.)

Justin Morneau: AC/DC, “Back in Black.” (Same as last year.)

Torii Hunter: Bonecrusher, “Never Scared.” (Same as last year.)

Jacque Jones: The Game, “Where I’m From.” Juvenile, “Bounce Back.” T.I., “Bring ‘Em Out.” (Dutcher: “Jacque likes variety and is very specific about his music.”)

Lew Ford: Tree 63, “Treasure.” (A Christian rock song, if I’m not mistaken.)

Michael Cuddyer: OutKast, “Behold A Lady.” (See above. Suggested inappropriate alternates: “Three Times A Lady,” “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” “Pretty Woman,” and “Lady Sings the Blues.”)

Luis Rivas: Petey Pablo, “Freek-A-Leek.” (Dutcher’s selection. Suggested nicknames for Rivas: Petey Pablo and Freek-A-Leek.)

Matthew LeCroy: Charlie Daniels Band, “South’s Gonna Do It Again.”

You might recall that jaunty little Latin number that accompanied Cristian Guzman to the plate during his last several years here. For those who might wish to recreate those wonderful memories in the privacy of their own homes, the song is called “Fiesta Mora,” by Alabina, and is from a CD called “Sexy Latin Beats.”

Corey Koskie’s song was Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” and, sometimes, a tune called “Joy” by a Christian rock group whose name Dutcher did not recall. Eddie Guardado, of course, took the mound to AC/DC’s booming “Thunderstruck.” Joe Nathan’s warm-up music features “Stand Up and Shout,” by the fictional band Steel Dragon (vocals by Sammy Hagar) from the “Rock Star” soundtrack, mashed with Big Head Todd’s version of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.”

There you have it. Somebody please burn me a CD of this schizoid mix so I can drive my wife bananas on road trips. I’d also be delighted to entertain suggestions for alternate selections –perhaps something you think might be more appropriate– for any of the above named players. Or any players, period, I guess. What would Ted Williams’ walk-up music be, I wonder? What was Ron Coomer’s? What should it have been?

Oh, lord, the possibilities are endless.

I’m not even going to bother to try to reconstruct the haywire play-by-play from the last four games. I was intending to go back over the game logs at some point tonight, but the prospect is frankly just too exhausting at the moment. All I know for sure is that I saw more variations of ugly than you’re likely to see this side of the Deliverance wrap party. Somebody out there will know how many times the Twins had the bases loaded over that stretch, and how many runs they managed to get out of those situations. I’ll just take a wild stab for the hell of it: the Twins had the bases loaded twenty-five times and scored one run. I think that’s right.

This I do know, though, because all I have to do is look at the boxscores: Four games, thirty-seven hits, fifteen walks, thirty-eight runners left on base, nine double plays hit into, eleven runs scored, and a 1-3 record. Folks, I know it’s a difficult game, but it’s hard to do what the Twins have been doing (or hard to not do what the Twins haven’t been doing?). Something like that.

Look on the bright side, though. Seriously, have you looked at the pitching numbers for Johan Santana specifically, and the pitching staff in general? Johan has now struck-out thirty-seven batters while walking two. Those are Dennis Eckersley numbers, from when Eckersley was a reliever. It’s unreal. And it’s not just Santana. The entire staff has walked sixteen and struck-out ninety-four. Juan Rincon’s strikeouts to innings pitched ratio has got to be inching up there close to Santana territory. (Okay, I just looked: Rincon’s K/9 –15.00– is actually better than Santana’s –13.50.)

I don’t know how to explain all the home runs Johan’s given up so far, other than just to remember that it’s still early, he was lousy for the first month or so last year, and the league’s got a much better idea of how he operates. There’s also the Joe Mauer factor. Henry Blanco was a very good signal caller, and the pitchers raved about him all last season. I don’t know how long it’ll take Mauer to get a good handle on the batters around the league, and maybe right now they’re calling most of the pitches from the dugout. I don’t think so, though. All I know is that if you could throw back half the homers Twins starters have allowed –and there have been a lot of two- and three-run shots– we wouldn’t even be talking about all those stranded runners and double plays.

Well, we’d probably still be talking about them, or bitching about them, but we’d pretty much be nit-picking. I’m not going to do too much bitching tonight, however, consternated as I am, because I got an earful all night from my pal Jumbo, and I know only too well how tiresome it is to listen to somebody piss and moan. I actually got up and switched seats in the middle innings because I’d had enough of his bellowing. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it on Friday.

Tomorrow I’ll give you the rundown on the tunes that escort each of the Twins from the on-deck circle to home plate, most of them personal selections. I’ll also, finally, assign an artist and a title to that damn song they played for Cristian Guzman the last couple years he was here. I think you know the one. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that you could hum it right now.

Have you noticed over the last several seasons how every time a Central Division foe has tried to talk trash about the Twins in the media it’s seemed to result in an immediate upsurge in the quality of play from Ron Gardenhire’s charges?

Granted, what qualifies as bulletin-board grade trash-talking in baseball is generally pretty innocuous stuff. Detroit’s Dmitri Young’s statements about the Central race essentially being a two team contest between the Tigers and the Indians was certainly foolhardy, particularly coming as it did in the season’s first week; and I suppose the Twins, after pretty much dominating the division over the last few years, are at the very least deserving of a bit of modest respect from their rivals.

