MAY 18, 2009 -- NEW YORK 7, MINNESOTA 6

Ron Gardenhire does his annual "let's lose four" in the Bronx and the Twins are swept in a four-game series by an admittedly mediocre Yankee team. Mediocrity or not, these games might as well be the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington Generals. Ron Gardenhire is the ideal coach for the bumbling Generals, and the Yankees continuous pummeling of the Twins is getting somewhat comedic. It sure makes for good entertainment if you're a Yankee fan (as you keep wondering if all these good things that people keep saying about the Twins aren't true) and absolute heartache for a Twins fan. With the loss, Gardenhire drops to 3-23 in the regular season in the Bronx and an incredible 16-44 career (including playoffs) against the Bombers. That's an unbelievably low .267 winning percentage -- just over once every four games does Gardenhire's Twins beat the Yankees. A team with a dead blind man managing the team could probably do as good as Ron Gardenhire does against the Yankees.

Same old story on Monday, however with a different twist. Glen Perkins did his best impression of pitching in the first inning, lasting one trip through the batting order before good ol' R.A. Dickey came in to save the day. By the time Perkins' night was through, he had given up six runs (four of which crossed the plate via the long ball) and gotten only two outs, one of which was a warning-track fly ball. Perkins topped his night off by giving up a pathetic hit to some guy named Francisco Cervilli -- yet another example of the Twins giving up hits to what I call "sore thumbs." They did it constantly last year with Jose Molina and they're back at it this year with Brett Gardner and Francisco Cervilli -- looking at that dreaded Yankee lineup, guys like Cervelli stick out like sore thumbs in the batting order and must be retired. Due to the one-run deficit at the end of the game, the hit to the sore thumb of the batting order was the difference of the game.

Dickey surprisingly mowed the Yankees down, but Ron Gardenhire was not satisfied with his bullpen putting zeroes on the board, so he put Luis Ayala into the game. Perhaps the worst pitcher in the American League, Ayala has continued to prove to everyone (except Ron Gardenhire, who has a demented sense of confidence in him) that he cannot get anybody out. Ayala was lucky to get through the sixth inning unscathed, but then he laid a 0-2 cookie right down the plate to Mark Teixeira leading off the seventh that he hit for a mammoth home run, which turned out to be the winning run in the ballgame. Hey, Gardenhire, are you watching the same game that I am? If Luis Ayala is able to pitch a scoreless inning, it's like you just got away with murder. You take him out of that game before the Yankees can process the fact that they were unable to get a run off of him. But, in another episode of "Gardy being Gardy," The Brain left Ayala in and the results were fantastic.

How 'bout Mike Redmond, folks? Representing the last out of the game, The Brain chose to go with Mike "No Gas Left in the Tank" Redmond to pinch hit for the pitcher-- er, Nick Punto. Redmond, facing left-hander Phil "Definitely Not Mariano Rivera" Coke, worked the count full and then started swinging at pitches feet from the strike zone. The game ended with Redmond literally swinging at a pitch half-way into the left-handed batter's box. For Pete's sake, Gardenhire, I could do that. Nick Punto could do that. Hell, I'd have sent up Jose Morales in that situation -- at least I've seen him get a hit that didn't make me want to puke. It was the perfect way to wrap up one of the most pathetic weekends of baseball I have ever seen in my life.

Why can't Gardenhire win in New York? It's pretty simple, I think. Gardenhire's well aware of his track record in the Bronx and he certainly lets his players know about that. There was a shot of Gardenhire Monday night after another failed scoring opportunity, shaking his head and chuckling to himself in disbelief. The failures in New York are so much a part of Gardenhire that it's the mentality that he conveys to his players. He's a scared manager managing a bunch of scared players. They are under the belief that it takes a perfect game to win in New York, so they play on pins and needles the entire time that they're there. If they could just relax and play their game, they'd do at least better than 3-23, which I don't think you could do if you tried to lose those games on purpose. Unfortunately, Gardenhire is a weak and shallow fool, and he imparts the fear of the Yankees that he experiences regularly to his players.

As it turns out, Glen Perkins had a bad elbow and that was the reason, aside from him sucking with a good elbow, that he was unable to finish one inning on Monday night. He was put on the disabled list and some guy named Sean Henn, he of a career record of 2-6 with a 7.56 ERA, was called up to replace him. With those numbers, it sounds like he'll fit into that bullpen real well.