Game 163, Part I: The Setup & The Start

After the conclusion of all games on September 7 during the 2009 baseball season, the Detroit Tigers led the American League Central Division by seven games.  It would take a near-historic choke to relinquish such a comfortable division lead.  But as the remainder of the season rolled on, the Tigers' lead shrunk.  The second place Minnesota Twins traveled to Detroit's Comerica Park for a four game series starting September 28, the Monday of the final week of the regular season.  The Tigers came back to life, winning two of the first three games.  Now, with just four games to play, all at home, the Motor City squad maintained a three game lead.  But they dropped the series finale 8-3 to the never-say-die Twins, then proceeded to lose two of three to the visiting Chicago White Sox.  Meanwhile, the Twins returned home from Detroit to face the Kansas City Royals in the beautiful Metrodome.  The Twins took all three of those games, producing 28 runs combined.  At the end of the 162 game regular season, the Twins and Tigers had finished with identical 86-76 records.  A one game playoff would be required to decide the AL Central championship.

Among the four major professional team sports, having home field advantage arguably is most important in baseball.  There are a host of reasons, but getting "last at-bats" is the biggest.  Prior to the 2009 season, MLB used a coin flip to decide home field advantage in a one-game playoff scenario.  Given the stakes at hand, that method seemed rather flippant -- no pun intended.  The protocol was changed in 2009  to something more justifiable.  The team which won the head-to-head season series between the two tied opponents would now be rewarded.  By virtue of the Twins' 11-7 season record over the Tigers, the Metrodome became the venue, much to the delight of the Twin Cities faithful, many of whom had probably given up hope back on September 7, if not earlier.

The capacity of the Metrodome for baseball was just a shade under 56,000.  Despite the fact that the playoff game was to be played on a Tuesday afternoon, my guess is that the franchise could have sold over 75,000 tickets that day.  Priority went to the 2009 season ticket holders, and then to the new 2010 season ticket holders.  After you figure all the big shots, celebrities, media members, league officials, glad-handing politicians and others with connections, that did not leave many ducats available for the hoi polloi, of which I was (and remain) a card carrying member.  Although full of skepticism, I drove downtown early Monday morning, October 5, to take my chances in the ticket line.  I was almost shocked when the ticket seller offered two seats high above home plate, three rows from the very top of the upper deck.  Momma Cuandito and I, who had stuck with the Twins all season long, were going to be in the Dome for the big game.  It turned out to be the best and most memorable baseball game of the hundreds I've attended.

***

The Twins were very confident going into the winner-take-all duel.  Heading into September, the Twins were only one game above .500.  But their record over the last twenty games of the season was 16-4.  If the Tigers had not managed to salvage the final game of their just completed series against the White Sox, the Twins would have become Central Division champs outright, thus obviating the need to settle the race with the one game playoff.  The Twins were the hot team; the Tigers had staggered through a September swoon.  Yet the Tigers were not unnerved by the Twins sprinting to a 16-4 finish.  After all, three of those four losses were to none other than Detroit.

The immediate reward for the victor of Game 163 would be a date in New York the very next day for the opening game of the American League Division Series ("ALDS") with the AL East Division champion Yankees.  Thus, before even the first pitch of Game 163 was thrown, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and Tigers skipper Jim Leyland had to strategize to take into account that their respective pitching staffs might be called upon again less than twenty-four hours after the present game was completed.  But both men knew that without winning Game 163, there would be no trip to New York; the loser's season would be over.  They must win the game at hand.

Gardenhire chose Scott Baker to be his starting pitcher against the Tigers.  Baker was a five year veteran, age 28, with a 2009 season record of 15-9 and an ERA of 4.36.  As his statistics indicate, Baker was an above-average pitcher but not what you'd call an ace.  (The Twins really had no ace.)  Since June 1 of that season, though, he had managed an impressive 13 wins, one of which had been against the Tigers just five days before Game 163.  Leyand chose young Rick Porcello to start for Detroit.  Porcello's season record was practically the same as Baker's, 14-9 with an ERA of 4.04.  Those 14 wins were the most of any rookie in the league.  The kid was only 20, but he looked to be about 15.  (Porcello was the second youngest pitcher ever to start a tie-breaker; the youngest was Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946.)  How would he hold up to playoff pressure?

