August 20, 2021

Well…

There’s no need to dwell on what happened to the Twins on Thursday in The Bronx. They lost, of course, 7-5.

But I am compelled to mention reliever Andrew Albers and the job he did late in the game. Albers, 35, who last pitched at the major league level in 2017, entered the game in the fourth inning and gave the Twins four good innings, striking out four over that span. He allowed only one run, a cheap home run from Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who basically hit a pop up. But because the right field wall at Yankee Stadium is only 314 feet from home plate, it landed among the fans for a home run.

The right field wall at Target Field is 328 feet from home plate.

Charlie Barnes gets the ball Friday.

Extra innings…

-The New York Post, never a bastion of support for the Twins, reacted with glee to Thursday’s win.

The Yankees tend to beat up on the Twins even when they are playoff-bound — and then crush them even more in October. So when a struggling edition of the Twins arrived in The Bronx on Thursday, they just served as more fodder for the red-hot Yankees.

With a spark from the bottom of their lineup and another solid start from Jameson Taillon, the Yankees ran out to a big lead and then hung on for their season-high seventh straight win, 7-5. The Yankees (70-52) improved to 26-10 against the Twins (54-68) since the start of 2015.

 

COMMENTS

Hi, I’m Rolf Boone, Twins fan.

I became a fan of the Minnesota Twins after a friendly wager in the early 1980s. I survived Ron Davis, the meltdown in Cleveland, Phil Bradley at the Kingdome and then marveled at a rising generation of stars and two World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. Brad Radke made the 1990s bearable, while Kirby Puckett’s eye injury, exit from the game and eventual death made it almost too much to bear. The new century ushered in more talent — Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, Torii Hunter, Justin Morneau — and consecutive seasons of playoff baseball, followed by consecutive seasons of losing baseball. A winning season returned in 2015. So here we are. Go Twins.