Minnesota Twins Face a Rough Month of August

That was a hyper-disappointing series for the Twins. When I say 'hyper' you know its bad. Think hyper-inflation, hyper child and hypertension. With Blackburn's pitch count skyrocketing faster than space shuttle Atlantis, we knew that the stock market wasn't the only thing in trouble this weekend. Heading in to the Twins-Oakland series, I thought the Twins would have a nice 'break' in playing a team that was 3rd in their AL West Division with an even greater deficit than the Twins. Wrong.

Nick Blackburn, known as a sinkballer, could make his sinker sink and without his go-to pitch, the Twins floundered.

My other main man, Carl Pavano didn't do much better. After the Twins jumped off to a 3-0 lead, Pavano continued his winless post-break streak by losing his fourth in as many starts by giving up 9 hits and striking out only one. No good, boys. I expect better of my hottie-patotties.

We win some, we lose some. What concerns me are the Twins' upcoming opponents (all except for the White Sox). We have the Angels who have been closing the slim gap that exists between them and the Rangers, Boston who has overcoming their disappointing start, the Indians and Tigers who are both leading the Twins and have slowed very little topped off by the Yankees who are the Twins' post-season nightmare. Not only does that schedule look terrible on paper, its even worse that the Twins travel from away to home every two series. That's a lot of traveling.

Today is the first of August and the Twins need to pull it together. Today. Because tomorrow we start a series against Tori Hunter and the recently-hot Angels in Anaheim. In a month that starts and ends with the White Sox, the perpetual door mat of the Twins, we have to believe the Twins can turn this around and climb in to the AL Central lead. Right?

Like Congress, its do or die time for the Twins. Crunch time, baby.

Twins Tickets!

After my disappointing failure to get season tickets, which I am still not over, I did my best to order a plethora of Twins tickets in the pre-sale and sale to the general public. While it was my intent to purchase 20 or so games, Mom didn't think too highly of that.

Neither did every other Twins fan in Minnesota. My pre-sale experience went a little something like this:

1:58 pm - log on the twins site with my one-time-use password
2:00 pm- the time you were supposed to log in; tickets went on sale...
7:30 pm- finally released from the virtual waiting room and gain access to the limited quantity tickets

That is right, folks. I waited in the Twins virtual waiting room for 5.5 hours. What do I have to show for it? A game against Tampa Bay on April 28th and a game against the dirty White Sox in September. "That's all?" you might be asking. Well yes, because there were very few games left. Imagine my disappointment after shelling out the deposit to have no season tickets and then, to sacrifice almost 6 hours to have two games. This season was looking like a big joke to me.

On March 18th, I received a text message from my bestie, Mara. Now Mara and I are notorious for radical, last minute plans (thanks to me, we usually have an itinerary) and what she proposed was no different. Mara wanted to go wait in line at Target Field on March 19th for tickets. These tickets went on sale at 10 am and she wanted to go down at... ehhh... 9:30 or so. Now me being the brains of all our operations knew that the rabid fans of Minnesota would allow no such thing - we would have to get there by at least 7. Good thing.

By the way... Mara did say she asked me because of anyone she knows, I would be the only person crazy enough to do this.

Now Mara was in the cities on some family business, staying at a ritzy hotel near the theater district. I went down to said hotel at around 6:30, mooched some complimentary breakfast and headed off to Target Field. Lucky for Mara, I only brought one yard chair =). Good joke, I thought. She didn't.

We waited in line for 3 hours and all we have to show for it are... OPENING DAY TICKETS! YANKEE TICKETS! AND BOSTON TICKETS!

When we got to Target Field, it is my best estimate that forty people were in front of us, some of which had camped out in line for 15 hours, and by the time it was all said and done 300 behind us. We are so smart. I would say it was well worth the wait! I am way too excited and I can't believe how lucky I ended up. Hey, if at once you don't succeed... try, try again. Or something.