Tear the Roof off This Sucker

Kubel got his first major league hit leading off the first, Morneau followed later that inning with a three-run bomb (his 15th home run since the All Star break), and Tiffee belted his first big league homer, a walk-off shot that gave the Twins a 4-3 win. Jessie Crain, another late addition from Triple-A, pitched a scoreless inning in relief of starter Carlos Silva, a guy who had started one major league game prior to this season. Toss in the fact that the Royals were 47-86, and the game felt strangely like 1999 all over again.

Yet all those small details--and most of those players--actually meant something that night, for the team's present as well as its future. The Twins were not simply fielding a Triple-A lineup and playing out the string. They were, in fact, holding down a nine-and-a-half game lead in the Central and breezing toward their third consecutive division title.

That's going to be a pretty special and, frankly, surprising accomplishment for a team that deserves to be drawing more than 23,405 fans a game (24th in the major leagues). It's also a testament to the amazing resurrection of a franchise that has gone from dead in the water to absolutely loaded in a span of four years.

It's been a great run, and the marvel of this year's team is not just that they've won, but how they've won, and how this team has been assembled. I'll address that in a couple of weeks as I recap the season and--shit, I suppose I should knock wood--take a look forward to October, which is still the only month in the baseball calendar that has the potential to rid the Dome of its stale, hopelessly permeated atmosphere of September malaise.