ALCS I

It was less than forty-eight hours ago that it occurred to me that I wanted tickets to the American League Championship Series between the Twins and the Angels.

I watched the Twins win on Sunday from my position curled into a ball on the blue recliner in my parents' living room. My mom and I kept looking at each other through that game -- which the Twins led 2-1 until the ninth inning -- and saying, "This lead will not hold up. They need more runs. We cannot do 2-1. Oakland has too much offense. This lead will not hold up." So we begged for insurance runs, and in the top of the ninth, we got them. Three of them. Went into the bottom of the ninth 5-1. And then our "brilliant" closer, "Everyday Eddie" Guardado, put two guys on in the bottom of the ninth, and then gave up a home run. 5-4. Oh, good. That won't give me a heart attack at all. We sat there, paralyzed, until Eddie finally got Ray Durham to fly out in foul territory to veteran handyman Denny Hocking, who was promptly crushed under the celebratory pileup and had his finger sliced open. He is out for the Anaheim series. Which is a very, very Twins thing to have happen.

Monday morning, I was trying to get into the swing at work, but I was reading some stuff online about this insane game we had played Sunday, and about the upcoming Anaheim series. If the Twins won it, they -- the team that wasn't even supposed to exist this season, had Major League Baseball had its way -- would go to the World Series. This team, whose owner had tried to get them contracted out of existence, would play for the whole ball of wax. And to get there, they would play the ALCS not against the odious Yankees, but against the manageable Anaheim Angels, who are almost as unlikely a team to be here as the Twins are.

It occurred to me that I should go. I got this thought at about ten to nine on Monday morning. I went to the Twins web site first, thinking I would just see. Just see if I could get tickets online. They had a way to do it, but of course there was too much traffic. "Too much traffic," it kept telling me. "Try again." I kept trying, but I didn't feel good about it. I wasn't even sure the ancient browser where I work (thanks, IE4!) was registering my efforts. So I got on the phone. I called and I called and I called. Busy signals. "All circuits are busy" from the phone company. "All circuits are busy" from my cell phone company. And then, all of a sudden, it rang. And five minutes later, I had tickets. Horrible tickets, I was sure -- three rows from the top of the notoriously terrible Metrodome, in the right field corner. Everyone would probably look like an ant. Maybe I wouldn't be able to see at all. I would feel like I wasn't even really there.

Oh, my God.

I took my parents to the first game last night, because there was simply no other option. My father is the one who taught me to love baseball. He loves it so much he can barely watch games he's too interested in, because he lives and dies by them entirely too painfully. He grew up watching the Red Sox, so he has known suffering. For twenty years, we were Phillies fans, so he has known idiocy and foolishness. I remember I was babysitting on that horrifying night in 1986 when . . . you know, with Bill Buckner. I remember telling the family I was babysitting for, when they went to take me home, that I wasn't sure I wanted to be at home. "My father is probably considering jumping off the roof," I told them. There was no question I would take them to the first game.

I knew all along I would keep score. Just another thing my father taught me. Draw in the diamond. Write in the middle. 6-4-3.

When we got to the Metrodome, my mother and I immediately noted that what it had the most in common with was the State Fair. The insanity of the crowd, the greasy food smells drifting here and there, and the mix of people. Older, younger, men, women . . . and it was about two hours to game time. We sat outside and ate dinner. We bought our official homer hankies. Homer hankies sell for a buck, so pretty much everyone in the stadium has one. If you've ever seen what a sea of them looks like, it's pretty impressive. And we flap them for everything. We flap them when we want a homer. We flap them when we want a strikeout for our pitcher. On this particular evening, we flapped them when Bert Blyleven became swept away with passion. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Shockingly, we discovered that there is nothing wrong with the seats. Oh, yeah, they're high up. But you can see everything. The perspective is actually rather marvelous. And they certainly aren't so far away that you feel disconnected. No one in the Metrodome felt disconnected tonight.

The Twins put Joe Mays up to pitch. Mays has been anything but reliable over the last few months. Injuries, bleh. Inconsistency, bleh. My father was nervous and edgy about having him in the game, even though we weren't sure that Kevin Appier, who the Angels used, would be a lot better. The Twins have pitchers we think are better than Mays as a rule, but Brad Radke (currently our hottest) had been used in the decisive Game 5 of the Oakland series, and he couldn't go again. So it was Mays. All we were hoping for was that he wouldn't fall apart completely the way he did in his start against Oakland.

He started the game by getting the annoying Eckstein to ground out. After that, though, Darin Erstad (almost as annoying) smacked a single. "Double play ball would be nice," I muttered to my dad, who was sitting between me and my mom. We got the double play ball. There it was, 6-4-3. It was when the double play came that we learned just how loud it was going to be on this particular night. You may have heard how obscenely loud it is at the Dome -- we're famous for it. It's a horrid ballpark, tacky and grimy and gray and with a puffy white roof, for God's sake, but we certainly know how to use it. It's noisy here. At Vikings games, it's been known to be a problem even for the Vikings. At Twins games? The Twins tend to encourage the fans to let it go.

And they do.

