A Winner And Some Losers

It may have taken longer than we anticipated, but we finally have a winner in our 1991 Anniversary DVD contest. “Rick” may not have been correct with his prediction of when Joe Nathan would get his record-breaking save, but who cares? It may never happen at this rate. So based on the random selection process we posted Friday morning, Rick is our winner.

Rick, we need you to email us your mailing address so we can pass it along to the good folks who are sponsoring these contests and get your DVDs in the mail to you. Click the “Contact Us” link up above for our email address.

I wish I would have seen a few more winners at the ballgame Friday night, but it was not to be.

I was seated way out down the RF line tonight so the pictures aren’t terrific, but they aren’t nearly as bad as the Twins’ brand of baseball, so I’m not going to apologize too much.

This was the line to get in Target Field at 3 pm... 2 hours before gates opened
My line, around to the back of TF for Gate 14 wasn't nearly as long
The 1991 World Series Champions
Ozzie enjoys a chat with some of the 1991 Twins
Looking for Twins highlights? This is pretty much it. Kubel homered in the 1st inning
Yes, I did get my bobblehead and yes, I opened it.

That’s it for tonight, folks.

Looking forward to a bit better game Saturday night.

– JC

GameChat – White Sox @ Twins, 7:10pm

The boys are back in town.. and it smells like someone walked in dog do on the way into TF.. oh wait, that’s the WSox. Never mind.  Moving on…

Other big news today is that the Twins apparently offered Michael Cuddyer a wo-year extension worth $16 million. At this point it appears that it’s early in the discussion and I think Cuddyer would like to wait until after the season to talk about it but I don’t think that precludes an actual deal at some point. However, I think it’s pretty much guaranteed that neither the front office or Cuddyer’s people will say anything at all to the media/public until something IS done. But at least it’s something to work with as far as number ideas.

So it’s the 20th anniversary weekend for the ’91 World Series! Yes, there have been lines outside the park to get tonights give-away bobblehead all day. It actually looks kind of funny given that particular play has been fairly well immortalized. I have you the better view because I honestly don’t think the front looks much like Hrbek. But I still understand the appeal of the statue. JC drove up for today’s game but I don’t know if he stood in line for the promotion or not. I know he’d want one though – he’s been drooling over the set since they announced it. However, from what those in line have said, the majority are probably going to try to SELL the darn thing so it will be readily available by tomorrow is my guess.

[EDIT] I guess JC DID stand in line or at least got there early enough because guess who got one!

The fun part is that they have all the players from the ’91 team gathering together for the celebrations.. It’s going to be fun for the fans to see them all out there I think.

As far as the actual game tonight goes, the good news is that Thome is down to 2 HR left to hit the big 600.  It would be GREAT to see him do it here at home.. it would be even better to see him do it against the WSox.  However, he’s not in the starting lineup tonight so if he’s going to get #599 today, it’s likely to be late in the game if Gardy pulls him in for some late inning power. I think I would like that.

You know who else isn’t in the lineup? Span. Yeah, that one is a bit more worrying. The boys didn’t get in to the cities until most of us were getting up for the day so I’m sure they are all a bit on the bleary side. Span was feeling a bit more than bleary and that worries me. For caution’s sake, he’s asked for the day off because he was feeling a bit woozy. During his rehab stint, he didn’t play games on travel days because travel has a strong effect. So raise your hand if it worries you a little bit that our boy recovering from a concussion is experiencing woozy symptoms. *raises hand* However, they are making no judgements at this point, just letting him rest a day. And that means Revere gets a day at CF.

Casilla was taking grounders today during BP and they say he’ll be ready to play when he’s elligible to come off the DL on the 12th. I am NOT a Lexi backer in much of any way but at this point, I think I would like to see the Twins send Nishi to AAA for a little more work on how we do things here when Casilla is back in the lineup. I know I’m must wishing to dead air though but.. after the last week of play, I really think it’s time.

 

Chi White Sox

@

Minnesota
Pierre, LF   Revere, CF
Ramirez, Al, SS   Tolbert, 2B
Konerko, DH   Mauer, 1B
Dunn, A, 1B   Cuddyer, RF
Quentin, RF   Kubel, DH
Pierzynski, C   Valencia, 3B
Beckham, 2B   Young, D, LF
De Aza, CF   Nishioka, SS
Morel, 3B   Butera, C
  Buehrle, P     Blackburn, P

 

 

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

R

H

E

Chi White Sox

1

0

1

0

2

0

0

1

0

5

9

1

Minnesota

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

5

2

 

see.. I told you I smelled dog doodoo..

I’m glad that JC got his bobblehead because that was about all that game was worth. Kube’s HR was fantastic but between the errors and bad pitching and general lack of good baseball, it wasn’t the best game.  And yes, I think this game proved the other point I made in pregame – Nishi doesn’t get American baseball and needs to get it figured out. PLEASE send him down to AAA and let him figure out the nuances there!!

Of DVDs and a BOM

First things first. Apparently the Twins entered in to a conspiracy of sorts to prevent our DVD giveaway contest from proclaiming a winner. Almost two full weeks after announcing our contest to give away a set of Twins 1991 Championship Season DVDs to the person who could correctly predict the game in which Joe Nathan would break the team record for saves, he still hasn’t had an opportunity to accomplish that feat.

So, as we indicated in the original contest post, we’ll determine the winner on a random basis from among the 15 readers who entered our contest. Here is how we will go about declaring a winner:

Below is a list of those who entered the contest. Next to each name are two numbers I’ve assigned randomly from numbers 1-15 and 16-30. The winner will be the person assigned the number that is equal to the total runs scored by the Twins and White Sox in the first game of their upcoming series in Minnesota.

AW: 5, 20

Max: 9, 30

Shaun Streich: 15, 28

BobZ: 10, 24

MukMuk: 1, 17

bob miller: 3, 16

mark: 14, 27

lecroy24fan: 7, 23

Trish: 13, 29

Melissa: 12. 21

AW: 2, 19

E: 6, 22

UpperDeck: 4, 25

David: 11, 26

Rick: 8, 18

(If the Twins and Sox get in to a real slugfest and score over 30 runs combined, we’ll just add 30 to the numbers assigned to each entrant above and declare the winner on that basis. I refuse to let the Twins’ ineptitude draw this thing out any further!)

BOYFRIEND OF THE MONTH: JULY

Remember back last month when the Twins didn’t suck? I know… it’s not easy sometimes to remember back that far. But trust me, in July the Twins did win some ballgames and after each victory, our GameChat folks bestowed a Boyfriend of the Day award on the Twins player they felt was most deserving of recognition for their efforts in that particular game. As is our tradition, we then tally up those BOD awards each month and pronounce a lucky Boyfriend of the Month.

This one wasn’t really even close.

Danny Valencia, Brian Duensing, Joe Mauer and Michael Cuddyer each were honored with Boyfriend of the Day awards twice in July but for the first time this season, one player racked up four separate BODs from our GameChat contingent. Glen Perkins has been clutch when  he’s been called on in tight situations. We just wish we could see a few more of those opportunities going forward. But for his outstanding work in July, Glen Perkins is da BOM!

Glen Perkins