There’s two things to talk about regarding this game. First, let’s talk about the game itself. Was a match up of veterans. Kenny Rogers vs. Brad Radke. Brad Radke went 6 innings, giving up 5 hits and just one run. Kenny Rogers went 6 innings, give up 6 hits and NO runs. We were up 1 to nothing going into the seventh, when John Wasdin gave up a run to tie the game. But we picked up a run in the bottom of the 8th to go up 2-1. Then Cordero comes on and blows the save by giving up a run in the ninth, tying it at 2. I generally dislike extra innings from the aspect of we tend to lose them. I like them because we get more baseball, though. :)
We should have won the game in the bottom of the 9th though. Gary Matthews led off the bottom of the 9th with a double. Sandy Alomar then tried bunting, and failed. Twice. He popped up a bunt foul, and then tried a second time and bunt popped up to the Twins’ first baseman. Ugh. Dellucci and Young couldn’t get the job done either, that was pretty much it. We didn’t do much of anything in the 10th and 11th either. But the Twins did. They pounded Brian Shouse & Steve Karsay for 5 runs in the top of the 11th capped off by Jacque Jones’ home run. We lost 7-2 on a game we SHOULD have won. :( To make matters worse, we had a stupid out in the bottom of the 11th as Phil Nevin did get on, but was doubled off first to end the game after a Sandy Alomar hit ball ALMOST went out in left, but Nevin had run all the way around to third by that point, and was doubled off first. What a way to end it.
The other thing to talk about was the heat. I was at this game, and this is the kind of weather that demands that we move our Summer games back to 7:30 at night. Why exactly are we playing all these day games in the summer? I remember a quote in the press a year ago by Buck Showalter about us supposedly trying to take care of our natural environment in that regard, but come on – this is nuts. I walked through the concourse, and it was surprisingly cool (it usually isn’t). But the seating bowl. Wow. That was damn hot. It was hovering around 100 all day and mostly brilliant sunshine. Way too damn hot. They announced the attendance as 25 thousand something. Yeah right. There was at most 10,000, and unless they were all the way in the few rows down the bottom, they were all up in the shade. I know I was. My regular season ticket was 328-5-1. No way, I was up in 328 Row 22 (three from top). The folks who sit across the aisle from me in my regular season tickets were there too. Got a good idea from the lady that sits there. She had a cooler full of ice, and towels. Throw some ice cubes in the towel, and use it to cool yourself during the game. That worked surprisingly well. I figured it would be a “OK, that’s nice, but I’m still hot”, but the ice and the shade kept me pretty cool. But I shouldn’t have to do that, we shouldn’t be playing in heat this bad.
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