Young’s comments likely had little to do with the spanking the Twins administered in sweeping the Tigers, but the timing was nothing if not psychologically convenient. This first month will give the Twins every opportunity to send the strongest of possible messages to the rest of the Central, and the Detroit series will certainly go a long way towards insuring silence from the Tiger clubhouse the rest of the season.

No doubt it’s still way too early to draw any real conclusions, and the Twins aren’t going to break anybody’s backs in April. They can, though, raise the stakes for everybody else, build their own confidence, and clearly establish their right to the respect that has already been given them (and in spades) by the national press. You could persuasively argue that they’ve already earned that respect by virtue of their domination in the division over the last three seasons, but it’s funny how quickly the perception of the Central has changed in so many people’s minds. And you really do have to wonder: on the basis of what? Nine games? Some radically overhauled rosters? Wishful thinking?

I have no idea, to be quite honest with you. And I say this with the full knowledge that I’ve previously proclaimed the division much improved myself. But after watching the Twins dominate the Tigers, I’m as convinced as ever that Minnesota is much better and much more confident than anybody else in the Central, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them run away with the thing once again.

The one team I was discounting almost entirely two weeks ago, the White Sox, actually does seem to be a tighter, better, and more balanced team than last year, but I still don’t think they have enough depth to compete with the Twins over the long haul. My guess is that they’ll spend the summer playing rock ’em, sock ’em robots with the Indians and Tigers while Minnesota just keeps racking up series wins and pulling away from the pack.

There’s no rational explanation for the funny business in the first inning so far this year, at least so far as a team-wide phenomenon goes. Where Brad Radke is concerned, however, it goes back a lot further than this year, and is pretty easily explained by the kind of pitcher he is. Radke prides himself on throwing strikes, and isn’t a guy who ever seems comfortable wasting a pitch. He’s a deeply conservative operator, and at this point in his career isn’t going to change much. That said, he’s never had a single truly dominating pitch that allows him to get away with mistakes, and opposing teams know by now what he has, and that he’s pretty much always going to be around the plate. It seems like everybody he’s faced over the last couple years knows the book on Radke backwards and forwards, and they’re clearly being proactive in the early going and taking aggressive cuts. Hitting is incredibly difficult, but you give the other team a huge advantage when they know damn well you’re going to throw it somewhere over the plate and have a fairly limited bag of tricks at your disposal.

Radke’s a smart pitcher, and he generally does a good job of making little adjustments and settling in as the game goes along, but it sure seems like if he’d take a more unpredictable and even erratic approach right out of the gate he’d save himself the trouble of having to make those adjustments in the first place.

Last night’s terrific 5-4 comeback victory against the Tigers had no shortage of dramatic plot lines, from the return of Joe Mays and his $17 million arm to Shannon Stewart’s walk-off game-winner off the Rheumatoid Terminator, Troy Percival. Almost lost in all the hullabaloo was rookie Jason Bartlett’s first major league homerun, for which he was apparently rewarded with a stinging eyeful of tobacco juice courtesy of a sloppy high-five.

“We don’t have a lot of guys who chew tobacco on this team anymore,” Ron Gardenhire said afterwards. “But somebody must have had some on their hands and Bartlett got it in his eye. I don’t know who the culprit was, but I looked down there and Bartlett was sitting on the bench getting his eyes rinsed out. I guess that’s a pretty memorable reception for your first homerun.”

There were a couple other encouraging developments that were eclipsed by last night’s dramatic finish. The first –Jacque Jones’ plate appearance in the second against lefty Mike Maroth– wasn’t game-changing in any way and didn’t even result in a run, but it was one of those small, eye-opening incidents in a baseball game that reward the attentive. Jones still hasn’t shown real consistency against lefthanders, but he has demonstrated steady progress over the last couple seasons, and has looked particularly sharp thus far in 2005. Against Maroth he fell behind 0-2 and battled back, fouling off a couple pitches and working the count full before eventually coaxing a walk. His next at-bat he slapped a single to the opposite field on the first pitch.

“Jacque’s improvement against lefties is the result of a combination of things,” hitting coach Scott Ullger said. “He’s put in a lot of hard work and I think his confidence just keeps building the more he gets a chance to hit against these guys. I know people have said some things in the past, but it never entered my mind that Jacque was going to be a platoon player. We’re a lot better team when he’s in the lineup than when he’s not.”

The other obvious positive for the Twins last night was J.C. Romero’s appearance out of the pen, in which he struck out three batters and gave up just one hit in his inning-and-a-third on the mound. After rollercoaster seasons in ’03 and ’04, and a shaky spring this year, Romero is once again looking like the reliable left-handed set-up man who was so valuable to the team in 2002.

Last night in the clubhouse Lew Ford expressed confidence that, with the departure of Cristian Guzman to Washington, he now possesses the best set of wheels on the Twins. “Bartlett keeps telling me he’s faster than I am,” Ford said. “But I don’t think so.”

Across the room Ullger and Jerry White both tossed out Nick Punto’s name. “Lew gets out of the box in a hurry,” White said, “but Punto might be quicker around the bases. We’ve got a lot of guys who can run on this team. Bartlett and Rivas have got some good wheels, and Torii and Jacque can also move pretty good.”

As I started to walk away, White added Joe Mauer’s name to the mix.

“Really?” I said. “Mauer’s got speed?”

“Mauer can really run,” White said. “I probably shouldn’t let this get out, but, shit yeah, Joe’s got wheels.”