THE GREATEST (regular season) GAME EVER

Trust me: I, better than anybody, understand that this blog is starting to take on the monochromatic complexion of All Twins All the Time, and while I do have many other recent and entirely worthy preoccupations to blather about (I do! I really do!) like say, the new Flaming Lips album, Henderson the Rain King, my impending EPIC trip to Philly/NYC--Leaving in three days!--the Kurosawa movies I watched this weekend and those random observations of human thruths that amuse and confound us all, the cold hard fact of the matter is that baseball season is a veritable 7-month solar eclipse in la vida loca de King Fun that stunts my general sociability, any and all sense of ambition and general interest in, well, just about everything else. What can I say? After banishing my id for a long walk through the cold woods last October, he has returned, giantic and hirsute and monstrosly hungry, craving nothing but Twins baseball. Chained to the wall though he may be, I still have to feed the beast. I have no choice.

That said: Saturday night.

Twins: 6
Yankees: 5

And I was there.

Oh. My. God. OH! MY! GOD! How many superlatives can we apply to nine innings of madness, disapointment, righteous fury, anxiety, true blue drama and then the ultimate ecstasy of refulgent, holy holy glorious victory? During Easter week, too! The Passion of Justin Morneau! If we were to take months, perhaps years analyzing this single game, could we create a work of art that explained everything that makes this human comedy worthwhile? I bet we could. A patchwork quilt of irrational hagiography entitled something like this:

Do You Know The Meaning of Being Sanctified?: April 15, 2006: The Night Everything Beautiful & Right With Baseball, America & Life in General Occurred in Minneapolis

Understatement Alert: It is so, so satisfying beating the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth, watching Riviera blow a save in front of 40,000+ fanatic, screaming partisians (See? There is something that can turn all of these docile Lutherans insane). It is a singular experience that's virtually indescribable, rendering witnesses inarticulate by their own happiness, like when one sees the dopey, winsome, hangdog grins of people attempting to describe what it means to fall in love to a small child or something. The point is, well, you just have to experience it for yourself.

Nevertheless, I shall try: The thing about rallying in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Yankees is that it's a quintessential experience of righteousness defeating the darkness of evil. It's deliverance from the unremarkable denoument of seemingly nasty inevitability by a shining miracle that's as pure as the driven snow. It's the incarnation of baseball grace.

When the Twins blew a 4-run lead late in the game and it seemed as if the status quo would prevail and the Yankees' usurpation of the lead via rather boring and mechanical means reinforced their fans' preening, self-righteous expressions of exceptionalism and entitlement ("Well, of course we were going to take the lead and win. We're the Yankees."), it was, uh, really, really--I mean practically murderously--galling.

I have sat through way, way too many of these games (including Game 4 of the 2004 playoffs, which is, without a doubt, the single most disheartening game I have ever seen as a Twins fan). Here we go again, I thought. The clammy feeling of defeat due to the inexorable forces of rampant, ruthlessly coldblooded capitalism. The Yankees are the stupendously arrogant and greasy, gimlet-eyed robber barons; The Twins are the feeble, naive yet noble belief of farm systems and equal opportunity and meritocracy. It's a battle of The America That Is vs. The America That Could Be. Reality vs. The Dream. Why can't we do it? Just once, for the love of Puck? Just once?

Well, The Dream finally broke Reality's heart on Saturday night. And it was so beautiful, you wanted to cry.

I almost asphixiated from the noxious green clouds of eau de triumphalism rising from the bodies of Yankee fans sitting around me as Riviera strode to the mound for the ninth. But I held my breath and held onto my faith, standing on my feet and shouting with the rest of the crowd.

And then Castillo gets an infield hit. And then Joe Mauer hits a single and makes it to second on the throw. No outs, runners on second and third. A single wins the game. We could do this! I thought. We could really win!

But then Rondell White strikes out on a pitch aimed straight at his head (which is a whole 'nother rant altogether), and then Torii Hunter looks at a third strike right down the heart of the plate to go sit down (ARRGGHH!!!). And then, ladies and gentlemen, our collective hope for salvation was left in the dubious, precarious hands of Justin Morneau...

The baseball gods said to me, "You want drama? We'll give you drama!"

And each individual cell in my body called out in a resounding Greek chorus of nerves, responding, "Um, we think we're all going to simultaneously throw up now."

Morneau! My relationship with J-Dogg is, say we say, complicated: This is the same Morneau who, earlier in the same game, ran home on a grounder hit to the left side of the infield and was promptly thrown out (Don't they teach fundamentals in Canada?), the same underachieving Morneau who has the hapless expression of a retarded puppy on his face all the time, mirroring his performance on the diamond, a performance of manifest incompetence that dominates the rare flashes of everything everyone says about his physical gifts and the claims that he is in the incipient phase of entering the pantheon of baseball gods. Morneau? Really? He's more like Johnny Fontane abjectly asking for Don Corleone's help in The Godfather. You just want to pick him up outta his chair and slap him around a bit, screaming, "You can act like a man! Act like a man!" Morneau sent to save us! Of all people!

In my fit, my bursting paroxysm of indignation and pleading, I shouted, "C'mon, Justin! You owe me, buddy! YOU OWE ME!"

And then, on the first pitch, he hit a single to right field, and two runs scored, and we won the game. Morneau got a hit! A real hit! We actually won! Riviera blew a save! We won!

The Twins mobbed the field; the 40,000+ screamed the wild screams of sweet, orgiastic transcendence; and all of the Yankee players and fans looked down at their shoes with fixed, tearful gazes for a very, very long time. And then they all took out their infinitesimal, bite-sized hearts and quietly ate them.

I believe in the beauty of this world. I believe in miracles. I believe in my Minnesota Twins.