Before she headed out of town to her place-without-the-Internet, Batgirl slipped the key to the blog under the door and said, "If there's something to say, RD, say it."
RD has something to say: THERE'S A PENNANT RACE GOING ON!
Not to sound like the voice in the Twins Territory commercials, but it's time to put aside anything that could distract from the task at hand and pay close attention. It's time to bring your casual-fan friends into the fold, making sure they understand that the next couple of weeks has the potential to determine our state of mind for the next few months.
Make sure they know that JustIncredible hits lefties now and Little Nicky Punto is more than a Tiny Superhero novelty. Make sure they know that Johan has been Joined by nine others whose first name begins with J, and they need to start learning which Jason is which, and how to tell a Josh from a Jason on the basepaths.
Make sure they know we didn't really mean a lot of the grumpy things we said back in April and May and early June.
Damn, RD loves pennant races. Most of the time, he finds it maddening to have only the Internet as his baseball lifeline for no-TV day games. (He lobbied hard for the TV above his desk, you know.) But this afternoon, he was tapping away at the GameDay page, keeping up with the twists and turns of the series-sweeper against the C-Rayz Walz, er, T-Bayz Rayz. When he wandered around his office floor, he saw others doing the same thing, others who had to make split-second decisions about whether to hide the GameDay screen depending on who was walking behind them.
Of course, many of those who would rat out a GameDay user are the same people who huddled around the secret TV to watch the British Open.
We wondered aloud what was up with El Presidente's control, walking three batters in the inning when he teased the Rays by letting them have a 3-1 lead. And we imagined what the RBI-singles by The Chairman and Cuddy looked like, the ones that turned a 3-3 tie into a 5-3 lead.
And we wondered if we would see the words: "RONDELL WHITE HOMERS" pop up on our screens.
And we weren't being sarcastic.
And some of us e-mailed someone special when young Twitch 'n' Pitch (d/b/a in the American League as Pat Neshek) protected the lead by striking out the side in the seventh. That's when we knew it was game over, seven in a row and time to start thinking about Cleveland.
Ah, Cleveland, baseball's birthplace of the offensive mascot and a place where the Twins stumbled badly during the season's discouraging first week. Cleveland, though, has been impersonating the Kansas City Royals in recent weeks and it's time to storm into town and get some revenge, starting tomorrow night when the Twins get an encore with whiny, corpulent Captain Cheeseburger.
Three games in Cleveland, three in Chicago against the Bitch Sox and then home for three with the Tigers.
THERE'S A PENNANT RACE GOING ON!
Finish strong, Yung Joc
meet us at the Jake
it's goin down
meet us at the Cell
it's goin down
meet us at the Dome
it's goin down
anywhere you meet us guaranteed to go down
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AN RD ADDENDUM: The other night, FSN put a mike on Little Nicky Punto and captured his chattering and grunting and everything else that's part of Nick at night at the Dome. While enjoying the show, the wonderful and talented Twins Goddess offered LNP some cautionary advice. Read it here.