It is typical among American sports publications to include in a playoff preview a position-by-position comparison of each team's starters.  Excluding pitching, the Twins had a clear edge at just three of the nine spots, with Joe Mauer at catcher, Orlando Cabrera at shortstop and Denard Span in center field.  The Twins' Michael Cuddyer at first base and Jason Kubel in right field were very solid players who were enjoying terrific seasons, but it would be hard to give them the nod over their respective counterparts, future Hall Of Famer Miguel Cabrera and Magglio Ordonez, who occupied the 3 and 4 slots in the Tigers batting order.  Detroit second sacker Placido Polanco, sporting a .286 batting average, was clearly superior to the Twins' Nick Punto with his .228.  I would rate the other three positions (third base, DH and left field) tossups, highlighted by two left fielders enjoying stellar seasons, Delmon Young of the Twins and Ryan Raburn of the Tigers.  This Game 163 was going to be hotly contested, and like many baseball games, the team receiving the better pitching would most likely prevail.

***                            

                                    THE STARTING LINEUPS                                 

       Detroit Tigers                                                         Minnesota Twins

1. Curtis Granderson - CF                                       1. Denard Span - CF

2. Placido Polanco - 2B                                           2. Orlando Cabrera - SS

3. Magglio Ordones - RF                                          3. Joe Mauer - C

4. Miguel Cabrera - 1B                                            4. Jason Kubel - RF

5. Carlos Guillen - DH                                             5. Michael Cuddyer - 1B

6. Ryan Raburn - LF                                                6. Delmon Young - LF

7. Brandon Inge - 3B                                               7. Jose Morales - DH

8. Gerald Laird - C                                                  8. Matt Tolbert - 3B

9. Ramon Santiago - SS                                           9. Nick Punto - 2B

Rick Porcello - P                                                      Scott Baker - P

***

Two telltale signs that the moment might be too big for a young pitcher are loss of command of his pitches and an inability to find the strike zone.  Nerves and adrenalin often combine to cause a pitcher to be erratic, so instead of throwing strikes to force the batters to put the ball in play, the pitcher starts giving up walks.  To Baker and Porcello's credit, that did not happen in Game 163.  Despite the youth of the two starting pitchers, each managed to get through the first two innings without yielding a run or even issuing a walk.  Baker was immensely helped by a defensive gem courtesy of Twins shortstop Cabrera, who went to his backhand with one out in the second inning to snag a screaming liner off the bat of Brandon Inge, thereby preventing a runner on third from scoring.  Porcello, the rookie, had to face only seven Twins to get the first six outs.

The third inning was a different story.  Baker surrendered a one out walk to leadoff hitter Curtis Granderson, followed by a two out RBI single to Ordonez.  Miguel Cabrera, nicknamed "Miggy," then lofted a two run homer over the center field wall on an 0-2 pitch.  Perhaps Miggy, who had doubled in the second inning, was out to prove that he, not Mauer, should be the American League's MVP.  Up to that point the Metrodome noise had been ear-splitting and the crowd was a sea of waving white Homer Hankies.  Now, with Detroit suddenly up 3-0. the fans were momentarily somber.  Many of them were aware that the Tigers' season record was a gaudy 55-30 when scoring the first run of the game.  The Twins' flash to the finish in September seemed a distant memory.  Yet, it was only the third inning; the Twins would have their chances.

The Twins came back with a strange run in the bottom of the third.  Twins third baseman Matt Tolbert, who was playing only because regular third baseman Michael Cuddyer was filling in at first for the injured Justin Morneau, hit a smash down the third base line.  Detroit third baseman Brandon Inge, as gutty a player as there ever was in MLB, dove to his right to attempt to make the play.  This was a valiant effort because Inge was playing on two badly injured knees which would require surgery less than a month later.  Tolbert beat Inge's throw for an infield single.  Then, following Punto's strikeout, Tolbert advanced to second on Denard Span's single to left.  The next batter, Orlando Cabrera, hit a fly ball to right field, so deep that right fielder Ordonez had no chance to throw out Tolbert advancing to third after the catch.  [Note: This is a situation which I discussed in my July 17, 2014 post (Arbitrary And Capricious Traditions) about some of baseball's peculiarities.  In the boxscore, this play looks like a simple fly ball out, costing Cabrera a point or two on his batting average.  In reality, his ability to advance Tolbert to third was invaluable.]  The Twins, still down 3-0, now had runners at the corners with two out.  Next up, Joe Mauer.

