Chicago at Twins. Twins 10, Bitch Sox 2.

Before the game today, Batgirl noticed how strangely calm she felt. I mean, usually before a Twins/Bitch Sox match-up she's all twisted with angst; it's the Bitch Sox, for the love of Pete. They must be made to pay for their impertinence! Every game with them is a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and every time darkness wins, it says, "Ha, ha! Clearly I have always been superior and you inferior, and now I will spread my evil ways all over the land!" And when darkness loses, it says, "But we're so much better than light, and we would have won, except we sprained a pinky finger, and the ump was biased, and the Dome is full of cheating, and Torii Hunter's a big stupid meanie. So suck it! Ha! Showed you!"

It's very hard to take, especially when the forces of light are working on their third straight mid-September clinch. But anyway, the point is, Batgirl barely even remembered we were playing the Bitch Sox tonight—really, now, they seem kind of cute, like the Soviet Union.

It wasn't always this way. You remember the last series between the Twins and the Bitch Sox, don't you? At the end of July? The Twins had played mediocre-at-best baseball against mediocre-at-best teams most of the three previous months and had been playing Mother-May-I with the Bitch Sox for first place the whole time. The Twins were in trouble, the Bitch Sox told us, because we'd already finished with the easy teams and we had an impossible schedule in August—while the Bitch Sox played nothing but pansies for the rest of the season.

But Batgirl was sanguine—because, frankly, as we all know, the Twins had been playing like ass and we still managed to stay at or near the top of the division; no matter how pathetic we were (and, yes Virginia, we were pathetic) the Bitch Sox couldn't put us away. Yet they swaggered and taunted and promised that just as soon as they started playing teams that weren't so darned good, they'd show us who's the boss. (And they didn't mean Tony Danza.)

The thing is, Batgirl's not interested in winning because of whims of the schedule. Batgirl would like to win because we beat the best teams—and if the Twins were going to win the division we'd need to do just that. Good. Let's play ball.

So, anyway, back at the end of July, the Twins had just started to turn it around and were up by .5 game in the Central. It was big. We were going to face Chicago, at Chicago, for a three game series that would set the tone for the second half of the season.

And boy, did it. The Twins swept the Bitch Sox and put them 3.5 games back. Now, that lead seems almost quaint, but back then it looked like the Grand Canyon. You know, really pretty and hard to cross.

There was one matter—you've probably forgotten about it with all the excitement of the pennant race and the Cy Young and all the winning and all, but in that first Bitch Sox game Torii Hunter did his best John Randle impersonation and knocked over poor defenseless Jamie Burke on his way to home. Every single person on earth, with the exception of Bitch Sox players and some fans, declared it a clean hit. But the Bitch Sox would never recover.

You may have forgotten about the play, but the Bitch Sox did not (even after beaning Corey Koskie three times the next game). And while Batgirl spent the pregame thinking, not about our opponents at all, but about Johan Santana and how many people he might strike out, and whether or not the Twins could clinch at home, and if the gardenburgers at the Grandstand Grill were going to be any good (they were), the Bitch Sox were apparently thinking about Torii, and about revenge. They might not be able to win the division, but at least they'd make Torii really, really sorry. And when Torii stepped up to the plate in the first inning, Freddy Garcia's first pitch went somewhere in the direction of his ankles, and the second went right into his shoulder.

And Batgirl turned to Goober and Goober turned to Jeb and Jeb turned back to Batgirl and we all said, "Oh, yeah! We're playing the Bitch Sox." Jeb had to be physically restrained from rushing the field and making like John Randle himself. Meanwhile, the same angst-twisty feeling came back in Batgirl's stomach. I want to beat these guys, she muttered, teeth clenched. I want to beat them so it really, really, really hurts.

We got our revenge in two ways. First, Johan K. Santana kindly plunked Carlos Lee a couple innings later—risking, may I add, being thrown out of the game during the final stages of CyQuest '04. Second, and far more satisfactorily, the Twins hit the holy crap out of Garcia in the sixth inning. Well, actually, first Garcia walked Ojeda and Blanco, then Stewie bunted them over, then we hit the holy crap out of him. We hit him really, really, really hard. Guillen took him out of the game after a lot of the hitting and the scoring, but we still kept looping back to a time and place where he was on the mound, huffing and puffing and bitching and throwing nice, hittable fastballs down the middle, and we hit him some more. By the time it was all over, nine runs had scored, and Freddy Garcia sat in the visitor's clubhouse and reflected back on that beaning of Torii Hunter and whether or not that was really such a nice thing to do. It wasn't, was it? It was kind of petty, really. Torii was just playing the game hard, and we, the Chicago Bitch Sox, shouldn't blame him for the fact that we totally and utterly collapse every single year and we have the intestinal fortitude of lime Jell-O. I know we've lost our two best hitters, but really, we weren't that good when we had them, and look at the Twins! Their whole team has been on the DL this year, but they just kept plugging away. That's really impressive. My hat's off to them, and their whole organization. And even though my team is entirely falling apart before my eyes, and currently playing defense like a bunch of monkeys on Red Bull and embarrassing the whole fine Windy City, I see a future where we can start again. It will take time. We'll have to change the whole organization, but we can do it. We will be a team of strength, not swagger. Of depth, not dipshittery. We will execute the fundamentals, we will play hard, and we will respect our opponents and the game. And someday, maybe in five or six years, we'll be a decent baseball team. And we'll look at this moment, this petty beaning, as the moment we hit bottom and decided to change.

Okay, that probably didn't happen. Regardless, the Twins got their revenge, and Batgirl was happy. Johan pitched seven shutout innings and was generally supernatural. Two Batlings got featured on FSN with their lovely Santana/Nathan '04 sign, and Johan gave them props. And the Bitch Sox were utterly humilated. It's great to be alive.

Oh, and, bean this.