Same game, different perspective

On the same day that my esteemed colleague was lucky enough to actually be in Detroit, I was also watching the game, but in a much less real-life way.

It's become common practice for me, on days when games are early enough in the afternoon that I'm still at work, to have mlb.com's gameday screen discreetly hidden behind whatever work I'm doing at the time. I soon discovered that I wasn't alone in my cubicle game-watching - one day during a particulary quiet afternoon, my co-worker Jeff piped up from his desk "Hey, Twins are up 2-0!". Even though Jeff is in his late 40's, married with 3 kids and not much hair, we have somehow become office baseball watching buddies.

One of our sadder moments was the 18-5 loss to Boston on Wednesday...you know, I wanted to write about the Boston series. I really did. But I was having a crappy day and it just made me too depressed to even think about... so true to form, I'm going to try to block it from my mind. We're still only 1 game behind Chicago, so as far as I'm concerned, the Boston debacle never occured.

Moving on.

"Watching" Wednesday's game at work proved that watching stationary, identical batters not swing at small white spheres that leave behind trails of color depending on the pitch can be almost as suspenseful as actually watching the game. After the extremely depressing series-which-must-not-be-named (Volde-series?), it seemed like nothing would ever go right again for our beloved Twinkies. It was enough to make me want to go by all of their houses with plates of cookies and be like "Look guys...it's gonna be alright."
Was it though?
For a while on Wednesday, it looked like maybe not.

5 run inning for Detroit. Ok. Not so good.
Walking a guy on 3 pitches? Also not so good.
And then there were things I was glad I didn't see, like Justin Morneau's homer oh no wait it was a double...WTF?

Somehow, we came back to tie it up in the 9th. When we left Denard Span and little Nicky P stranded in the 10th I thought we'd only blown our chance...and then in the 11th hour...or the 11th inning...I felt a punch on my arm and there was Jeff in my cubicle with a super-excited gleam in his eye. "Go Morneau! Home run!" I high-fived him and then went back to my spreadsheet.

In an exclusive imaginary post-game interview conducted by me in my head, Justin described that glorious moment:
KG: So honey, I mean Justin I mean Mr. Morneau, how did it feel to hit the game-winning home run while simultaneously saving six children from a burning building?
JM: Well, I just was so pissed about the non-homer, and after Voldy-series I just had all this anger inside me you know?
KG: Hot.
JM: I know right?!? Anyways, I just was like "I'm gonna hit this ball!" And then I thought about how awesome Kristina is, and then...I remembered Supraction(TM)!!! It was like a lightning bolt from heaven... I forgot about Supraction(TM)! Well the second I decided to Supract those pimple-faces it was like nothing could stop my bat from connecting with that ball.
KG: You know it's funny you talk about "connection" because sometimes when I look into your eyes -
JM: Ooh hey free ice cream! (eagerly jogs in direction of free ice cream)
KG: Sigh.

So as you can see, Delmon Young has, in fact done good things for the Minnesota Twins - he has helped us Trademark our way to victory yet again!