Mauer entered the game hitting .364, an average so lofty he could have gone 0 for 17 in Game 163 and still won the batting title over second place Ichiro of the Seattle Mariners.  Porcello may have thought that it would be easier to pick off Span, a threat to run with 23 stolen bases, than it would be to get Mauer for the third out, especially since Mauer had driven a double to center field off Porcello in the first inning.  Porcello's pick off attempt to get Span, who actually had only a tiny lead, was off target to the right field side of the first base bag.  The burly Miggy could not corral the ball and it bounded away.  As soon as the alert Tolbert saw the ball rolling on the ground away from Miggy, he easily trotted home with the Twins' first run.  Luckily for the Tigers the errant ball caromed off Twins first base coach Jerry White; otherwise it would have gone near the Twins dugout allowing Span to advance to second (if not third).*  This excitement got the capacity home crowd back in the game.  Was Porcello coming unglued?  Tigers pitching coach Rick Knapp paid him a visit on the mound to calm him.  Whatever he said must have worked because the third inning ended uneventfully with a Mauer walk (probably one of those well known"intentional/unintentional walks") and a Kubel K.

***

The next two and a-half innings, at least on paper, were relatively uneventful.  However, that did not cause the crowd to simmer down.  The fans lived and died with each pitch, just as they had during the World Series championship years in the Metrodome, 1987 and 1991.

Scott Baker needed only an impressively efficient 28 pitches to breeze through the fourth, fifth and sixth inning.  During that stretch he had to face only one batter over the minimum of nine, allowing merely two base runners, one of whom was erased on a double play.  Porcello was even more stellar in the fourth and fifth innings, striking out three of the minimum six Twins he faced.  Porcello continued gliding into the bottom of the sixth, getting Cabrera to fly out and Mauer to whiff. But the third man to bat in the inning was Twins cleanup hitter Jason Kubel.

Going into the game Kubel was 8 for 11 against the rookie.  In baseball parlance, Kubel "owned" Porcello.  Kubes belted the second pitch he saw way over the right-center field wall for his 28th home run of the season, thus closing the Twins' deficit to 3-2.  When Porcello issued a seven pitch walk to the next hitter, Michael Cuddyer, manager Leyland came out and sent the youngster to the showers.

Reliever Zach Miner was summoned from the pen to close out the inning.  He did, but only after surrendering a single to Delmon Young and hitting pinch hitter Brendan Harris.

Little did we know at this point that the game was only half over.

______________

*  The errant pickoff attempt by Detroit pitcher Rick Porcello in the bottom of the third inning resulted in one of the strangest rulings by an official scorer I have ever witnessed.  The scorer correctly gave an error to Porcello for his poor throw because the Twins runner on third, Matt Tolbert, would not have scored had Porcello's pickoff throw been accurate.  However, the strange aspect of the ruling is that Porcello was credited with a pickoff, and runner Denard Span was charged with being picked off -- EVEN THOUGH HE WASN'T.  The ruling assumes that Span would have been picked off if only Porcello hadn't thrown the ball away.  Span barely had any lead off first.  There's almost no chance he would have been out, even with a good throw by Porcello and a quick grab 'n' tag by Miggy.  You might call the ruling a "phantom pickoff."  

