Twins fall to Yankees no reason for panic
By John Gilbert
If you’ve been watching the 2010 Major League Baseball playoffs, you’ve seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. Great pitching, great hitting, great defensive plays, and, on the other side, some surprisingly lousy pitching, some ineffective hitting, and some botched defensive plays. Unfortunately, the overriding factor you take away from a lot of the games is how some blown umpires calls can affect the outcome of a game, or in some cases, a season.
The Minnesota Twins just happened to be the prime example. But not the only one. The Twins had Game 2 of their three-and-out series with the Yankees take an ugly turn when a clearly blown strike three call that would have ended the seventh inning was called a ball, and the next pitch wound up triggering a rally that sank the Twins 5-2. It was fun to watch the other games, with the Phillies handling Cincinnati much the same as the Yankees handled the Twins, and San Francisco stifling Atlanta in the National League.
When Texas went to Tampa Bay and beat the Rays twice, I winced, because I like to watch the Rays. In that series, an ump called a ball on a checked swing, then asked the third-base ump for verification, and he, too, said there was no swing. The replay showed clearly that the head of the bat had gone across home plate, so both umpires blew it. It happens, because they’re human. Often, you watch a baseline umpire seem too eager to call a strike when it appears the batter holds up, only to have slow-motion replays vindicate the call by proving the bat crossed the plate farther than what the viewer would have guessed. This time, the umps were unusually conservative, and, as fate would have it, the next pitch — bang! — game-changing hit. That call was vitally responsible for the Rays to go down 2-0 in games and having to go to Texas, just as the Twins had to go to New York down 2-0.
The difference, though, was the Rays erupted, found their old groove, and beat Texas both games. That sent the series back to Tampa Bay for a deciding Game 5. Texas won Game 5 with a strong performance, meaning the road team won all five games. But it doesn’t matter who won at that point, it wa’s a great series. Just as, if the Twins had beaten the Yankees twice in New York, forcing Game 5 at Target Field, even Minnesota fans could have lived with whatever outcome evolved.
As for the Twins, before the playoffs I suggested a major concern about the series. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, a man I greatly admire, had given a number of Twins time off during the last two weeks of the regular season, and the Twins wound up losing eight of nine. Joe Mauer, who might be the best hitter in baseball, was rested, and probably needed it. But he had been the hottest hitter on the hottest team before the late swoon. I mentioned that when a hot team is hot, there’s no susbstitute for that rhythm of success, but when the hot hand goes away, there is no way to automatically get it back.
I identified my concern as a bad premonition if the Twins were to falter against the Yankees, and I think that’s the best explanation for what happened. You could say the Twins always seize up against the Yankees at playoff time, and that would be correct. You could point to pivotal umpire calls, which turned an inning, a game, and maybe a series. But mostly, there was no rhythm, no semblance of the red-hot Twins we got to know and love from the All-Star break on. And Joe Mauer, the face of the Twins, had an expression of concern throughout that series. He looked like anything but the best hitter in baseball.
For 162 game a year, Joe’s habit works: He always takes the first pitch, and if it’s a ball, he generally keeps taking pitches until he gets a strike. Then he hits with amazing frequency. I’ve seen the trend of Mauer’s habit turn into a formula for opposing pitchers. It has allowed pitchers to establish a “book” on Mauer. They groove a fast ball for strike one, then get serious and deal with him. It makes Mauer’s achievements more noteworthy, because he is essentially giving himself only two strikes to hit. If I could counsel Joe Mauer, I would suggest that he makes one small alteration in his habit. In one at-bat of each game, he should go to the plate with the idea that he’ll load up for the first pitch. If it’s anything but perfect, take it, as usual, but be looking for a fastball down the middle, and if you get it, swing from the heels. First of all, he’d probably double or triple his home run total, but more importantly, opposing pitchers would suddenly realize they no longer had a freebie on the first pitch. They’d become more careful on the first pitch, and Mauer would end up with a lot more 1-0, 2-0 and 3-1 counts, than always facing 0-1.
In the playoff series, looking out of sorts and still taking that first strike, Mauer looked awful at the plate. He struck out three times in one game. Granted it was CC Sabathia, one of the best left-handers in the game, who did it, but he did it with an easy first strike and then a bunch of breaking balls. In the final game, when Mariano Rivera came in to close it, Mauer led off. I was silently pleading for him to hit the first pitch. He didn’t. Rivera grooved less-than-his-best fastball for strike one, then threw three tough sliders that broke down in the dirt, and Mauer struck out.
