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September 15, 2004

An evening with the Twins

Well, there it is, the Santana button. Obviously they handed these out at the game last night. Already it is being sold on E-Bay for approx. $4.00. In fact, I have two due to the fact that I found one sitting under a seat on my way out of the Dome. What luck! And you would think all the stars would be aligned for Santana to have a let down during the game, but you would be wrong. He, of course, pitched magnificently and managed to lower his ERA to 2.76. Wow. He also had seven strikeouts, and he took care of a little business by beaning Carlos Lee in the fourth after Hunter was beaned in the first. Gotta respect that. Santana said after the game, "You have to protect your players." Indeed.

I was a little worried for the first five innings due to Garcia's no-hitter up to that point. I think every inning through the fifth ended with a variation of me saying, "This is pathetic," or "This is despicable," or "This is atrocious." To think that Santana could lose with a 2 hit shut-out was unbearable. But Cheesehead Craig and I agreed that the no-hitter would be hard to keep given that Garcia was pitching more balls than strikes. He ended up pitching 51 balls and only 45 strikes. Well, in the bottom of the sixth the Twins finally seemed to figure this out and got a couple of walks to start their half of the inning. Stewart then laid down a great bunt and Jones got the 9 run inning started with an RBI single. That was a relief and the rest of the inning was great fun to watch.

One thing that I did not like about the game, though, was the way Santana was taken out of the game. Santana was just rolling through seven with his two hit shut-out and the crowd all expected him to pitch the 8th. Well, Gardy sat him for the 8th and didn't give the crowd a chance to cheer Santana as he left the mound. All of the sudden Joe Biemel was on the mound. Very upsetting. Biemel proceeded to give up two runs for a 54.01 ERA in his debut. Yikes!

And let me send out a public "thank you" to Cheesehead Craig for supplying me with $25 in Dome dollars so that I could engorge myself on junk food during the game. Cheesehead won $50 Dome dollars at work and shared half with me. I ate a Dome dog, nachos, ice cream, pizza, and of course I washed it all down with a Coke. I was stuffed, and I was happy. Thanks Craig!

Finally, let me give all of you a little advice. When you have to get up and go to the restroom or get a little more food at the Dome, please use the row that you are in to exit into the aisle. Cheesehead Craig and I sat in a row that didn't have too many people, so the row ahead of us (which had a lot of people) constantly climed over their seats to exit through our row. It got to be so much that Craig and I started to chuckle about it after a while. Even the people above us gave us their sympathy. I mean, I realize our row had less people, but does that mean we should be inconvenienced 50 times? I started to use the tactic of getting up really slowly when someone needed to pass. Just because they wanted to use my row to get to the aisle doesn't mean I have to be quick about getting out of the way. Anyway, if someone from my own row needed to pass I certainly got up in a timely fashion. There is nothing wrong with that. So, to sum up, when at the Dome use your own row to exit into the aisle, unless the row above or below is empty. If the row above or below has people in the way, why is it better to inconvenience them?

Twins 10, White Sox 2. Santana for the Cy Young award. Twins magic number is 8. All in all it was a good night.

Posted by snackeru at September 15, 2004 7:40 AM | Twins

Comments

A great looking button! Do you and Craig know how fortunate you are to live so close to professional sports entertainment? I hope that all of you Twin Citians do not take that for granted. Otherwise, you could end up with nights like my night in Grand Forks: a shopping trip to Target and re-runs on television.

Curt in Grand Forks

Posted by: Curt Hanson at September 15, 2004 11:02 AM

Shane,
It was my pleasure to help put some meat on your bones. It certainly was an enjoyable time, aside from the constant standing up to let people by. I believe that for the first 7 innings, we were up at least 2x/inning. Nevertheless, it was a joy to watch Santana live for the 2nd time this year. Given Pedro got rocked last night and lost, that just makes Santana a better Cy candidate. His only competition now is Schilling. We need to actually root for NY to win the division, cause if Boston wins it, the media will have a field day and Schilling will get the nod. Sometimes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Posted by: Cheesehead Craig at September 15, 2004 11:29 AM

Wow. I never thought of it that way. If the Red Sox win the division, I believe you are right, Schilling would win the Cy Young. Genius! Go Yankees! I don't like the Red Sox anyway. Bunch of snivelling pansies...

Curt, you bring up a good point that I'll probably have to address: the apathy of Twins fans. Sometimes it just drives me nuts.

Posted by: Shane at September 15, 2004 11:34 AM