The Lower 48 Is Not A Rectangle, And Other Geographic News Flashes

The Early Days:  I have loved geography ever since fifth grade at St. Joe's.  In the first semester, Mrs. Foley promised an "A" to each student who could memorize the 48 state capitals.  (Yep, not that I'm ancient or anything, but... Alaska, our 49th state, was not admitted until January 1959 when I was in sixth grade.)  She made the same promise second semester regarding capitals of all the nations of the world.  My results: "A" and "A."  This knowledge came in handy my junior year of high school when Father Robert Williams, our American history teacher, made us memorize all 50 states and their capitals, starting with a blank piece of paper.  Each correct answer on the quiz was worth one percentage point.  The result: Approximately 20 of the 25 students, including me, got a 99%.  We were docked a point for abbreviating "Saint" in the name of Minnesota's capital.  I reminded him of that tricky penalty when I saw him at my 20th year high school reunion.  As I expected, a wry smile crossed his face.

Later Let Downs:  My geographic curiosity has made domestic and international travel a joy, but two places I wanted to visit for over thirty years before I finally got the opportunity proved to be disappointments.  The realities did not measure up to my imagination or expectations.

The first disappointment occurred circa 1992 on a family road trip from Minnesota to Phoenix.  (It was the same trip to which I referred while discussing the Eagles album in my May 31, 2020 post.)  We had a planning meeting or two with our travel partners, the Cipolles, to determine which of several possible routes we should take on this journey, which would cover over 3200 miles round trip.  We unanimously agreed to do some sight seeing along the way.  I was adamant about just one destination, the Four Corners.  It is the only place in the United States where four states come together.  Clockwise from the northwest they are Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  Ever since I was a boy I had pictured a grand scene, complete with sculptures, a garden with beautiful wild flowers, historical plaques documenting the significance of the site, souvenir and gift shops (maybe even an ice cream shop or a candy store) and, who knows, a saloon or two?  I predicted the four states would want to use the uniqueness of the site to do a little bragging, setting up tourist information storefronts or at least kiosks, touting their respective attractions and nearby points of interest.  Of course there would be a professional photographer who, for a mere $10 or so, would be happy to take a keepsake picture of you and your three friends each standing in "their own state," or perhaps a photo of just you with an extremity planted in each state as if you were playing a game of Twister.  People would be willing to go out of their way to see this one-of-a-kind national landmark, so the mood would be happy, festive and celebratory.  Most of all, I wanted to see how The Spot was marked.

Instead what we found was grim and uninspiring.  There were few signs directing the minimal traffic off the county highway to the dirt road leading to Four Corners.  The Navajo and Hopi Indians had set up makeshift huts with plywood tables, forming a semi-circle about forty yards in radius from the exact Four Corners spot.  On those tables were trinkets and inexpensive jewelry for sale.  Near most of the huts were faded flags, some Old Glory, others probably state or tribal flags, still others representing unknown entities.  The point of intersection of the four states was marked by a simple brass disk, with a diameter of eight to ten inches, imbedded in pavement.  In the middle of the disk were two engraved perpendicular lines, with the name of one of the states occupying each quadrant.  There were no sculptures or plaques, nor was there a garden, beautiful or otherwise.  The huts with the cheap tables were the closest thing to a shop.  Not a tourist information kiosk was to be found.  To my dismay, there were no postcards for sale.  If you wanted a photo you were on your own.  In truth, it was a bit of a personal letdown, though still worth a one-time visit.  In retrospect I should not have expected more from this remote desert station.  The words of my favorite poem, Ozymandias, later came to mind: "...boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."

***

You are no doubt familiar with the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  You would think, following the Four Corners experience, I would have learned to lower my expectations, but eleven years later I fell victim to unjustified hopes for the second time.

I grew up in the far reaches of northern Illinois, fifteen miles as the crow flies from the Wisconsin line.  Downstate Illinois -- which for most natives of that state means roughly its southern three-quarters -- was an intriguing mystery.  I tried to convince my parents to take my sister and me on a Downstate road trip so I could discover what the rest of our native state had to offer, but I had to settle for a one-time weekend jaunt to Springfield, the historic capital located in central Illinois.  Our family summer vacations invariably took us in the opposite direction to the North Woods of Wisconsin, where my dad enjoyed his single hobby, fishing.  Downstate would have to wait.