Mauer wasn’t the only problem, but he was the poster boy for the Twins struggle. As a group the Twins were not hot. They played well in Game 1, taking a 3-0 lead, as Francisco Liriano outpitched Sabathia through five innings, but we knew the Yankees would come back, and they did, turning the game around and winning the opener. In Game 2, Carl Pavano matched Andy Pettitte in a 2-2 duel. Pavano walked Jorge Posada, and with two out was facing Lance Berkman. With a 1-2 count, Pavano threw a 91-mph fastball on the inside corner. Great pitch, impressive strikeout. Incredibly, umpire Hunter Wenderstedt called it a ball. The replay with the little strike-zone box showed the pitch was clearly over the plate, an inch or two in from the left edge, and it was belt-high. A textbook strike. Pavano, who had taken a stride toward the dugout, sure that it was a strikeout, stopped and went back up on the mound. Next pitch — bang! — line drive over Denard Span’s head in center. Instead of an inning-ending strikeout, there was a tie-breaking hit. Couple guys later, Derek Jeter singled in another, making it 4-2, and it wound up 5-2. Gardenhire came out to settle down Pavano and the team, and when he tossed his opinion of how Wenderstedt had affected the game, the ump threw him out.
Naturally, going to New York down 0-2 was different than being 1-1, and it wasn’t a second guess that I thought the 0-2 situation called for Gardenhire to alter his series plan. He had tabbed Brian Duensing as the starter. Duensing had been elevated to a starting role back when the young Twins pitching staff was terribly inconsistent. His off-speed southpaw hurling was effective in letting the Twins get by for many games. Later in the season, when the Twins got hot, I thought harder-throwing pitchers such as Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey and Nick Blackburn all had gotten things together pretty well. At least until that late, reserve-filled stumble, when more than the starting pitching was lacking. Starting Duensing if the series was 1-1 would have been an intriguing experiment. But down 0-2, with the season on the line, I would have been more comfortable with Baker, Slowey, or Blackburn starting. All three of them can throw harder than Duensing, who might have been a huge improvement from what was going on in the bullpen.
Listening to the national ESPN radio broadcast of the games, where John Miller again proves he’s the best play-by-play man in baseball, former pitcher Orel Hersheiser was his color man.In the fourth inning, when the Yankees were up 2-0, Hersheiser mentioned that at that point, Duensing had not yet thrown a single strike where the Yankees had swung and missed. Now, that is insight. Sneaking around the corners for a strike is one thing, but every time a Yankee swung at a Duensing pitch, there was contact. Ouch! Sure enough, the Yankees shelled him. Baker came in to relieve and threw an impressive 1-2-3 inning, and even though he later gave up a home run, at least he threw a half-dozen pitches right past the Yankee hitters. The damage, however, had long been done in a 6-1 loss to end the Twins season.
When it was over, all the cynics jumped on the Twins as being woefully inept. No, they weren’t. They weren’t on top of their game, but still they were only a solid hit here, or a good umpire’s call there, away from winning a game or two. Winning one, at any time in the series, might have gotten the Twins untracked. True, the Yankees have the Twins number, but everyone is acting as though the Twins are awful, and that the Yankees are invincible. In reality, the Yankees are very good, and they rise up to play their absolute best at playoff time. Suddenly the pitchers all look good, and their lineup suddenly looks potent throughout.
But the Yankees were the American League’s wild-card team, losing the East Division race to Tampa Bay. That was one reason I was pulling for Tampa Bay to beat Texas. The Rays are NOT intimidated by the Yankees, and they could — and I think would — beat them head-on in the league final. Texas did the job anyway, proving to be cool and poised, and it was interesting to watch the Yankees appear less than supremely confident in that series.
In the National League, the Phillies, with the best starting pitchers in baseball, needed a four-error meltdown by Cincinnati to overcome a 4-0 Reds lead in Game 2, and went on to eliminate the National League’s best scoring team in three straight, while San Francisco knocked out Atlanta. That made for a great National League final series, where the Giants unseated the Phillies.
As usual, the World Series promised to be a fun party. Too bad the Twins misplaced their invitation.
The critics continue to insist that the Twins need wholesale changes. They don’t. It’s all in the attitude, and the doomsayers who are demanding wholesale trades because of the playoff setback are more fragile than the Twins. In fact, without a single change, the Twins will be easy favorites to repeat as division champs. There is no rule that the Yankees must play better than they are against the Twins, or that the Twins must face the Yankees with the attitude that a safe is about to fall on their heads from the top of the Empire State Building. If Justin Morneau comes back from the lingering concussion effects, we can count on that young pitching staff to be better, incrementally, and the Twins will be fun to watch. It would even be fun to see a rematch against the Yankees in the playoffs.
