JULY 3, 2009 -- DETROIT 11, MINNESOTA 9 (16 innings)

If ever there is a baseball team that should have won a game that they had trailed by six runs, it’s the Minnesota Twins. The Detroit Tigers prove to be a resilient team, rebounding from the huge shift in momentum that occurred when the Twins rallied to tie the score at seven in the middle innings. Then the game went on and on…and on and on…and on to the sixteenth inning. Fortunately for everyone involved, R.A. Dickey was the last pitcher left for the Twins, and he provided a flashback to April, when Dickey was one of the most hittable, slop-throwing pitchers I’ve ever seen. All the respect that Dickey had gained from this writer over the past few months he lost in three little innings in which he gave up nine hits and four runs. The Tigers’ run they scored in the fourteenth inning didn’t hold up, because the last pitcher in there bullpen was the shaky Freddy Dolsi, and the Twins quickly tied the score, but thanks to Justin Morneau and Dan Gladden, they couldn’t win the game. That’s because Gladden, who inexplicably was calling play-by-play in crucial extra innings, claimed that, after Dolsi had allowed hits to Joe Mauer and Morneau to start the inning, the Twins “were going to win this game because of Dolsi’s ineffectiveness.” Good one, Dazzle. After you mentioned that, you officially jinxed the Twins and they were certainly not going to win. Justin Morneau helped that cause in the very next at-bat, when he stupidly tried to go to third on Michael Cuddyer’s game-tying single. Morneau was easily thrown out, thereby committing the cardinal sin of getting making the first out at third base. Still not sure what Morneau’s thinking – dude, you’re not fast, and you don’t need to try to be Superman. Park your ass at second base and don’t be an idiot.

The game was really classic Twins – providing more than a glimmer of a hope that they would win the game, and then teasing fans for sixteen wretched innings just so they can lose. It was a dickhead effort in every sense of the word – if you were going to lose, why not just take that 6-0 deficit that Kevin Slowey put you in after the third inning, bring in R.A. Dickhead right then and there, and cruise to a 15-0 loss? Instead, the Twins had to get their money’s worth, tire out all their pitchers in the bullpen, make Joe Mauer catch all sixteen innings (most certainly he’ll DH today because of that) and embarrass their fans at the end of the game. The top of the sixteenth was an abomination in the Biblical sense, as Dickey was throwing batting practice to the Tiger hitters. Though the Twins patheticness was the hallmark of Friday’s game, the Tigers also have to be commended, as they showed everyone which of the two teams belonged in first place. Though they haven’t run away with it yet, making certifiable idiots like Dick Bremer get ants in his pants over the fact that the Twins are only four games out of first place, the Tigers are clearly the best team in this division. One thing that they proved on Friday is that they are able to win games that they should have lost. True, they had led the game by six runs, but after the fourteenth inning started, the Twins should have been able to get across the winning run. Good teams take advantage of their opponent’s mistakes; the Tigers did that in spades, while the Twins just couldn’t do enough.

I should apologize to my readers today, as I was unable to post an blog entry on Friday. Though Thursday was an off-day and I had no game to recap, I was planning to complete Matt Guerrier’s Doghouse post, but some unfortunate events occurred that had me flying to San Diego in a huff. See, some people would have heard of the 53-minute delay that occurred at Petco Park in San Diego on Wednesday, a delay that was caused by a mammoth swarm of bees. It was unfortunate to see the gentleman who was called upon to quell the situation and because of that, I needed to make a quick trip to San Diego on Friday. The apiarist that they called upon to take care of the bees was a Mr. Mark Goldsmith, who just so happened to be mentored by yours truly in the 1980s. Being the lone certified apiarist in the county in which I reside, I was the one to go to if you had apiarist ambitions, and Goldsmith was one of those people. Since he became certified, Goldsmith has resolutely turned his back on me and frankly I resent that. I know that this may not be the appropriate medium to utter these words, but Goldsmith and I are now rivals, and I happened to catch Goldsmith’s actions on Wednesday. Knowing that the cameras were rolling and that it may be the only time that he would get any exposure from his job, Goldsmith frankly was rude and condescending and as a fellow apiarist, I took great umbrage, so much so that I had to fly to San Diego and talk to a man that I had not spoken to in over ten years. He’s gone California with his career and has forgotten his roots, and I felt that I needed to speak to him desperately. When you’re in the bee business, you learn that it’s more often the people than the bees that really sting, and I hope that by talking to Goldsmith, he now understands that.

Francisco Liriano pitches tonight against Edwin Jackson. Liriano pitched well in St. Louis after turning in a terrible five-inning performance in Milwaukee. He’s won two games in a row, but I still think that Liriano is best suited for the bullpen. Jackson has been perhaps the best acquisition of any team from last offseason, and he’s a major reason that the Tigers are where they’re at. The game starts at 3 PM today.