That 6-4-3 double play led to one of the most spectacular explosions of sound I have ever heard. It was one of those where the screaming around you becomes so loud that it turns into a buzz and it feels like your head might explode.

They never touched Mays. He gave up four hits, but the Angels never had a bead on him all night. If it hadn't been for a completely ridiculous error by Cristian Guzman, they would never have scored at all. He was simply spectacular. My father and I marveled at his percentage of first-pitch strikes, and the peculiar consistency with which he followed them with second-pitch balls. He went 1-1 with almost every batter he faced, especially at first. Someone had clearly whispered to the Angels that Mays couldn't get the first pitch over the plate. Often true. Not tonight. He could have lobbed those first pitches like it was batting practice, and they wouldn't have taken the bats off their shoulders. They were taking the first pitch all the way, for several innings, and they paid for it. Mays was ahead of almost every batter, all night long.

Appier, on the other hand, wasn't quite right from the word go. He gave up a single to Corey Koskie in the first, and he tossed a wild pitch in the second. We only wound up with five hits, but it felt all night like we could hit the guy. He lasted only five innings.

It was somewhere around the middle of the game that one of the between-innings gimmicks was the "Kiss-Cam," where they put various couples up on the big screen, and they're supposed to kiss. A couple of couples went by, obligingly smooching in an embarrassed fashion. And then they went to Bert Blyleven, who had been one of three ex-Twins to throw out the first pitch. Bert is much beloved around here, and in his capacity as an announcer, he has this year become the center of the "Circle me, Bert" phenomenon. Basically, what happened is that when he was calling games, he had one of those tele-strator pens so he could put white lines on the screen, and one night he was pointing out a fan in the stands, and he circled the fan on the screen. By the end of the season, not only did a crush of people bring "Circle me, Bert" signs to the games, but there was a "Circle me, Bert" song.

We have such dorky phenomena here. I love it.

Anyway, when the Kiss-Cam went on Bert, a giant roar went up in the crowd, and for a minute, he just sat there, staring into the camera. And then, suddenly and hilariously, he absolutely ATTACKED his wife, grabbing her into an insane embrace and practically climbing on top of her. And the roar got even louder, and half of it was delighted laughter. An unbelievable sound.

Mays pitched a masterpiece. Eight innings, four hits, none after the fourth inning. By the fifth inning, he had hit such a rhythm that it didn't feel like they were ever going to hit him. He and Pierzynski had just found it, whatever that thing is between pitchers and catchers that sometimes happens, where there isn't any waving off the signs and there isn't any screwing around, and it feels strangely like nothing bad can happen.

So of course, in the ninth, it was time for Eddie to come in. And there was no 5-1 lead for Eddie to play with. This was it. The fans forgive Eddie for his sins, and for their cardiac problems, and as soon as they saw him start toward the mound for the ninth, the chant began. "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!" Mind-splittingly loud. Completely unified. Hankies waving. And my father and I, looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes, not even needing to speak, because of all the years we spent being tortured by the likes of Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams. Oh, boy. Well, let's see what he can do.

Eddie faced the strongest part of the Angels' order -- their #2, #3, and #4 hitters. Erstad, Salmon, Anderson. Erstad went down swinging. We were on our feet the entire time, and once there were two strikes on him, a wave of constant noise rose up. Scream as loud as you can, constantly. That was the only rule. And we did. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!" You think you won't do it, until you get there. And you find yourself doing it.

When the count to Tim Salmon went to 2-1, my father looked at me. "Eddie's thinking of putting someone on, so it won't be boring." We smiled at each other ruefully, in that way we only could because we have baseball history together. We even went to a no-hitter once. Terry Mulholland at Vet Stadium in 1990, back when we lived near Philadelphia. Eddie walked Salmon. "See?" Dad said. Garret Anderson flew out, and then it was Glaus. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!" I realized somewhere around this time that the weird guy next to me had stuffed pieces of paper in his ears. Idiot. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Eddie took Glaus to 2-2. Then 3-2. My heart was pounding, and it was partly just to distract myself that I continued participating fully in the yelling. "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!" We waved our hankies rhythmically. "Ed-die! Ed-die!" It began to sound desperate as Glaus fouled off several pitches. Couldn't hear. Couldn't hardly stand up anymore.

Third strike, called. Dude went down with the bat on his shoulder. In the LCS. With two out and a guy on base.

The sound was impossible to describe. My ears still hurt. My throat still hurts. I'm still a little hoarse. So, 2-1. A tight game. Good pitching. Very few mistakes. But in the end, Mays and A.J. Pierzynski, untouchably in the zone, whatever that actually means. They both said last night that Mays did it by trying not to overthink, which I think means Dad and I had it right when we oohed and aahed about the game A.J. was calling for him.

Want to see how beautiful it was? It was this beautiful.

Thank you, Twins. Thank you, cell phone. Thank you, Joe and A.J. Thank you, screaming fans. Thank you, nice lady selling homer hankies. That was quite possibly one of the most thrilling spectator experiences I could have imagined.

And I'm going back tonight.

Posted by Alison-Jane at October 09, 2002 06:58 AM