Dear Batgirl,

I’ve been a Twins fan all my life. I was there in ‘87 and again in ‘91. Due to a miracle almost equal to the one we witnessed, my dad and I sat two rows behind home plate when Kirby went deep in Game 6. I was there again in game 7, about 100 rows further back in the upper deck, to watch Jack Morris bring it home. But that game 6 was special. A postseason ball game, shared with the two heroes in my life, Kirby Puckett and my dad. I never thought the Twins would be capable of moments like that ever again. I mean, how could they? That is, of course, until this year….

I moved out to the Bay Area back in 2001. Every spring since then, I’ve happily signed that $160 check to DirecTV for my MLB Extra Innings package. I joked with a friend of mine that DirecTV could raise the price of the package to $5000 and I would (happily) still pay. I would say something like, “Jeez, I guess it’s a little steep this year but….” Twins baseball isn’t a luxury for me, it’s a necessity. A close second to oxygen.

Much to the chagrin of my girlfriend, I watch about 130+ games a year. I am a TIVO surgeon. When I’m not there to catch the games live, I turn off all forms of communication until I can get back to my TIVO to watch them blissfully unaware of the outcome. When traveling, I follow the games and scores on the internet. When there is no internet, I call 1-800-TELL-ME to get in-game scores. When I can get no updates, my head spins wildly thinking about what I might be missing. But, when my beloved ball club annually visits its west-coast counterpart in Oakland, I never go.

It didn’t always used to be like that. When I moved out here in ’01, my college roommate, a Red Sox fan by birth, was working for the Oakland A’s. As a job perk, he had two season tickets and access to more when necessary. For the first season or two, my Minnesota friends and I used him frequently to get tickets whenever the Twins were in town. And, without fail, every time that I drove over to the Net (now McAfee Coliseum) to watch the Twins, they lost. So when the postseason rolled around in 2002, I made a declaration that I would not go to any of the games. My friend, of course offered his tickets to me, which I gave to two other friends of mine. The Star & Tribune actually ran an article in which Everyday Eddie Guardado mentioned some crazy Twins fans waving their home hankies from their seats right by the Twins dugout. These were my friends, Charlie and Tom, sitting in my seats. When game 5 rolled around, my friend Paul, who worked for the A’s, pulled off another minor miracle; 8 seats together on the third-base line. Would I like to go to the game? Hell yes. But I would never do that to my team. Instead, I called every Minnesota fan I knew in the Bay Area and filled those seats. And I watched the game alone in my girlfriend’s apartment, my 2002 “Proud and Loud” homer hanky waving wildly.

It was a game for the ages. AJ’s homer off of Koch was one of the most electrifying moments in Twins’ history. And I, of course, was not there to see it. If these 2006 Twins manage to climb out of the 0-2 hole that they’ve dug, it will be an achievement greater than AJ’s insurance blast. Maybe even equal to Kirby’s game 6 heroics. And no matter what happens, I will not be there to see it.

A few hours ago, shortly after the Twins fell to the A’s for the second time in as many days, I received a message from my friend Paul who no longer works for the A’s. It said simply, “Keep the faith” This from a man who knows the fallibility of the A’s as well as anyone; who repeatedly had his hopes for a World Series ring dashed when the A’s couldn’t get past the first round. So, per his instruction, when I watch Radke take the bump on Friday, waving my homer hanky like a wild man, I will keep the faith.

Keep the faith Twins Nation,

Al Sullivan