Chevy Volt performance? Electrifying!
Chevrolet's plug-in Volt commutes without gasoline.
By John Gilbert
ROCHESTER, MICH. — We’ve all heard about the Chevrolet Volt, through five years of hyperbole and breathless promotion. But finally, Chevrolet’s plug-in electric car is ready to start production as a 2011 model, with a few prototypes already hitting the streets and highways. First drive experiences indicates it might be better than the most enthusiastic claim from the always enthusiastic staff that remains in the rebuilt General Motors.
The Volt might inspire a brave new world in automotives, and it certainly could become the vanguard indicating that Chevrolet and GM could return to automotive technical prominence. The Volt is sleekly styled, somewhere between compact and subcompact size. It’s heavy, because its primary drive system is a battery pack and two electric motors, along with its backup gas engine. And, it’s expensive, costing just over $40,000 and probably fetching closer to $43,000 after production gets going by the end of November. Read more
EcoBoost paces F150’s 4 new engines
Black grille available on 2011 EcoBoost Ford F150.
By John Gilbert
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — When Ford redesigned its popular F150 pickup truck, it connected every objective to maintain its 33-year-old title as largest-selling vehicle in the U.S. The assorted V6 and V8 engines Ford offered in the half-ton pickups seemed adequate enough, but Ford decided it could upgrade all of them for 2011.
Riding the crest of a technical wave, Ford is offering four new engines in the F150, starting with a base 3.7-liter V6, then to a high-revving 5.0 V8 adapted from the Mustang GT, and up to the 6.2 V8 built for the larger SuperDuty pickups. The coup de grace is the smallest but arguably the most potent — the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6, which is aimed at convincing truck buyers that refining and turbocharging the smallest-displacement offering results in far more than just “the little engine that could.”
Distinctive for its new horizontal-bar grille, all four engines have specific purposes, and all represent a shift to high-tech powerplants that are both more powerful and more economical. Ford unveiled the new arsenal in Fort Worth, Texas, where waves of media showed up to drive them through various tests against top opposition from Chevrolet and Dodge on area highways and freeways, including competitive towing and handling exhibitions. Read more
Field of Dreams can be a Natural
First-round Senior tournament action at Union Hill's Field of Dreams.
By John Gilbert
The movie “Field of Dreams” is a classic for anyone who has ever played, watched, or heard about the game of baseball at the small town level. It rivals “The Natural” for being the most intriguing baseball movie ever made.
The Natural is more of a drama, about a fictional character who makes a magical bat out of a peculiar chunk of wood and it powers him to fame. Field of Dreams is different, more of a whimsical story about the magic of the game of baseball. It’s hard to pick out the best part of Field of Dreams, where a farmer in Iowa decides to build a ballfield out in the corn, inspired by the motto, “If you build it, they will come.” The field is built, looking like a giant emerald, and, sure enough, Shoeless Joe Jackson and a bunch of ancient ballplayers emerge out of the tall cornstalks to play on that field.
Maybe the movie is especially captivating to those who have been to a small town that really cares about its ballpark. Those of us in the…uh…”senior” category have been feeling the inspirational fire every year, playing in the Minnesota Senior Men’s Amateur Baseball League, for those over 35. This is a league started 31 years ago by a guy named Duane Gaulke, who lives down in Jordan, Minnesota, a small town off Hwy. 169 after you’ve driven through Shakopee and are headed for Belle Plaine, or Mankato. Gaulke was getting older, slowing down a bit, and he could sense the young lions coming up to force him and his equally aging contemporaries out of the game. Normally, that means they gracefully become fans, reduced to occasionally reminiscing about the good ol’ days.
So Gaulke concocted a set of rules to organize a league for players 35 and over. No young pups allowed. He declared each of nine innings would start with one out, and each at-bat would start with a 1-and-1 count. The games would be fast, less than two hours, rather than high-scoring. Batters would go up swinging instead of taking pitches, and the pitcher would pitch a complete game and still function at his real-world job come Monday. The rules worked, and the league grew. Gaulke, the everlasting commissioner, conceded only in recent years to switch to seven innings with three outs, but retaining the abbreviated count.
