Date: 10/9/09

Opponent: New York Yankees

Home/Away: Away

Starting Pitcher: Blackburn

Final Score: L 4-3

Best Moment: It seemed like there was going to be a lot to write about as so much seemed to go our way for the first 8 innings. The Blackburn was pitching like a stud. The bullpen was holding the Yankees in check. Brendan Harris came off the bench for a huge pinch-hit triple after Tolbert injured himself to drive in the first run, and then later contributed to the other 2 runs. He also had a fantastic diving stop at 3rd base. Everything was rolling along, I was feeling jubilant, and all of the sudden it came crashing down with one pitch by Joe Nathan. Instead of coming into the Metrodome with a tie series and some momentum, we're in a horrible 0-2 deficit and facing elimination at every step. Instead of proving to the world that we could win against the Yankees and in New York, we again look jinxed and cursed and fuckterrible (yes, I think it's time to bust out the fuckterribles again). Instead of shutting up all the experts who picked the Yankees to sweep us easily, we are now in the position to have just that happen on Sunday. Is one win really so much to ask? A little bit of hope and a chance to prove we can play with the the big money teams? A good memory from the post-season rather than a horrible repeating loop of everything that went wrong? Come on, throw my a frickin' bone here!

After Joe Nathan gave up the home run to A-Rod, he managed to get through the inning. But it felt exactly like that ghastly series in May; I was just waiting for the walk-off. You can only hold them off for so long, and when you add in a failure of epic proportions (bases loaded, no outs, and we can't even get 1 run in), it was an inevitable loss.

3 moments really cost us the game in my mind. The first was Gomez's stupid baserunning mistake. There were 2 outs, Delmon Young was on 2nd, Gomez was on 1st, and Tolbert had a base hit. Gomez rounded 2nd too far, slipped and fell, and was tagged out on his retreat to the base before the run could score. All he had to do was scramble away from the base and try to delay the tag a little bit. That extra run maybe meant the game for us. Nonetheless, we still had a 2-run lead in the 9th, leading to the second Minnesota-is-screwed moment, Joe Nathan's huge fuck-up. He couldn't seem to find the strike zone, fell behind hitters, and blew the save in 2 batters. I don't know if he's tired or what, but it's hard to have confidence in him when you remember his recent struggles. And then the third moment, Mauer's "foul" ball in the top of the 11th. That wasn't foul. Or even close to foul. It would have been a ground rule double, and although he reached base on a single, probably cost us at least a run. There are two extra umpires in post-season play. They are supposed to watch the left field and right field lines. That is their only fucking job. Phil Cuzzi was feet away from the ball. He was in perfect position to view it. Not only did it graze the fielder's glove in fair territory, it then bounced a good 6 inches fair. Two opportunities to see the call and he still couldn't see it. I know it's a common rip on umpires, but is he fucking blind? How did he miss that? Yeah, the Twins fucked up plenty on their own, but we still shouldn't have the game come down to that horrible, horrible call. That's an inexcusable mistake. I know umpires are human and will make mistakes, but that wasn't even close. Not even close.

I keep alternating between fury at the Twins for messing up in so many ways and rage at the umpire and utter despair. It's official: start panicking. I hate the Yankees. I hate them as a team, I hate them individually (I really can't think of any player that I bear even the slightest goodwill toward), I hate that they buy wins, I hate that they feel entitled to the playoffs, I hate the media bias toward them, I hate their stadium and their fans and everything they stand for. They make me absolutely sick. I just hope the Twins can put up something of a fight. We had offense tonight; we may have messed up but we did outhit them 12 to 7 and drew 7 walks. We just need to do a better job of hitting when it counts, with men on base. A home run or two wouldn't hurt either. Hopefully we can go to town on Andy Pettite, because to be honest I don't really trust Pavano to deliver a Blackburn-esque outing. It's looking bleak, but we can always hope. I'll be at the game Sunday, praying they don't embarrass me. Go Twins!

Most Questionable Moment: Oh, so many, many, many things. Gomez's baserunning decision. The home plate umpire's strike zone. The inexplicable foul call by Phil Cuzzi. The level of suck attained by the announcers. Stop. Saying. Fisted. I'm also fairly certain one of them mixed up Brendan Harris with Brendan Fraser (totally understandable...if you've ingested hallucinagenic mushrooms). Although I'm getting a brilliant idea for a reality show...

Worst Moment: I'm not going to do a worst moment. Instead, I'm handing out "Fuck You"s for the day.

Fuck you, Carlos Gomez, for making an enormous baserunning gaffe. Even Nick Punto wouldn't have messed that up. And that's not even mentioning your particularly crappy at bat with bases loaded and 1 out where you took a defensive half swing at the first pitch and grounded into a fielder's choice.

Fuck you, Jason Kubel, for going 1 for 10 in this series with 6 strikeouts. It's hard to present yourself as a power threat when you can't make contact.

Fuck you, Orlando Cabrera, for creating out after out in front of Magic. And you look like a weasel by the way.

Fuck you, Delmon Young, for not getting any hits in the post-season thus far and refusing to lay off the first pitch.

