No doubt sports fans in many cities believe that their teams are jinxed or cursed. But Minnesota fans have had a special, objective basis for feeling put upon: our Twins had lost a world-record-in-any-sport 18 consecutive postseason games. It is a unique distinction–they had to be good enough to often make the postseason, but not good enough, year after year, to win a game.
If the chance of winning a given postseason baseball game is 50%, which is close, and if my math skills are intact, the odds against losing 18 in a row are 262,144 to one. So maybe it was just extraordinarily bad luck, or maybe, at some point, the streak got into the players’ heads. Or maybe it was just that we kept facing those damn Yankees in the first round.
That all changed this year. The Twins stormed into the postseason, hot, with a very good pitching staff and a makeshift, injury-plagued lineup. As champions of the AL Central, we faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the initial, wild card round. The first game was played on Tuesday, and the Twins won 3-1 behind Pablo López and (as usual these days) multiple relievers. Budding superstar Royce Lewis, coming back from injury, knocked in all the runs with two home runs. And the streak was broken.
Game 2 was played yesterday afternoon. Courtesy of a vendor, my organization had four tickets to the game, and I got one of them. It turned out that our seats were in the first row (only a handful of people on folding chairs, on the ground, in front of us), just up the line from first base. We had a ringside view of the action, and I was reminded that there is no such thing as a routine ground ball. When you are almost on top of first base, every infield play is exciting.
Once again, pitching and fielding predominated. Twins starter Sonny Gray battled early, but kept the Jays off the board. He wound up going five innings without giving up a run. Twins fielding was superb throughout, but the key play came in the top of the fifth. The Jays had runners on second and third with two out. Sonny Gray and shortstop Carlos Correa brilliantly executed a pickoff that they had been planning for a while. They caught Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a step too far off second and Correa applied the tag:
The fans went berserk, but Guerrero and the Jays wanted the play reviewed. As the umps studied the video, three views of the pickoff were played on Target Field’s big screen. The third one, in particular, showed that the call was correct. The crowd went crazy again.
The Twins scored two early and made the lead stand up. One of the guys I was with filmed this from our seats near first base. Max Kepler beats out an infield single:
After the fifth, the Twins sent a succession of relievers to the mound, each one pitching an inning. That is modern baseball, of which I don’t entirely approve. The Blue Jays started former Twin Jose Berrios, still a fan favorite in Minnesota, and he was pitching great. He kept the ball down and was mowing down the Twins. We were stunned, but delighted, when Toronto’s manager lifted him in the bottom of the fourth, after just 47 pitches. The score was 0-0 at the time, but the Twins went on to score their two runs in that inning.
The pitchers’ duel continued until the top of the ninth, when the Twins brought in their closer, Jhoan Durán. Duran is likely the hardest thrower in the world, clocking in routinely at 104 and 105 mph, while also having command of other pitches. When he came out to start the ninth, the Twins went through their usual Duran routine: lights were dimmed, fans held up their cell phones with lights on, dramatic music played, and flames danced around the stadium:
Duran started to warm up, then stopped after a few pitches to study his hand. Trainers and others gathered around the mound while we fans wondered what was going on. The same thought flashed through all of our minds: star reliever comes on in the ninth and injures himself during warmups. Someone else replaces him and we go on to lose the game. What could be more Twins-like than that?
It turned out that Duran had somehow cut himself with a fingernail. You can’t pitch if you are bleeding, so the trainers had to get his hand in shape to pitch. That was finally accomplished, but Duran then started pitching for real by throwing two fast balls that were a foot and a half high. Oh oh. But he then settled down and struck out the side. After the final strike three the players and fans celebrated. Now it is on to Houston to play the Astros:
After a few minutes, someone led the players’ families on to the field, right in front of us. Some were older, but there were a lot of pretty young women with small children–a reminder of how young most professional athletes are.
Of course, you can’t draw a lot of lessons from a single baseball game. But I had more fun at yesterday’s game than at any sports event I have attended since the 1991 World Series. (The next contender is a Japanese League game I saw in Osaka some years ago, but that is another story.) Mostly that was because the Twins won, partly because the dreaded losing streak is at an end, partly because it was a taut, well-played game. And partly because the new rules mean that the game moves smartly along. A year ago, the same game would have taken another half-hour to play. On this, I agree with veteran sportswriter Pat Reusse: the new rules are a good thing.
An evening at the ball park (Target Field, a truly great stadium) in the company of 38,000 more or less crazed fans, with a dramatic victory by the home team, confirmed my view that baseball is still the master sport. All others are competing for second place.
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