LA at Twins. Twins 9, Dodgers 2.

In the 6th inning of tonight's game, Joe Mauer hit a single. The hit didn't do anything special, just moved LNP to third—but as one the Metrodome crowd got to their feet to applaud. The FSN cameras caught the faces of some of the fans—eyes full of wonder and delight, shaking their heads and muttering in awe to each other. You could hear the echoes from the future, I saw Joe Mauer when he was just 23, they will say to their kids. He went 5 for 5 against the Dodgers, and it was incredible… That's what the crowd was applauding on Mauer's fourth hit of the night and eighth of the series—the sense of greatness, the sense of history.

Upon watching the crowd's reaction, DickN'Bert started talking about seeing Rod Carew play—BG wasn't really sentient then, but she imagines it was something like this, some combination of joy and wonder, some electricity, some feeling that every beautiful hit resonates through baseball's past and its future.

Maybe Goober can tell us.

A player like Joe Mauer comes around once a decade, maybe two. The last truly great player we had—among plenty of very very good ones (And I'm not counting Winfield and Molitor who came to us when they had no futures on which to dream)—was Kirby Puckett. I remember when he went 11 for 12 against Milwaukee we tell our kids. It was incredible...

Yes, a player touched with greatness comes along once a decade. Unless, for some reason, you get three of them at once. There's Johan Santana, from whom greatness exudes from each pitch (and butt wiggle.) And when he doesn’t win the Cy Young, it will be because he loses it to the number 2 guy in the rotation, the Kid—his career is so young but with each strikeout he makes you stand up, eyes full of wonder and delight. Unless, of course, you're facing him, and then you stare helplessly off into the distance, wondering how just baseball gods could allow you to look like such a foolio, and you slink into the dugout muttering to yourself and questioning your whole belief system and your career choice and your parentage and possibly your sexuality because frankly, as embarrassing as it was, it was mad hot.

How many Hall of Famers do we have on this team? We can't say, of course, but we hear the echoes. Mauer. Liriano. Santana. If the Twins end up being the greatest third place team in history this season, we'll still be blessed, because we got to watch them play.