Red Sox at Twins

The Vanimal and Clay (Game 38)

The Twin Cities team takes the loss and Break-Evening drops to two games away. And yet I dream.

Clay Buchholz stood at the other end of the street again Vance Worley, and the Vanimal was outgunned from the outset of the duel. The Vanimal stood tall in his boots and gave the Twins six innings.

The greatest distance in the world is the distance between two lovers before their first kiss. The second greatest is between two runs and three.

This weekend series look like a war between rain and great baseball weather. Baseball weather better win. I get to go to my first game of 2013 on Sunday.

Bat on the Shoulder, Monster Magazine in Back Pocket (Game 39)

Behind on my fiction writing, I took my laptop to Donny Dirk’s Zombie Den to finalize revisions on my baseball-themed horror novel The HooseCows.

My regrets about avoiding the game were neutralized on the drive to the bar, when David Ortiz knocked in a three-run home run and put the writing up on the wall. It just wasn’t a Twins kind of day.

The transition from my baseball world to my horror world seemed pretty seamless. It’s not that weird, really. How many kids from previous generations spent their childhood alternating between the ballpark and monster time? How many pairs of jeans slid into second with a Tales from the Crypt, Famous Monsters of Filmland, or Fangoria magazine rolled up in the their back pocket?

I don’t know when sports and scares got Berlin-walled, but I’d like for everyone to just cut it out.

Also, Break-Evening is getting further away for these Twins. At least I’ll be at the ballpark tomorrow.

A Bucket of Donuts (Game 40)

People have blamed baseball for driving them to drinking for years. I might be the first poor bastard to blame baseball for driving him face first into an actual bucket of mini-donuts.

My first game of 2013 at Target Field was delightful, in no small part due to the time spent with my wife. We settled in and took in the Target Field experience. The ballpark couldn’t have felt more like home if Thornton Wilder wrote a play about it.

The field looked like this.

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The perfect Sunday in the ballpark was marred by defensive glitches, like skips and jumps when you’re trying to finish watching a scratched DVD. The sky grew dark and my wife and I kept checking out phones to see if we were going to get through nine innings.

The field looked like this.

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The rain came down and the game got called when Morneau got the plate, leaving him like a jilted groom at the altar. To kill time during the delay, the folks with the plan loaded up The Sandlot for everyone to watch while waiting out the rain.

Some of the ballplayers sat and watched from vantage points out of the rain. Outside of the occasional bleat of a testy fan, everything stayed chill and comfy. Hunger got the best of me and I got that bucket of donuts.

Seeing The Sandlot outdoors, with other folks, reminded me again that Joe Bob Briggs was right, and the Drive-In can NEVER die.

When the movie was over, the field looked like this.

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Wife and I decided not to wait to see if the Twins ever got out of the coma. We went home, in love with time at Target Field and each other. A very nice day indeed.