Tag Archives: johan santana

2013 Twins Game Log

2013 Father’s Day Game: Tigers at Twins

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I have been to one Father's Day game in my life.

My memory lies, it turns out. The game in question was definitely against the Padres, and it was on Father's Day, 2005. However, I thought I remembered Johan getting ejected early in the game, allowing Jake Peavy to cruise to an easy win. However, Peavy didn't even pitch, while Darrell May cruised to a win. Johan gave up one run in the sixth, then a bases-clearing double with two outs in the seventh that got him pulled. The Padres went on to win, 5-1, and who has two thumbs and didn't see a Johan Santana win in person in Minnesota, ever? THIS guy! (I did, however, attend this game at Safeco, where two guys behind me were bemoaning the fact that they were "getting shut down by a no-name pitcher." A writer in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer essentially repeated that statement the next day, displaying an utter lack of respect for his own work).

As for that Padres game, I was to go with a nine-month-old Skim as well as the Milkmaid. It was Father's Day, Johan was pitching, we all had the day free and I hadn't yet started running Spookymilk Survivor so my schedule didn't revolve around it. However, the Milkmaid ended up being called in to work by her ruthless douchebag bosses, who told her Father's Day wasn't an important enough holiday for her to miss and they needed to add her to the schedule (I was not consulted for comment on their opinion). I watched the game with Skim and folks around us marveled at how quiet she was - a trend that she continued all throughout early childhood, where people would get up after dinner or event and remark that they had no idea they were sitting near a child.

The game sucked, though, and it was rainy afterward. And, me being me, I couldn't remember where the f*&^ I had parked. I knew it was in one of the ramps, but I hadn't written it down, since at 27 years old I was still trusting my never-good sense of direction and memory for landmarks. I walked around with Skim, who barely complained despite the light rain. Once the rain cleared, it got hot. Brutally hot. She still didn't complain but I felt like a heel. She fell asleep in the Baby Bjorn as I spent over two hours combing a four-block area (this is who I am) looking for my car. Finally, I found it in the first parking garage I'd searched, on a floor I'd walked at least twice. I laughed at my own uselessness in the arena of finding things and we drove home.

The Milkmaid, for her part, had only been on at work for two hours. They cut her when the rush died down, a further insult to our day. She asked if the game had gone ridiculously long. It was a rather short one, at 2:23, so I amused her with the postgame story. If she'd been with us, there would have been no problem. The way I remember the spelling of words and names is the way she remembers directions and landmarks.

I don't know how the rest of the day went, but as stupid as everything was, it remains my strangest Father's Day, and it was also my first.

History, Minnesota Twins

April 11, 2004: Random Day in Twins History

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I used a random number generator to pick a season from the past with the idea that I would quickly highlight the Twins history that occurred today in that year.  The generator sent me to the year 2004.

Detroit 6, Twins 5 (10 innings) - BR boxscore

The Tigers won the rubber-match of a three game series to improve to 5-1 on the early season defeating the Twins in 10 innings (after ending the previous season with just 43 wins).  The Twins rallied from an early 3-0 deficit to tie the game 5-5 before losing.  The Twins stranded at least two runners in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth innings.  Henry Blanco tied the game in the eighth inning with an RBI double, but he was thrown out easily trying to reach third base.  Gleeman wrote, "The throw beat Blanco to the bag by about 10 feet and Blanco went 'sliding' into third with some sort of belly flow/somersault combination." The following batter, Cristian Guzman, doubled but was stranded when Nick Punto struck out to end the inning.

Asked about his aggressive baserunning after the game, Blanco explained, "I was out of gas. . . . I was trying to see what could happen.  Nothing happened."  He added, "Seems like every time you make a mistake on the bases, the next guy gets a hit and you pay for it."  Ron Gardenhire did not criticize Blanco's decision.  "The play's in front of him, and he's trying to play the game," Gardenhire said.  "We don't knock guys for trying to be aggressive."

In perhaps the least surprising quote in the history of quotes, Ron Gardenhire lamented, "We didn't get it done.  We were battling.  We were getting after it.  They were getting after it."  [ed. note: I swear on my life this is a verbatim quote from the Strib.]

The Tigers scored their first run when Craig Monroe scored all the way from first base when Lew Ford misplayed a Carlos Pena single.  Later, they scored the winning run when Joe Roa issued a one-out walk to Rondell White (aka The Insanity).  White was removed for pinch-runner Andres Torres who stole second base and then scored on Monroe's game-winning single.  "A game-winning single like that -- I can't describe how good it felt," Monroe said. "I'd never done anything like that before up here."

Joe Nathan did not pitch in the game, but he had pitched in four of the first five games of the season.  In fact, through the sixth game, Nathan, Roa, J.C. Romero, and Carlos Pulido had each appeared four times and Juan Rincon and Aaron Fultz had made five appearances.

Johan Santana lasted just five innings (and had thrown only nine innings in his first two starts).  He allowed a homerun to Pena in the fourth inning - his first homerun allowed to a left-handed batter in 70.1 innings dating back to the previous season.  Santana struggled to retire hitters once he reached two strikes.  In fact, Gleeman documented that Santana threw 32 pitches in his five innings after already having two strikes on the opposing batter.

Other Twins notes: The Twins signed Joe Beimel to a minor-league contract that day and assigned him to Rochester.  Beimel had a pathetic cup-of-coffee with the Twins in September, but then put together some pretty decent years after leaving the organization.  The loss was the team's third of the season.  In all three games, they had scored at least four runs.

A front-page story focused on the likely inability of the Twins and Vikings to contribute more than 25% to the cost of their new stadiums.  The Twins explained that paying for a large-chunk of the cost "could impair the club's ability to field a competitive team."  A stadium bill working its way through the legislature at the time would require the Twins to contribute one-third of the cost - an estimated $150 million - to the final stadium.

GM Terry Ryan expressed some concern that Joe Mays, after undergoing Tommy John surgery in September, was trying to rush his rehab.  "We've got to slow him down some," Ryan said.

Blanco was playing because Mauer had been attacked by the warning track behind the plate in the Metrodome and Matthew LeCroy strained his oblique.  Through his first fifteen plate appearances, Blanco somehow had hit 267/467/733.