2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 10 Recap: Minnesota Twins 7 – New York Yankees 3

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once again, sorry, you guys, i wasn't able to keep a solid eye on the game. the small percentage of eye that did see the game is wondering how often the twins of this monday night will show up to other games. pavano pitched a great game (most likely out of spite). the inverted W and W and inverted W boys did great. clete thomas continues to show he is the answer to all twins' problems (and is apparently a great home base coach). also, i've always had irrational hopes for casilla; and if he can keep making plays like this (and maybe hit a little please?), i'll continue to be happy he's on the team.

anyway, please pretend that i thought up an an awesome way to recap these twins actually beating the yankmes, and then comment accordingly. danke sehr.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–April 16

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Dutch Leonard (1892)
Paul Waner (1903)
Babe Phelps (1908)
Pete Hughes (1915)
Pete Suder (1916)
Joe Bauman (1922)
Rich Rollins (1938)
Bernie Allen (1939)
Garry Roggenburk (1940)
Jim Lonborg (1942)
Bob Montgomery (1944)
Bruce Bochy (1955)
Curt Young (1960)
Fernando Vina (1969)
Antonio Alfonseca (1972)
Kelly Dransfeldt (1975)

Joe Bauman hit 72 home runs for Roswell in the Longhorn League in 1954.

Kelly Dransfeldt was drafted by Minnesota in the seventh round in 1993, but did not sign.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–April 16 →

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 10: Twins at Yankees

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First Pitch - 6:05 p.m. CDT
Television - FSN, ESPN
Game Notes
Lineups
Scorecard

Oy. Considering the season start we're having, heading to New York City for a four-game series against the Evil Empire just seems sadistic. What, the brain trust that is MLB scheduling couldn't wait a few weeks to add insult to injury? They couldn't wait until May or June to have the Twins demonstrate their futility in the Bronx?

ON THE HILL
Few things tickle me as much as the fact that the Yankees paid Carl Pavano 40 million dollars for less than 150 innings of work over 4 years, and the Twins have wrung 220+ innings out of the guy each of the past two seasons. So at least in the coveted IPP metric (Innings Pitched per Pavano), the Twins continue to outperform the Yankees. While Pavano has been adequate as expected in his first two starts, he's giving up more hits and more runs that any of us would like and would do well to pitch a bit less to contact and a bit more to the catcher's glove.

On the other side of the street, the Yankees send longtime lefty Twins nemesis Freddy Garcia to the mound. The last time I saw Garcia pitch, Jim Lehland was trotting him out against Ozzie Guillens' White Sox in a rainout makeup game that would send the Sox to a game 163 versus the Twins. The last actual time Garcia pitched, just last week, he threw five wild pitches, the first MLB pitcher to pull that off since 1989.

In a universe where karma moves faster than a rebate check from Menards, the Twins would win this game by ten or twelve runs and Pavano would throw a 130-pitch complete game shutout (come on, you just know that a-hole A-Rod would break up the no-hitter with a two-out Texas league dink in the 9th inning). But I'm going on the record as predicting that won't happen today, or any other day for that matter. All I'm asking for out of this series is a split and I'd settle for just one measly win. With Sabathia pitching tomorrow and former Dodger Kuroda on the hill Wednesday, today may be as good a chance as we get this series.

Play ball!

At The Movies

Third Monday Movie Day

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Movie of the Month: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

The winner of the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film certainly deserved it. Beau's been ragging on me to see this for something like a year, and I had it at home from Netflix for three months (I have a bad habit of putting off foreign movies because I can't look away from the subtitles and my kids distract me a lot).

It was worth the wait. Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) works for the East German secret police, the Stasi, and bugs the houses of artists and writers, documenting their activities to see if they're western sympathizers. At times I forgot I was watching a German movie, since it's easily compared to McCarthyism in America.

Wiesler follows the lives of a playwright and his girlfriend and becomes increasingly sympathetic with them, and is forced to start making some difficult choices.

The playwright, the girlfriend and various other secret police and artistic types all turn in fine performances, but Muhe is the clear star and commands attention any time he's onscreen. According to IMDb, the script particularly resonated with Wiesler, since he as a theater actor was observed by the Stasi, and he later found out that his wife at the time was registered as an informant. Sadly, the film that launched Muhe from a supporting player to a lead actor proved to be one of his last, as he died in 2007 at age 54 of stomach cancer.

The script is near flawless and the whole thing leads to a satisfying and yet utterly believable ending.

I can't recommend this one enough.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 9 Recap: Minnesota 3, Texas 4

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Jackie Robinson Day. Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. He played 9 years in the majors and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. I could go on, but if you watched baseball today, you already know everything there is to know about #42. Sh*t, even if you didn't watch baseball today you probably already know all about Jackie. He is that significant to the Civil Rights era and the eventual improvement of race-relations in America; a true icon.  His inclusion and eventual debut in the majors was carefully orchestrated by Branch Rickey (to me, one of the more interesting characters in MLB history). In case you're still wondering, this game came nowhere near the historic magnitude of Jackie Robinson or even Branch Rickey.

The game ended poorly for Glen Perkins and he took the loss. Robbie Ross took over in the 6th and pitched 2 scoreless inning for the Rangers to notch his 2nd win. Through the early innings, it was the Clete Thomas and Liam Hendriks show. In their season debut for the Local 9, the former Twins draft pick (and recent Tiger) jacked a 2-run homer and had a nice (sort-of?) outfield assist, and the Aussie pitched 6 innings of 1 run ball. After completing 7, the Twins had a 3-1 lead and the top of the order due up. It should have been enough to get the Twins back in the win column, ready to salvage the rubber match of the series against the Dallas, Texas Rangers of Arlington.  Except it wasn't... Continue reading Game 9 Recap: Minnesota 3, Texas 4 →

Remodeled basement. Same half-baked taste.