Oakland at Twins. Athletics 8, Twins 2.

Before he made up his line-up this morning, Ron Gardenhire waited for his players to stagger into the dugout. After yesterday's 18-inning marathon, he had to find out who was still animate and breathing. But what about Batgirl? Did anyone check on Batgirl? Did anyone say, Gee, Batgirl, you sure gave it your all for 18 innings yesterday—how are you feeling today? Are you ready to go again today, or should we start Jose Offerman?

It's not that Batgirl would, in fact, say, "No, no, send in Jose," although she's sure he'd do a very nice job. It's just that she'd appreciate the consideration. For she still has not emotionally recovered from yesterday's game, and she feels pretty strongly that if she is to endure an 18-inning game, the Twins really should go ahead and win the thing. And, conversely, if the A's were going to score 3 runs to win the !#%%@#$?% game, wouldn't the eighth or ninth inning be a good time to do that?

Well, today, the Oakland A's were kind enough to oblige. And Batgirl appreciates it, she does. These past few days have been really hard on her; her fingernails are all gone and a few of the BatCurls have gone grey. The BatKitties have been wandering around the house looking like haunted creatures, dazedly batting at invisible flies and meowing incoherently to themselves. Or is that Jeb?

Anyway, for a few innings at least, it looked like another nail-biter. The Twins struck first, yadda yadda yadda. In the fifth inning, Oakland came back with a run to tie it up, but then Luis Rivas went yard in the bottom of the inning. So the Twins had the lead again, for about five more minutes.

That's when Kyle Lohse got tired of pitching well. I mean lots of people pitch well, you know? But if you want to distinguish yourself, I mean really truly distinguish yourself, you've got to pitch really poorly. You've got to start walking the lead-off hitter and then loading the bases with no one out. Yes, Kyle, that's the way! These are confused times, and that's the only way to really make a stand.

That gets us to Aaron Fultz. After seeming like a reasonable facsimile of a bullpen pitcher yesterday, he came out today to replace Lohse in the top of the seventh with two men on, and then he promptly beaned Eric Chavez. That's one way of keeping Chavez's bat out of the equation, I guess. That put Mark McLemore on third base and allowed Scott Hatteberg to score the A's (sigh) fifth run.

You'd think that would have been enough, but oh, no. I don't know exactly what happened to Fultz then, but when he came out in the eighth inning he clearly thought he was throwing BP. "Nice hit, Goldilocks!" he shouted when Eric Byrnes lined a leadoff single to center. "Oooh, you really knocked the snot out of that one," he enthused to Marco Scutaro as he rounded second. "Oooh, Good eye!" he winked at Adam Melhuse after walking him to load the bases.

Then it was time for Jesse Crain, who in his first appearance last week and again last night showed a great deal of mettle. Today, he rusted. First a wild pitch, then a four-pitch walk to Bobby Big League Kielty, and by the time the inning was over, four runs had scored and Batgirl was officially no longer anxious about the game.

The bad news is, while we played the A's pretty closely, we lost 3 of 4 to them. The good news is we don't have to play them anymore…in the regular season, that is. And if we do meet the A's in the postseason, at least we can say that now we've had a pretty good look at their team.

BatNote: Batgirl got this e-mail from reader Gustavo today and it cheered her up immensely:

…did you know that Henry Blanco has a nickname back in his (and my) native Venezuela? Some of his Caracas Lions buddies (where he plays in winter ball) call him "Cara 'e mango" ("Mango face"). I almost fell off my chair last December after a TV commentator mentioned it.

So here's to you, Mango Face!

Posted by Batgirl at August 9, 2004 03:53 PM