Tuesday September 7, 2004
LATE NIGHT BRIEFING
Good Monday Morning!
Well, as I mentioned on Friday, I was down in the Twin Cities area for the long weekend to primarily watch the Wolf Lake amateur baseball team in the state tournament. In the two previous weekends, they had won three straight games. On Friday night, they beat Sobieski 8-4 behind another strong, 9-inning pitching performance of Shane Hendrickson. That meant that they were one of two undefeated teams remaining. They would wait until Sunday at 11 to play the other undefeated team, Blue Earth. Knowing this, I drove home to my parent's place Friday night. My mom and I were going to drive down Saturday, stay there and watch the game Sunday.
However, the Twins played at 11:00 on Saturday morning, so we decided to leave there at 7, meet my sister at 10:15 and head in to the Dome for the Twins/Royals game. That game was awesome. As my dad said when he saw the Twins lineup, I was "in heaven." The Twins started with a lineup that included Jason Kubel, Lew Ford, Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer and Terry Tiffee (as you know, I am a fan of the prospects!!). Later in the game, reliever Jesse Crain pitched a perfect inning. As you already know, Jason Kubel knocked his first big league hit, a double, to lead off the bottom of the first. But the story of the game was Terry Tiffee. He had two hits from the left side of the plate and then, leading off the bottom of the ninth from the right side of the batter's box, he unloaded on a pitch, drilling it into the bleachers in left field for a game-winning, walk-off homer!
That night, I went to my brother's place and watched the Minnesota Gophers football team beat up on Toledo. Toledo is not a bad team, yet the Gophers won 63-21!
Sunday, we went to the Wolf Lake game. Unfortunately, the Wolf Pack lost by a score of 7-5, meaning they were scheduled to play at 5 that afternoon. Well, we got back to the park at a little before five and the field was under water due to the combination of a couple of storms piling up on the field. At 6:30, they finally postponed the game.
Did I mention that Kyle Lohse got shelled again on Sunday, this time by the Royals? The time has come... (Chant along with me...) We want Durbin! We want Durbin!! We want Durbin!!
So, yesterday morning, we drove over to Belle Plaine. Wolf Lake was playing the Moorhead Brewers. The loser of the game would claim third place in the state and the winner would advance to play Blue Earth in the championship game. Wolf Lake got ahead and stayed there behind a gutty, 9 inning effort of draftee Pete Marjama, who had pitched three innings the day before. Wolf Lake won 4-1.
The start of the championship game was about 2:00 yesterday. It was a close game throughout. Shane Hendrickson came back on just a couple days rest and gave up three unearned runs in another complete game performance. Unfortunately, the Wolf Pack was only able to score one run, meaning that they finished second place.
That is second place in state. Seriously, that is very impressive! I think they know it, and they should all be very proud of how they played! Shane Hendrickson, Chris Baso, Luther Kangas and Ryan Breitbach all were named to the All-Tournament team.
The game finished shortly after four yesterday afternoon. The game was about 30 miles south of the Twins Cities, and again, I live on the Canadian border, so the long trek home began. Hopefully you will understand how late last night (or early this morning) I got home, and will forgive me for such a short entry. I will be back tomorrow with much more. I have my second fantasy football draft after work tomorrow, so will have some thoughts on that, try to get caught up on the Twins and more. I have a roll of pictures I took from our 9th row in the upper deck, behind the 3B dugout seats, that actually turned out well, so I will try to post some of them as well.
Our first set of football picks will be here on Thursday because the first game of the season is Thursday night! Should be fun. And, I do have a couple more fun things lined up for postings. So be sure to check back.
So until then, I will just repost a fun entry I ran in March. If you have any thoughts, comments questions, or anything for me, please feel free to e-mail me.
Have a great day!
Seth
Reprinted from Thursday March 25, 2004 My First Crushes