I was working at the Minneapolis Tribune when a fellow called me up to tell me about the league, which was going into its third season, and how it might be a good story. Heck with the story, I wanted to play. After joining the Burnsville team for that season, I started my own team — the Shoreview Hawks. Since I was coaching my sons’ teams, I recruited some athletic-looking dads to start the team. That was 27 years ago. . At the time, the teams were all in the Minnesota River Valley, and we were the only team north of Bloomington. The league proliferated, and several other competing leagues have sprung up. We’re still at it, although it’s more of a haul, splitting time between Duluth and the Twin Cities. But we only play a game or two each week, from late May until early August.
And then we have our state tournament, which is right now. It takes two weekends, with each team assured four games, and it incorporates all the teams from our league’s three divisions, plus a northwestern Minnesota league contingent that comes down for a season-ending highlight. The beauty of it is that we get to play at those small towns with their own Fields of Dreams, as we live those dreams. Or relive memories, take your pick.
The Shoreview Hawks are not going to win the championship this year. Again. We were tournament runners-up in our first three years of existence, but in recent years, our fortunes have faded. We were always competitive when we had two outstanding pitchers, which is no surprise, but one of them left to play for a team nearer to where he lives, and the other was lured away by a guy hand-picking a better team from selected players on existing teams. But we keep playing, with the same objective as always: Play the best we can, play for the love of the game, and enjoy being as competitive as possible within the scope of having good guys more than star players. Noble concepts, those, and, unfortunately, they pretty much always fall short against superior pitching, hitting and defense.
This season, we don’t win, but we invent extremely creative ways to not win. One game we rallied from a 5-1 deficit to tie the game in the last inning, only to lose 6-5 in extra innings when our outfielder’s perfect one-hop throw to the plate would have foiled a tag-up from third — except that we executed a perfect cutoff on the throw and the winning run scored. Another time we were in a 0-0 game and gave up two runs in the sixth on a shocking dropped fly ball — only to come back when our newest player, playing in his first game, got his first hit in the top of the seventh to drive in two runs for a 2-2 tie. Then we played extra innings until it was too dark to continue, and we had to settle for a tie.
We’ve pitched better as the season has progressed, played pretty good defense, but not consistently, and we’ve hit sporadically, and we certainly haven’t done all three in the same game.
For us, the tournament opened in Union Hill, a tiny town south of Jordan and west of New Prague. Somehow, our catcher, shortstop, centerfielder and third baseman all misjudged the distance from their Twin Cities homes, and failed to arrive until only a few minutes to game time. It happens, at this level, and all you can do is stall the nice lady trying to get my lineup sheet for the public address announcer. We lost 6-1 to Northfield in a game I thought we’d win.
We lost Sunday in Jordan, too, in another game I was sure we could win. This time, we walked the bases loaded in the top of the first, then on a grounder up the middle, our shortstop fielded it, stepped on second and threw to first for a double play, after which our first baseman spotted the runner trying to score from third and threw him out at the plate for a triple play. The only one I’ve ever seen or heard about in this league. But four pitchers went on to walk so many guys the Minneapolis Bombers didn’t need to get many hits to beat us 16-4. Other than our pitching, hitting and defense, we stayed right with ’em.
I feel a little bit like Charlie Brown, because we seem to lose, game after game, but I’ve never anticipated we wouldn’t win.
We played early enough both days that I could drive around that rural farmland and watch games in Veseli and Shakopee, as well. Shakopee has the newest and slickest field in the league, which figures, because it’s basically a Minneapolis suburb now, with lots of residents, and a raised sophistication. It also happens that Shakopee was undefeated all season to win their division, and they entered the tournament as heavy favorite.
Veseli is another tiny town, south of Prior Lake and east of New Prague, nestled down there near Webster and Lonsdale — which also have teams and neat ballparks. Every player on Veseli’s team comes out to work on the field, while other residents flip burgers and sell soft drinks. The Veseli field is another shrine to small-town perfection, with an American flag flying from the left-field foul post, and a Czech flag flying with equal pride from the right-field foul post. I love flags, but I’m not sure if that flag represents the Czech Republic, or the previous nation of Czechoslovakia. Doesn’t matter, actually, because Czechoslovakia is where most Veseli residents can trace their heritage. .
A new player on our team, who moved to Minnesota from out of the state, was wide-eyed when he got to Union Hill’s field. It has a short but high fence in left that’s short enough to not intrude on the barn out there. From the barn, rows of corn 7 feet high completely surround the fence as it curves from center field to right field, and beyond, on and on, all the way to Hwy. 19. The modest little grandstand is in the shade, and the concession stand is under the public address booth. The whole scene caused our newcomer to say, “This IS the field of dreams!” He couldn’t wait to snap some keepsake photos of the place.