Fuck you, Joe Nathan, for being a bigger choke artist than the Mets. I can appreciate that we pay you a lot of money to help get us to the playoffs, but if we're going to get eliminated immediately because of you, what's the point?

Fuck you, Jose Mijares, for continuing to suck. So glad you know how to pitch under pressure.

Fuck you, Mark Teixeira, for existing. I hope your turncoat donkey face gets ripped off by a rabid skunk.

Fuck you, A-Rod, for using your drug-enhanced cheating body to crush the dreams of hotdish-eating Midwestern kids everywhere. May you rot in hell.

Fuck you, celebrities, for supporting the soul-sucking Yankees. You are tainted by association.

Fuck you, TBS announcers, for being incompetent commentators with the most monotonous, homoerotic vocabulary and an inability to call plays accurately. Your fashion sense is also lamentable.

Fuck you, Chuck Meriwether, for having an erratic strikezone roughly the size and shape of Gorbachev's birthmark (yeah, you know I'm pissed when I start dropping 20-year-old USSR references).

Fuck you, Phil Cuzzi, for missing a huge call and possibly costing the Twins the game. It's been a bad week of umpiring, and now you've single-handedly pissed off an entire generation of Minnesotans, opened the door for accusations of umpire-bias and favoritism, and possibly endangered your job security (this one may be a little overly optimistic on my part, but to miss a call that blatant screams for some accountability). Oh, and you've also made my umpire shit list. Todd Tichenor needs some company.

That's all I've got right now. I actually feel a lot better after that. And, in case you were wondering, yes, I do have anger issues, and no, there is no such thing as a safe distance.

Quotations of the Day:

• "Those three didn't matter in the regular season, because we are in the playoffs now. But we've been to New York twice this year, and it seems like every time we are walking off with our heads down and it's tough, especially since this is a game we know we needed and we know we should have won this game. But things didn't go the way they should have." - Denard Span
• "It's really disappointing. I've been walked off enough times here. Some of the things that happened out there were pretty disappointing. It was a good baseball game. A lot of things could have went either way, but didn't go our way again tonight. You end up getting walked off again." - Ron Gardenhire
• "It's obviously a ground-rule double, and who knows what would have happened after that. [The double] would have put us in a good situation. It just seems like one of the things that tend to happen to us here." - Michael Cuddyer. Now, repeat after me, "The Twins are not cursed in New York. The Twins are not cursed in New York. The Twins are not cursed in New York." Yeah, I don't believe it either.
• "Now it is lose and you're out. That's kind of how we've played for the last three weeks -- with our backs against the wall. We've got to win three against the Yankees in a row, which is tough to do, but you know it wouldn't be that great of a story if it wasn't like this. We've been playing tough Game 7 baseball for a long time, and now we're back to that Game 7 again." - Nick Punto
• "We left a lot of runners on base. We probably could have had a 3-, 4-run lead by the time we got to the 9th. We have to drive some runners in and make our breaks instead of wait for calls like that." - Brendan Harris. Yes, this is technically true, but it doesn't really make the call any easier to swallow. Or the Joe Nathan implosion.
• "The mistake I make today, it cost 1 run. I know, everybody knows what I did. It's bad base running. I don't make excuse about it. I make a mistake and that's it." - Carlos Gomez
• "We know we can play with these guys. People talk about our record and stuff like that, but we can play with these guys." - Joe Mauer
• "To be honest, I haven't talked to [Tolbert]. I know it's a tough injury to turn the corner on in two days." - Brendan Harris, on whether or not Tolbert will be able to play the rest of the series. Translation: "I am so back in the lineup, bitches!"
• "They gave us that game and we didn't take it. A game like this you never forget. It's like when you're a kid and someone offers you candy and you don't take it. You end up regretting it later." - Carlos Gomez, with a depressing analogy. I'm hungry now, too.
• "You don't know how [Cuzzi] missed it; he was 10 feet from the ball. Hopefully the umpire realizes he has to do something to get better. That was his job tonight [to make calls down the line]...There's nothing we can do about a terrible call -- and that's what it was." - Joe Nathan, trying to turn attention away from his own epic fail.
• "You can't see at all from the dugout, but I think we all know the ball was fair by a long ways." - Ron Gardenhire
• "There's a guy sitting over in the umpire's dressing room right now that feels horrible. Nobody feels it worse than the umpire." - Umpire crew chief Tim Tschida. I bet he doesn't feel as badly as Twins fans do right now. And Twins players.
• "We left a small village on base." - Brendan Harris. That wasn't a small village. That was the entire fucking population of Zimbabwe.

Suck-Ass Performance of the Game: This might take a while. Orlando Cabrera (0 for 5, 1 strikeout, 5 left on base), Jason Kubel (1 for 6, 4 strikeouts, 4 left on base), Delmon Young (0 for 4, 2 strikeouts, 5 left on base), Carlos Gomez (0 for 4, 2 strikeouts, 5 left on base, 1 bad baserunning mistake), Joe Nathan (1.1 innings pitched, 3 hits, 1 walk, 1 home run, 2 earned runs, 1 error, 1 blown save) and Jose Mijares (0.2 innings pitched, 1 hit, 1 home run, 1 earned run, 1 loss). Nathan and Mijares now sport identical 13.50 ERAs in the post-season.