Twins at Boston. Red Sox 9. Twins 2.

I always wonder whether baseball players play games in their dreams. I mean, Sooz dreams of going to glamorous parties, Jeb dreams of writing papers, and Batgirl, of course, dreams of BatBlogging. Do baseball players replay games in their dreams?

For the sake of our emotionally fragile bullpen, I hope not. For tonight, Aaron “Glass Half” Fultz and the Roa Constrictor combined to pitch in a nightmare of the wake-up-screaming variety. Except—gasp!—that nightmare was real.

It all started innocently enough. In the first inning, David “Junior” Ortiz hit the ball way hard, as is his wont. It is nice to see he still points up to his momma who lives in heaven when he hits homers, and it’s nice to see him doing so well. I just wish he wouldn’t do it against us.

Anyway, two Manny Ramirez RBIs later (and really, is it fair that a team should have Ortiz and then Ramirez in their batting order? Shouldn’t there be a law?) the score was 3-1. We still had a chance; Curt Schilling was dominant (as is his wont) but he’d gone through a lot of pitches (most of them to Torii Hunter in the 5th, who, as he continued to foul off pitches, proved himself to have gone temporarily insane and thought he was Shannon Stewart) and we might have a chance in the later innings. That’s what the Twins do, they come back, right? As long as the bullpen could keep it close…

...oh. That’s were the dark visions began. With one out in the 7th, Aaron Fultz walked Johnny “Grizzly Adams” Damon. Then Matt Belhorn singled, and then the AL RBI leader (that would be Ortiz) came up and added two to his total. 4-1, Sox. Fultz tried to pinch himself a couple of times, really really hard, then intentionally walked Ramirez, because you just know Manny would have hit it out for a three-run homer. Then Joe Roa came in with the bases loaded and on the first pitch to Nomar, well…let’s just say that three-run homer didn’t look so bad anymore. Roa, who could be heard shouting, “Wake up you stupid bastard, it’s just a dream! It’s just a bad, bad dream!” then gave up a double, beaned a guy, then a single before the BoSox decided enough was enough. That’s when Roa went back to the clubhouse, sat in a corner next to Fultz, and both of them started rocking violently in tandem, muttering to themselves, “I will wake up, I will wake up…”

They did not.

All in all, Aaron Fultz had four runs charged to him in a third of an inning. I’m no stat head, but I think that’s really bad for the ERA.

Odds were we were going to lose this, because of, you know, Curt Schilling, though I’m not really sure it was really necessary to lose it quite so badly. Frankly, I don’t like playing the Red Sox; there are only two possible outcomes to the match-up, both of them bad. Either the Twins lose, in which case all the joy goes out of Batgirl’s life, or else they win—and Boston inevitably loses a game to the Yankees. No one wants to be a part of that.

Though, if given a choice, I’ll take the Yankees-related guilt for the rest of the series. It’s better than the nightmares.

Dear Readers: Please help get the taste of this loss out of Batgirl’s mouth. Cheer her with some Twins limericks.

Posted by Batgirl at June 22, 2004 08:58 PM