Part of the attraction is hanging around after the game to watch the next one, and maybe compare notes and heckles with teammates and opponents. That’s part of the whole scene, as are the grilled burgers with fried onions, which taste better there than anywhere else. Especially at Union Hill, where you can choose between beef or pork sausage patties. Or, for an extra buck, you can coax them into putting one of each on the same bun.
Another treat of playing at both Jordan and Union Hill is the best shortcut between the two towns is a small highway that gets you to a little dirt road where Lyle Lambrecht lives. Lambrecht used to play in the league, and since retiring, he started messing around making bats. Now he’s turned it into an art form. There are other bat makers in Minnesota, and elsewhere, now that wood bats are becoming prominent again, but Lambrecht Bats are something special. If pressed, I’d bet the others might actually be a bit better, but every single one of Lyle’s bats has its own personality.
Lyle Lambrecht, in his studio with a few of his friends.
He gets ash, and maple, and birch from the Adirondacks, and he gets a bit of mystery wood, which, he says, is like a cross between the hardest maple and the next-hardest birch. Ash, the lightest and most common, is easiest to swing, but also easiest to break on those blasted inside curveballs. You walk into the first little building where Lyle works, and it is like an amateur baseball shrine. There are bats in all sizes, length and weight, and type of wood. If you want a bat and you heft a dozen supposedly identical bats, you will find several you prefer, and if you work at it, you can eliminate them, down to the best one or two. At $40 apiece, you are buying a work of art, personalized with your name inscribed. And it could be an implement that could help your batting average.
I’ve bought several Lambrecht Bats for the team to use, and a couple of special ones that I stash away for my own private use. My older son, Jack, plays for us now, too, and he’s a talented hitter. He didn’t know it, but I went up to Lambrecht’s last Sunday and bought him a belated birthday present, with his name inscribed on the barrel. Now he’ll hit even better.
I hope he feels the magic, because now that I think about it, getting your hands on one of those personally selected Lambrecht Bats, and carrying it onto one of those fabulous fields, is more than just special. It is like giving you the opportunity to combine both your own Field of Dreams AND The Natural.
We go back at it this weekend. The Hawks never seem to win, but we’re going to win Saturday. I’m sure of it. Or Sunday. Or maybe both. And if we don’t? Well, it’s been a heck of a season.
Fast hook costs Slowey chance for no-hitter
By John Gilbert
So you’re the manager of the Minnesota Twins, and you’ve earned consistent praise for operating a winning ballclub, always contending for the pennant. You’ve got some concerns, such as the absence of Justin Morneau with lingering effects of a concussion, and the sore-shoulder layoff of catcher Joe Mauer. But your biggest concern has been pitching.
As has been discussed here, the problem early was the starting pitching, but that was mainly because the relief staff often seemed to function as though they were throwing gasoline on opposing fires, rather than putting them out. But now, as we head into the stretch drive for another pennant, the starting pitching has come around right well. Brian Duensing, elevated from a relief role to spot starter, threw a complete-game shutout the other day, and it was positively masterful.
That was the last remaining concern on the starting rotation. Well, that, and the fact that Kevin Slowey had to miss a turn with a minor elbow problem.
As manager, you send Slowey out to the mound to face the Oakland A’s in a midsummer assignment at Target Field. Slowey, in his first start in almost two weeks, couldn’t have been better. He got through inning after inning, and the TV guys waited until about the sixth inning to inform the audience that Slowey had not given up a hit. It’s bad luck to mention it, of course, but announcers have to bend to their primary role, which is informing the populace of what the heck is happening.
The Twins had staked Slowey to an early 1-0 lead. Joe Mauer — who is on such a roll that he is surging toward yet another batting title (you read it here first) — drilled another couple of hits and helped account for the run. That lasted until late in the game, when the drama of a 1-0 no-hitter was suddenly ballooned to 4-0 when Jim Thome smacked a 3-run home run.
But now you, as manager, are watching closely. You have a general rule that you don’t like pitchers to go over 100 pitchers in a start. It’s an arbitrary rule, but it’s your rule. Slowey used to have a history of going through four innings well, then getting bombed in the fifth or sixth. He became better and more consistent as the season progressed, but this day — Sunday — he might be more delicate than ever, just coming off the nonstart and sore arm. So you watch him closely. In the seventh, he walks one, and hits another, but gets out of trouble by inducing a hard-hit shot that becomes a double play.
