Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Watching Justin Morneau Through a Picket Fence of Tiaras


Twins win 6-5. We ended up leaving early because my daughter has a friend over tonight for a sleepover and they wanted to come back and do sleepover stuff - you know, watch movies, tell ghost stories, giggle - that sort of thing. We did see the crucial 5th inning, when the Twins put together a typical rally - a dink here, a dunk there, a few walks, a rattled pitcher (tonight's victim the immortal Clayton Richard) and Justin Morneau applying the coup de grace with a line drive that you could have hung all the laundry in New Brighton on. Typical stuff for the Twins. Glen Perkins didn't pitch especially well, but did just enough to win the game. The Mighty Whities laid waste to our heroes in Chicago last month, but strange things seem to happen under teflon skies. And suddenly a team that has three rookies in the starting rotation is only a half-game back.


As I mentioned, we took Maria's friend to the game with us, since Ben is up at scout camp this week. It was her friend's first major league game and she had a pretty good time, even though she wasn't always sure what was going on. The most amusing part of tonight's game was that we were seated directly behind a bevy of beauty queens. The Aquatennial is going on right now and all the contenders for the Queen of the Lakes beauty contest, from ports of call throughout the Gopher state were at the game tonight. You could see them all, from Richfield, Coon Rapids, Willmar, Duluth and towns I'm not familiar with. There were several young Nordic-looking lasses from the Minnewaska area sitting in front of us, all sporting plastic tiaras and sashes draped over their Joe Mauer t-shirts. The young ladies were having a splendid time munching Dome Dogs, taking pictures of themselves with their cell phone cameras and half-heartedly attempting to get a wave started. Word may not have reached Minnewaska that the Wave was passe a few years before any of them were born. Maria and her friend were amused at the spectacle, but neither seemed especially interested in taking a walk down the runway themselves later on. I can tell I'm getting old, because I was more interested in watching the game than the spectacle in front of me.


I realize that a lot of people are eagerly awaiting the new ballpark that's being built on the other side of downtown Minneapolis. It should be, from all accounts, a cozy little bandbox with a neat view of the Minneapolis skyline and enough skybox revenue to keep the Pohlad family smiling in perpetuity. And on summer nights like this, it's tough to go inside a dome to watch a game. But I'll say this - the Twins have had great success in this building and I really suspect that we will miss the reviled old Dome once it's gone.

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