GAME OVER: The Minnesota Twins' 2003 season is over, after consecutive home losses to the New York Yankees. It was a good run, I'm proud of my Twinkies, and I'm glad I was able to attend their only win of the series. Since Game 4 hadn't yet ended when Yom Kippur was about to start, I was forced to choose between the Jewish religion and the Religion of Baseball; I chose the former, went to Kol Nidre, and heard the result later on (the Twins were down 6-1 when I left, however.)
News was better elsewhere in baseball, as the Chicago Cubs beat the evil, no-good Braves to win their first playoff series since 1908. Cubs fans once again filled a large portion of the Turner Field seats, an event that should cause the immediate contraction of the Atlanta Braves; at any rate, we don't have to hear that horrible "Tomahawk chant" again for the rest of the year.
And tonight, the Red Sox completed an improbable comeback by winning their third straight game to defeat the Oakland A's, who lost in the first round for a Timberwolves-like fourth straight year. The win sets up a Yankees-Red Sox ALCS, just like in 1999; this will be an exciting, exciting week in the Northeast Corridor.
In the eighth inning, Boston outfielder Johnny Damon and second baseman Damian Jackson had a head-on collision going for a fly ball, in which Damon suffered a concussion. Damon made like The Undertaker, raising his arm as he was loaded into the ambulance; the centerfielder had made a big deal previously about not participating in the team's recent ritual head-shaving. Indeed, Damon's decision to retain his shag-mullet hairdo, which Bill Simmons has compared to that of Phil Hartman's "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" character, may have saved his life.
Throughout the game Fox cut to a live feed of Sox fans watching the game at Jillian's on Lansdowne Street, in the shadow of Fenway Park. On the eve of the 2001 season, my friend Aaron and I sat at that same bar, debating the Sox' prospects for that season. I thought SI might be correct in their prediction of a Boston championship that year, but Aaron, correctly it turned out, believed that the signing of Carl Everett would be the Sox' undoing.
I'd sure love to be at the Cask & Flagon tonight...