Weekend Round-Up. New York at Twins.
Friday. Twins 6, Yankees 3.
Saturday. Yankees 4, Twins 3.
Sunday. Twins 9, Yankees 3.

When Kevin Brown looks back on today's game and tries to figure out where things went wrong, I really think he's going to have to look hard at the point where he hit Torii Hunter in the shoulder.

Now, I certainly don't think Brown hit Sweetcheeks on purpose. Torii's not someone you want to put on the basepaths, and certainly not with just one out. Brown may be punch-wall crazy, but he's not CC Sabathia crazy. The thing is, though, Torii doesn't like getting hit, even if it's an accident. I mean, no one likes getting hit, but Torii, well, the thing is, he really, really, really doesn't like it. Really. He gets mad. He says things. Things that can't be taken back. He might, for instance, exclaim something about fornicating and then suggest you engage in unnatural acts with your own mother. He might glare at you and bark at you as he goes to first. He might stand on first base directing 220 pounds worth of white hot (And I do mean hot) fury right at you.

See, when Torii gets like this, something happens inside him. He stands there on first, his blood superheating and becoming pure liquid rage, and that rage begins to burble and bubble and boil over, and pretty soon the molecules excite and expand and turn into a gaseous state, and the Torii-Hunter-rage gas spreads all over the Metrodome. Were you there this afternoon? Did you feel it? Did you breathe it into your nose, through your lungs, and did it then insinuate into your blood stream, and did you then feel the sudden urge to grab a bat and go kick some Yankee heinie? The Twins sure did. That Torii Rage Gas spread all the way over to the Twins dugout and the Twins inhaled it and became SUPER CHARGED.

And after that, well, the Twins began to score runs. Again and again they scored, and meanwhile poor Kevin Brown, having been so dizzied by the THRG fumes (for they have ill-effects on opposing players) started playing Crazy Pepe's Chug & Toss. Not a good combination. Because at one point, Kevin Brown was standing on the mound with one out in the sixth and a 2-0 lead, and at another point some twenty minutes later he was sitting in the clubhouse with his team behind 5-2 with only one out in the sixth. And all you can think as you scrub yourself a little too vigorously, trying to get the bad things out, is, "I really shouldn't have hit that guy."

Now, when Brown was pulled out the game, his team was only losing 3-2, which to the Yankees is really just a challenge, rather like All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi was to Batgirl for her Birthday Eve dinner tonight, which she's sort of suffering from now--but that's not the point. The point was there was a moment where this game was lost for the Yanks, and it was not in the top of the eighth when Jesse Crain saw that JC Romero had made a mess and promptly put on his pink frilly apron and got out his Swiffer and cleaned that mess up so well that the inning just SPARKLED, it was BETTER THAN BEFORE, I mean you could see your FACE IN IT, you could EAT OFF THAT INNING, but, no, that was not when the game was lost for the Yanks. Nor was it lost in the bottom of the eighth when Mike "Feet First" Ryan came up with two outs and a runner on third and got back the run Romero had lost; nor when Hunter, still bubbling, got a bases-loaded single two batters later for insurance run number four; nor even when Jacque Jones followed with a two-run single to give the Twins a six-run lead. No, the game was lost back in the sixth inning, right after Tanyon Sturtze came in to replace Brown and Michael Ryan stepped to the plate with the bases loaded. Ryan laid a perfect bunt down the third base line—oh! That bunt! Poetry could be written about that bunt! Women weep and men slay themselves and a thousand ships set sail over such a bunt!—and the Yankees seemed to fall apart. Sturtze couldn't catch it, Jorge "Get Me Out of Here" Posada couldn't field his throw, and Cuddy scored for the fourth run of the inning. It was a perfectly executed safety squeeze, and after Cuddy crossed the plate and clapped with joy, the camera flashed to Joe "Sword of Damocles" Torre in the dugout. Before our eyes, Torre leaned forward and his cheeks drooped and his wrinkles set in a little deeper. At that moment, he seemed to know—the game was over. The Yankees would lose the series. And Daddy was going to be pissed.

Now, BG takes no joy in the agony of Joe Torre—displayed again and again in Sunday's game as the camera showed him aging more each time his team bobbled balls, beaned batters, and generally bumbled around. Torre's an outstanding manager and doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve Steinbrenner's meglomanical, misguided wrath, nor does he deserve this aging band of muscle-bound fading superstars. Joe Torre deserves a team, one that can do things like execute safety squeezes, that can put together a roster of Triple A guys and B-teamers and still manage to execute like a fine machine, one that comforts its rage-crazed players by giving them five runs all wrapped in a bow.

Batgirl, for her part, did not need the five runs for her Birthday Eve present. All she needed was that bunt—simple, devastating, beautiful.

(But the series win doesn't hurt.)