Sunday, June 27, 2010

Pavano's Got that mustache feeling and Mets trip recap

Twins beat the Mets yesterday 6-0, while this is old news, they have already lost 6-0 today, I've been busy recovering from the events to post quickly.

The Twins as a team have been struggling lately but not Carl Pavano. He has been excellent. In his last two starts, he has given up just one run combined and given the Twins 9 innings in each outing. He has beat Roy Halladay and Johan Santana in the process. He has been good most of the year. Pavano has gone 7+ innings and given up 4 runs or less in every start since late April, other than a 4 inning 10 hit 6 earned run start against the Blue Jays. I found some video that might help explain Carl's transformation and posted it below.




Anyway, Carl went all 9 innings, giving up 3 hits, 1 BB and 1 HBP, while striking out 4. Former Twin Johan Santana struggled in the first inning, giving up 4 runs. This was more runs than Carl needed. This was the second Saturday in a row I saw the Twins on the road. Two road games at two nice, new stadiums and most importantly, two wins. Recap in Philly is here.

Unlike the Philly comeback, this game was almost free of drama, although it was fun just the same.
Not that anyone could tell from this pic, but Prince Harry is throwing out the first pitch.

Mets fans also have a thing with mustaches.
The Apple stayed down all day.... wish it would have today.

Saw a lot of Twins fans, including a fan doing Dio horns. We ran into him in the beer line in Philly last week also.

This was a fun game, if not terribly memorable. The stadium was nice and the weather was perfect, but the game was free of drama. The game went by really quick. The drama level was about a 2 where the Philly game was a 10 at the end. It was fun beating Santana and Pavano's mustache ruled the day. 

After the game, we went to Manhattan and had some drinks with John Bonnes, writer of the Twins Geek blog  ,the Voice of Reason, Nick Nelson of Nick's Twins Blog, and Topper Anton of Curve For a Strike. It was fun getting together and meeting everyone post Twins game in NYC. We met Topper in Philadelphia and it was fun to see him for the second week in a row.

Later in the evening, we spent some time with Frankie Rodriguez. Frankie, a former Twin, told us some stories of his time with the team and of coaching his son's team. If you don't remember Frankie, check him out here. He had some good stories about Gardy (he likes him), Knoblauch (well, he seemed to respect him), as well as guys such as Pat Mahomes. He seemed like a very affable, likable guy, and it was cool spending time with him. He told us some about his career and how he is coaching his son now. He's also a friend of Manny Ramirez and explained that Manny donates money and equipment to the program they both played in growing up. My 11 year old step-son soaked in everything that he said.


It was a great day. Even though the Twins lost today and have been struggling lately, the last two Saturdays were amazing Twins experiences, so excuse me if I don't jump off of the bandwagon just yet. Days like these are why I love the game of baseball.
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