Last night's Twins game was so great for the first eight innings. Morneau crushed two homeruns on his birthday, Mauer added one of his own, Johnny Damon got ejected... going into the ninth inning, the Twins were two runs up. In his career, Joe Nathan's only blown four two run leads. Things got ugly - fast. Nathan had a meltdown and gave up three runs in the bottom of the ninth to lose the heartbreaker. The outfield had some issues, including the normally solid Denard Span over-pursuing a line drive down the left field line, which led to an inside-the-park home run. Hopefully the Twins will be able to get to Joba Chamberlain early today and put the evil empire in their place.
Micro Album Reviews
- I'd been eagerly awaiting Viva Voce's new CD 'Rose City' since I'd heard of its upcoming arrival. The finished product is pretty decent, but they've sort of stripped away a lot of the melody that made them so undeniable before. Most of the songs expand on the jam-heavy sound from "Get Yr Blood Sucked Out". It's a pretty good album, but it's going to take some time to get everything out of it.
- Wilco's new album (amusingly titled "Wilco (The Album)" is good. It's streaming for free at their website now, so you really don't have any reason not to check it out.
- Mewithoutyou's new album, "It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright" might actually kind of suck. After a couple of listens, I haven't gotten much out of it. The original mwY sound as featured on '[A-->B] Life' is gone. Aaron Weiss no longer has any fire left in his vocals, everything is either straight singing or done in his "sing-talking" style. All of this wouldn't really be a problem if the lyrics were up to mwY's usual caliber. Instead we get awkward lyrics with none of the drive that we've been used to from previous efforts. So to recap, they've lost their musical, vocal, and lyrical intensity - what actually is left to draw a listener in?
In Which Things Get a Little Weird on the Bases...
With one out and runners on first and third, Michael Cuddyer (the runner on first) took off as the pitch was being thrown. Brian Buscher (the batter) hit a looping drive which was caught by the centerfielder. Cuddyer had slid into second base already, so he started running back to first, as Morneau tagged up to score. Bizarrely, Gardner ignored the easy double play option in Cuddyer and threw home to try to catch Morneau. His throw was unbelievably pathetic, and Morneau scored in plenty of time. At this point, they appealed to second, and the umpire ruled that Cuddyer had not tagged second on his return to first (even though he had not run past second at all). Somehow, the run counted. Which rules govern this, and why did Cuddyer get called out for not retouching second even though he had not travelled past second base, but rather had simply slid into it?
While We're At It...
Derek Jeter is a great baseball player and a liekly first ballot hall of famer. However, he does not now, nor has he ever had "great range" or really even good/average range. He is a subpar fielding shortstop who knows how to make certain plays look very flashy. Thank you.
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