Empyreal Environs

Game 151: September 19, 2006
Twins (89-61), 7
Red Sox (81-70), 3
W: Matt Garza (2-5)
H: Jesse Crain (7)
H: Dennys Reyes (12)
H: Juan Rincon (25)
L: Tim Wakefield (7-10)

On my dreary way to work yesterday I got a call from Matt of NU50. I was expecting some trash talk about the head-to-head league we compete in, but then I remembered that I made it past the quarterfinals and he did not. Instead, he had free tickets for the evening’s game. I thought how apt it would be to welcome the team back since we had also attended the final game of the last homestand. (Have you checked out the comments to that game, by the way? There’s some funny stuff there.)

It was far from an ideal evening at the park. We got there about an hour in advance of the first pitch. The stands were less than a third full by game time. Our row in the grandstand on the first base side was fairly full, and a very large man was right next to our block of tickets. We opted to sit in the nearly vacant row behind it.

Around the third inning, moseying in comes the holders of the tickets to our temporary seats. It was obvious they had gotten their seats thanks to some corporate boondoggle and had very little interest in the game itself. They asked us fairly politely to move and we did so. The group then proceeded to stagger themselves in the empty row and quite obviously take up more than their allotted number of tickets.

Their conversation consisted of occupational mundanities of which they had exhausted by the middle of the seventh inning. So, they left.

But not before one of them shared their insight on Justin Morneau’s double to the wall bounding left-center: “It’s a double, could be a triple.”

Matt replied, not so sotto voce, “It could be a triple...if the garage door opened, a bear sauntered out, and that bear mauled David Murphy.”

I wish there were a bear available to maul Morneau, who went five for five with two doubles. While the ursid was at it, he could also take out Jason Bartlett and Torii Hunter, both of whom homered off Tim Wakefield.

Wakefield did not have his best stuff, or much of anything, really. He lasted only three and a third innings and gave up six earned runs.

Matt Garza, though not the heir apparent to rookie ace Francisco Liriano, pitched a respectable five and two-thirds innings with a line of five hits, three earned runs, three walks, and four strikeouts. No Twins wanted to be part of Red Sox lore and give up David Ortiz’s 50th home run of the season.

We’ll have another chance on Thursday evening thanks to a friend not being able to make the trip to the Hub. I’ve circled the date on my calendar, and with any luck Bert Blyleven will circle me, too.