Lucky? Yes, but that’s what it takes to throw a no-hitter. Slowey also was lucky a couple times when his outfielders made sensational catches, over their heads. But because the walk, hit batsman, and hard-hit double play had just occurred, you, as manager, are faced with a tough choice.
Do you let Slowey go out to pitch the eighth, having already thrown 106 pitches? Or do you follow your trusty “book” to bring in a reliever and chalk it up to a great night’s work?
Lat’s make an aside here. Pitchers used to start in a rotation of four, and they would pitch with no pitch count, always attempting to go the distance. A complete game was the measure of a pitcher’s worth, really, right after number of wins. Often, although counts weren’t kept, I’d bet that starting pitchers 25 years ago or so often pitched over 125, maybe 150 pitches. They’d be sore the next day, maybe a little joint stiffness, although icing down the arm did wonders to rellieve the problems. Three days later, they were ready to throw again, and four days later, they were back out on the mound, striving again for a complete game.
In the current method, pitchers throw on five-day rotations, and with the corps of rellievers set up by every team, starters go 5-6 innings, then turn the game over to a middle reliever, then a “set-up”man, and then, in the ninth, if it’s close enough, the closer gets to finish off the game. The Twins have used this style, and it has worked very well. Or has it?
When Johan Santana was the Twins ace, he would never be allowed to pitch over 100 pitches, and he never threw complete games. After he got traded, it took awhile, but in his first season, I heard a national TV announcer say that Santana was great, although “he’s not the sort of pitcher who can go nine innings.”
That offended me, because Santana certainly was the type, but he was never allowed to go nine innings. After some strong seasons, Santana now is capable of going the distance often.
It’s all a matter of conditioning. As someone who has pitched a fair amount in amateur baseball, I can tell you that if you go seven innings, or nine innings, it makes a difference in how sore you might be the next day. But sometimes you can throw only four or five innings and feel spent, and other times you can go all the way and feel like you might be able to go right on and pitch another couple of innings. Maybe that equates to a major leaguer throwing 140 pitches when he’s rolling, and getting the outs, while sometimes maybe he’s spent after 80 pitches, or six innings, when things aren’t going so well.
There are two points here. First, if you are conditioned to throw 130 pitches and go nine innings, you can still be 100 percent recovered after four days of rest. And the more you do it, the easier it is to do. On the other hand, if you are never allowed to go the distance, or to go over 100 pitches, then — guess what? — you will never be able to do it. The overriding thing about going longer and conditioning better is that it’s not as though turning the game over to the Twins relief corps is any sure thing. More often than not, it’s a disaster. You could look it up.
So Kevin Slowey looked tired in the sixth, and more weary in the seventh. Ron Gardenhire pulled him after seven innings, because he had thrown 106 pitches, and, no-hitter or not, he wasn’t going to let him throw more, for fear of reinjuring his arm. Turns out, Jim Thome’s 3-run homer made it 4-0, so the cushion was there. The relievers came striding in from the bullpen, yielding an immediate hit, then another, and giving up a run in the eighth. More rellievers came in for the ninth, gave up a couple more hits, and another run. Finally the Twins held on for a 4-2 victory.
Slowey got the victory, and the Twins won to stay hot. The media throng turned out in chorus to back Gardenhire’s cautious move, raving that Slowey obviously was finished, protecting his arm, and on and on…As second-guessers go, these guys are great. We can only wonder what they might have said had the relievers had more gasoline to throw on the fire and lost the game!
My feeling is a simple compromise. After seven innings, Gardenhire tells Slowey that he’s worried about him, but because he’s got a no-hitter going, and a chance for immortality, he can go back out for the eighth. Do your best, but if you falter, you’re immediately coming out.
Then if Slowey gives up a hit, give him the hook. If he continues with his incredible night-long run of good fortune, maybe he learns to pitch cleverly and slips by, inducing a pop fly here, a hard grounder there, and a long fly over there. Then he’s in the ninth, and we do it again, trusting that an extra dose of adrenaline might carry him. Maybe he can’t do it, and he gets pulled — but not until he gives up a hit.
Maybe, just maybe, he would have gotten through two more innings and completed a no-hitter. It would have been one of the most special moments in a very special season. And Kevin Slowey would have been a better pitcher — for having pushed himself to new levels of endurance, for having learned, maybe, how to out-duel a hitter here or there with fading stuff, and for having gutted out the greatest game he’s ever pitched.
Now we’ll never know. Except we do know that the Twins relief staff is still open to serious question — which makes my plan to stretch the starters farther and farther stand even taller.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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