Kansas City at Twins. Twins 5 , Royals 4.

John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner once told Lyndon Johnson that the Vice-Presidency "wasn't worth a bucket of warm piss." The first Vice President, John Adams, said, "[The Vice Presidency] is the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Theodore Roosevelt, once proclaimed, "I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president." More colorfully, Harry Truman called the VPs of history, "about as useful as a cow's fifth teat." And Daniel Webster, upon turning down the office, said (rather snottily I might add) "I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead."

We have no quotes from Mr. Joe Nathan on what his feelings were upon being nominated for Veep last year on the Batgirl ticket. But it's not like Nathan to complain about the indignities of his office, and anyway his reign has been nothing short of spectacular. In fact, Batgirl is fairly sure Joe Nathan is ready to go down in history as the greatest VP of all time.

No, I'm serious. Better than Hannibal Hamlin. Better than Schuyler Colfax. Better even than Charles Dawes. Did Charles Dawes ever strike out the side? I don't think so. Aaron Burr did shoot and kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but that's just not cool, man.

Sure, there wasn't anything that remarkable about tonight's performance. I mean Nathan himself has one-two-three ninths all the time. And this is an April game, against the Central's reigning AAAA squad. But there was something about this save… perhaps the fans were already dizzy from the happy surprise of the Twins actually converting with the bases loaded the inning before, perhaps it was the dollar-a-dog night fumes, or perhaps it was the fact that Nathan was just fierce tonight, but it felt special. (Really, weren't you surprised when the last batter actually managed to make contact with the ball? It seems so rude of him to actually ground out instead of striking out like his predecessors. But some people have no manners.) The point is, somehow in a game where Johan Santana struck out 10, where Juan Rincon did the voodoo that he does, where Jacque Jones got a homer and two walks, where Lew Ford created a run with his choo-choo speed and Shannon Stewart knocked in a go-ahead RBI in the eighth, Joe Nathan walked off the mound the hero of tonight's game. And that, my friends, is Vice Presidential history.

As for our president, well, perhaps he had a bad inning there in the 4th, what with the 4 runs and huge Mike Sweeney three-run homer and all, but you couldn't blame him for being a wee distracted as his wife had just given birth to their second child (that would be Jasmine Alejandra, 8 pounds 6 oz) less than an hour before game time. It's not many pitchers who last seven innings with ten strikeouts and no walks on a day when they're not "on."

Not bad for man spending the bottom part of the innings listening to Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" over and over again on his iPod. Santana left the game with a tie, then Juan Rincon came in, who is—what? President Pro Tempore? Majority Whip? Secretary of Sheer Awesomeness and Kick Ass? Whatever his position, Boo made the Royals feel very, very bad about themselves in the 8th, then we scrapped together a run, and then it was time for the Vice President.

If we were any other team, the 9th inning of tonight's game might have been a little frightening. The Twins had managed to eke out that 5-4 lead the inning before, but if there were any justice in baseball (and I don't mean David) about a dozen failed opportunities should have damned us tonight. That one run shouldn't have been enough, but I don't think there was one person in Twins Territory who didn't know that the Royals might just as well have shut off the lights in the dugout and gone home when Nathan took the mound.

As for the Royals, if they didn't know that at the beginning of the inning, they sure caught on quick. And Nathan, well, he truly exemplifies the standard for the office set out by former VP Dan Quayle: "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'"

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