Cleveland at Twins. Twins 5, Hubrists 1.

Batgirl would like very much to know what Kyle Lohse did differently before this start. Did he change breakfast cereals? Did he, on a whim, substitute Wheaties for his Hilary Duff Crispy Crunch X-treme? Or perhaps was it Count Chocula? Did he take a Centrum Vitamin, now with St. John's Wort? Did he spend an hour walking in the park, watching the flowers bloom, thinking of nothing but the beauty of the world and what a gift it is simply to be alive? Did he pass the quiet hours reading some George Eliot, or perhaps Virginia Woolf…or even some Gertrude Stein? Did he put the book down and contemplate the simple beauty of a sentence, the delicate dexterity of the subject-verb dance? Did he then shake his fist at the heavens and cry, "A rose may be a rose may be a rose, but a fastball is a fastball is a fastball, and I, Kyle Lohse, am sick of pitching like ass-crap!"

Perhaps he spent some time meditating, or doing some simple stretches, or watching Olympic women's judo—or perhaps he played catch with a fresh-faced neighborhood youth before the game and was mentally transported back to a time when baseball was just a game, and he did not pitch like ass-crap. Perhaps his pre-game meal was full of spinach, or completely devoid of spinach, or perhaps it had just the right combination of salty and sweet to make it a culinary sensation that caused him to aspire to greatness, or at something above mediocrity. Perhaps he went to his doctor and asked about Cialis. Or perhaps he simply sat down at his computer before the game, with a cat on his lap and a dog at his feet, and read Batgirl.

We cannot know. But whatever it was that Kyle Lohse changed in his pre-game ritual, whatever minor modification he made, whatever he ate, whatever pills he took, whatever he did with those Wheaties, it worked. For perhaps the second time this season Kyle Lohse looked like he belonged on the pitcher's mound, and not just as the rosin bag.

I don't want to cause any pain, I don't want to induce any flashbacks, I don't want anyone to make an emergency call to his therapist, but last week Kyle Lohse gave up 74 runs in the first inning against Cleveland. The Twins tried to rally, but the six-dozen-run deficit proved to be too much even for them.

But that was the old Lohse. The sucky, tantrumy, chin-pubey Lohse. The new version, well, it still has the chin pubes, but it also has command of its pitches, and it doesn't seem to be suffering from some kind of vague nervous disorder. Lohse 2.0 gave up three hits and one walk through seven complete innings today, and if he could just keep that up through September and the post-season, Batgirl's nervous disorder's going to get a lot better, too.

It doesn't hurt that the Twins have suddenly remembered that the goal of the game of baseball (or bakbal, for that matter) is to accrue more runs than the other team. You get a run by getting people on base through hits, walks, or opponents' errors, then advancing them around the bases until they touch home plate, or "score."

The Twins accomplished this feat five times in tonight's game. In the first inning, Jake Westbrook seemed to be pitching like Lohse 1.0, before the manufacturer even designed the patch, giving up a single and two walks to load the bases with one out. The Twins only managed one run then, off an Offerman ground-out, but the act seemed to inspire them enough that they decided to try for more of these "run" things. Westbrook calmed down, but in the fifth Jacque Jones hit a double to score Michael Cuddyer. Then, in the sixth, Cordel Koskos did that thing that he's so fond of doing lately, that "hit-the-Canadian-snot out of the ball" thing, to give the Twins a 3-1 lead.

That was all the run support Lohse needed, as he pitched a 1-2-3 7th. But then Lew Ford, Dr. Morneau, and Jose Offerman decided they might as well add a couple more runs, just for fun. Because it is fun. Scoring runs is fun. Winning games is fun. And setting the Cleveland Hubrists back five games, well, that's worth eating your Wheaties.

Posted by Batgirl at August 20, 2004 10:55 PM