First off, if you want a good working definition of, "What the fuck is happening here?" it's having Sounds of Blackness sing the National Anthem in Minneapolis. For the record, I saw one non-white person the entire time I was at the Metrodome tonight.
One. At the end. Not counting the guys on the field. One. Sounds of Blackness. (They did a great job, by the way, but it was possibly the strangest name to hear over the loudspeakers in Minnesota. I haven't had a harder time containing myself for a National Anthem since a group of deaf children sang at Wrigley Field last year with little to no warning.(I just remember the looks I saw on people's faces about two or three lines in - again it wasn't made clear that deaf children would be singing that evening, so the whole thing just unfolded like a sick joke. First the singing, then the confused looks and smirks, then reading "School for the Deaf" on the center field scoreboard. It's not like you can laugh during the Star Spangled Banner, especially when it's being sung by the deaf, but we were shown no love by the public address announcer. None. I'm just saying a warning, in that situation, is not too much to ask, is it?)
This time around, we were all standing for the names and photos of local servicemen and women who had died over the winter while serving in Iraq. This was followed by former players who had passed away, capped by Kirby Puckett. It's really hard to know what's appropriate in that sort of situation. Half the crowd cheered, the other half got a weird feeling that it might be like cheering that he'd died (I was in that group). Just strange.
After that's done, the band is set, the flag is spread out over the outfield and they announce Sounds of Blackness. If there was a way to hear thought, the Metrodome probably would have done the Sheila Broflovski What, what, whaaaaa??? at that moment. Good stuff.
This was followed by the Puckett memorial of sorts and considering that there was already eulogized right after his death, the whole thing seemed kind of weird. I'm not sure where it came from, but one of the Twins' broadcasters read a eulogy that may or may not have been written for the first time around and was recycled tonight.
Then, some guy with an acoustic guitar comes out and sings "Kirby Puckett, touch 'em all..." over and over and over and over and again for what seemed like 10 minutes. While the Girl decided to read the Twins media guide from cover to cover at this point, I kept hearing, "Kirby Puckett touched my balls," for nine minutes and thirty seconds. This was six or seven times more entertaining than the actual performance on its own.
Then Jack Morris (referred to as Jake Morris in the MLB.com story) comes out and was kind of a cocksucker about all of it. A small history lesson, first: The Twins won the World Series in 1991 and 1987, winning in seven games both times. Morris was a hometown product who played one season with Puckett in 1991, winning the World Series MVP that year.
In Game 6, the game goes to the 10th inning when Puckett hit a homer off of Charlie Leibrandt to force Game 7. He'd also made a crucial catch earlier to keep the Twins in striking distance, but the thing everyone remembers is that homer. After he passed away, that was far and above the most played clip of Puckett.
Morris is then given the start in Game 7 and goes 10 innings and when the Twins come up to bat, Puckett is one of two intentional walks that load the bases for pinch hitter Gene Larkin to come in and drive in the winning run, picking up Minnesota's second title in five years.
Tonight, Morris gets up there, is one of the least engaging public speakers I've ever heard and proceeds to use really odd language in the vein of (and I'm paraphrasing here) "If Kirby doesn't hit that home run, maybe I don't have a chance to do what I did the next night..."
Uh, gee, Jack, you think? Fine to point out that you were the MVP of the series, not the well-loved dead guy, but do you really need to piss all over his memorial service like that? It just seemed kind of shitty that he'd downplay Puckett's role in all of it and then draw the attention back to him. Dick.
Without Puckett's catch, they probably aren't in a position to win Game 6 in the 11th and probably don't get that hit in that spot, either. Guess what, pigfucker - the MVP trophy rarely goes to the pitcher from the losing team. Not sure what their history is or was, but it just seemed all the more classless given the situation.
Kirby Puckett's kids, Catherine and Kirby Jr., came in to throw out the first pitches, so that was pretty nice and they found one of Oakland's coaches who'd played with him and Torii Hunter, a Puckett disciple to catch for them, kind of a nice moment after Morris had finished wiping his ass with Kirby's jersey and then did the "dog has ass worms" butt scoot over the big number 34 in center field.Just seems like the whole thing was lacking to me. Maybe the big memorial immediately following his death was different, but this time it seemed like everything was thrown together at the last minute, almost like the publicity department found out Friday afternoon that the radio stations were telling everyone there'd be a Puckett service and they had to scramble to make arrangements.
Then they called Morris, who was boning Puckett's dog at the time and he agreed to come down and speak after he'd called local hospitals pretending to be a state sheriff who was warning them to keep Puckett away from the maternity wards because he eats babies, but before he lit all the funeral wreathes on fire.
All class, that Jack Morris. What a douche.
Even MLB.com's coverage was pretty second rate. What's up with interviewing a kid who'd never see Puckett play? They couldn't find one Twins fan with a memory of him? Did the reporter even get out of his car, or did he run up the expense account at the hotel bar last night, leaving him with no money for parking?
Other than that, the scoreboard went on the misspell "pitcher," gave the wrong number to Barry Zito, the public address screwed up Huston Street's name (Hutson, Huston, same diff...) and called Kiko Calero "Kiki."
Is this nitpicky?
Kinda, but when you nail Justin Duchscherer's name and can't place an All-Star, what the hell are you doing in that job? Come on now. Our guess is that with everyone down to the equipment managers being introduced, there might have been a mix-up ("Really? We need everyone's name on the JumboTron? Shit, OK, have the "Touch My Balls Guy"sing another two minutes, we'll copy and paste from the A's Web site.")
In all, kind of a sloppy game, which shows why the Twins are behind in the standings out of the gate. In one of those video game moments, starter Danny Haren took a no-hitter into the third and then couldn't find his breath on the mound as the runs piled up and he got shelled for six quick runs. Just one of those meltdown innings, but it was enough to sink the A's tonight.
I'd like to say that it was a powerful evening and the Twins really felt they had to go out there for a fallen friend, but all told, it was a pretty sloppy game with pitching falling short overall.
There are a few other bits and pieces here, but it's getting late and it's a long season, so there's plenty of time for that. On the horizon, though, are traffic patterns, stupid nicknames and my quickly filling list of baseball-related offenses that require fans to be rabbit punched in the testicles.
(Photo from StarTribune.com / Wikipedia.com)
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