As a boy I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn twice each.  I loved the way Mark Twain described life in the river town of Hannibal, Missouri.  His descriptions led me to think of Hannibal as being similar to Libertyville, only with the extra benefit of being on the Mississippi.  How great must it be, therefore, to experience Cairo, the southernmost city in Illinois, blessed with not one (the Mississippi) but two (the Ohio) of our country's most important rivers?  Plus, there was something exotic about the name "Cairo."  Even its pronunciation, KAY-roe, was a little offbeat.  I had to see the place for myself.  It finally happened on a road trip with Momma Cuandito in 2003.

I've considered several adjectives to describe what we saw driving through Cairo.  No single descriptor I came up with paints an exact picture.  I had ridden on the Vomit Comet through the ghettos of Chicago's South Side on my way to South Bend many times.  I drove through some scary neighborhoods in Detroit shortly after the riots there in the late '60's.  Gary, Indiana at night made my heart go "pitter pat," and not in a good way, even though I was with a couple of fellow Domers who lived there.  In spite of those sorrowful recollections, I was shocked by what had become of Cairo.  On a much smaller scale, it was just as disheartening as those other places.  Unlike Chicago and Detroit, where at least the downtowns were immune from the ravages evident in other parts of the city, downtown Cairo was in shambles.  Boarded storefronts, broken glass, crumbling sidewalk and street pavement, piles of rubbish, and nary a soul to be seen.  More than one social observer has called Cairo a ghost town.

The history of the town, details of which are beyond the scope of this post, furnishes a combination of reasons for its demise.  Racial injustice dating to the antebellum era, the building of railroad and highway bridges which destroyed the once-booming ferry boat business, and the rerouting of railroads which had helped Cairo become more or less a mid-South transportation hub are three major contributing factors.

Momma Cuan and I continued our drive a mile or two south of downtown to the actual confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.  During the Civil War it was the site of Fort Defiance, a citadel which enabled the Union army to control navigation of those waters.  This historic property is now deserted. The most remarkable items are the scores of fallen timber which drape the grounds.  There was no commemoration or shred of evidence of the existence of Fort Defiance and the strategic role it played in the Civil War.  There was not even a small sign indicating that this point is, in fact, where the two great rivers merge.  At least Four Corners had that engraved brass disk.

News Flashes:  We haven't had an exam on the Quentin Chronicle since June 10, 2014 when I presented my Citizenship Test.  Try your hand at this one question quiz.

Question: Which state is the closest to Africa?

A. Maine.

B. Massachusetts.

C. New York.

D. Delaware.

E. Florida.

A large portion of Americans tend to think of the "Lower 48" as a rectangle.  I attribute some of that misconception to our preoccupation with sports.  For example, teams along the Atlantic seaboard are often clumped together in one division.  In Major League Baseball's American League, the American cities in the Eastern Division are Boston, New York, Baltimore and Tampa.  None of the five cities in the AL Central Division are anywhere near the coast, with Cleveland being the closest.  In the National Football League, the four metropolitan areas with teams in the East Division of the American Conference are Boston, Buffalo, New York and Miami.  There are other examples at both the pro and college level, but my point is that the southern teams and northern teams along the coast are grouped together as if they were lined up vertically.  Yet, consider these tidbits: Atlanta is practically due south of Detroit, and Miami is lined up longitudinally with Pittsburgh.

The counterintuitive stuff isn't limited to the East.  Did you know that Carson City, the capital of Nevada, is west of Los Angeles?  So are three other state capitals in the Lower 48: Sacramento, Salem and Olympia.  The lesson to be gleaned here is that LA is not situated at the bottom left hand corner of the country's rectangle because -- wait for it -- there is no rectangle.

And now, back to the quiz.  The correct answer is "A."  Maine juts out far enough into the Atlantic to make the seemingly impossible true.  If you win any dough via wagering, I'll expect a small cut.

Eating Crow:  I am going to close this post with one more geographic oddity, this one regarding my native state, Illinois.  I read in a recent publication that six states border Illinois.  I could not believe an editor did not catch the egregious error.  As someone who lived in Illinois for over thirteen years and was fairly well-versed in its geography, I knew for a fact that the correct number of its bordering neighbors was five: Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa.  Any Illinoisan worth his salt can tell you that.  But, here is the catch!  Technically, Illinois also shares a border with Michigan.  It is located northeast of Chicago in the middle of Lake Michigan.