Twins at Royals. Twins 4, Royals 1.

You might be surprised, but Batgirl has some standards. I know that's strange to hear about someone whose Twins boyfriend was once A.J. Pierzynski, but it's true. And while she believes it her duty as Official Twins Blogger of the 2004 Summer Olympics to keep morale up amongst her BatLings during difficult times, there was simply no way Batgirl was going to be able to maintain her sunshiny exterior if we couldn't manage to score a few runs against Jimmy "Gobble" Gobble. Darrell May--okay, he'd just pitched a shutout. Zach "Little Squirt" Greinke--fine, if you insist, he's got good stuff. But Jimmy "Gobble" Gobble? Come on. A Batgirl can only take so much.

So when Batgirl (who had an unavoidable commitment in the morning and missed the first few innings) stepped into her car and turned on the radio and heard Gordo say, "And Santana and Greinke are dueling here in Kansas City," could you blame her for letting out a long stream of expletives and then banging her head against the steering wheel? I mean, Jimmy "Gobble" Gobble? Look at this kid, I swear he just waited on me at Dairy Queen last night.

Would you like fries with that?

Batgirl turned on the game too late to hear the Twins stuff the attempted suicide squeeze down Angel Berroa's skinny little throat, which was too bad—but she also missed Torii Hunter popping out on a 3-0 pitch with Lew Ford on 3rd, which was good because she would have really lost her #@$@#.

But she was in time to hear the sixth inning, which began with Luis Rivas hitting a double off Desi Relaford's glove… and then something wonderful happened. Jacque Jones got a double. A run-scoringdouble. Really. You should have heard Gordo, it was like Moses had parted the Red Sea, except more so. Batgirl could barely believe it. A clutch hit! A run! A lead! Jeb and Batgirl held each other, tears flowing from their eyes, and the BatKitties were holding each other too. Times like this, you're just so happy even to be alive.

Oh, and then—dear readers—Lew Ford came up. Now, Batgirl must admit that sometime during yesterday's game she thought, "Maybe Lew Ford is leveling out." Maybe he's not the second coming of Babe Ruth; maybe he's just a pretty good player that had a great couple of months and now he'll be human again.

And Lew Ford said, "Take that, Batgirl!" and Boom! went the ball. And then Justin Morneau said, "Take that, Batgirl!" (for no particular reason) and "Boom!" went the ball and suddenly, for a brief shining moment, the Twins had an offense again.

And that, of course, was all the Johaninator needed. He got onto the mound and proclaimed, "Hello, I am Johan Santana, and you are not," and then proceeded to show the Kansas City Royals, in fact all of baseball, why, no matter how much they might wish to be, they are not Johan Santana.

That pitching staff's going to look pretty good when we get the Big Unit, isn’t it?

Posted by Batgirl at July 17, 2004 04:26 PM