Twins reliever Craig Breslow may have etched his name in the history books Monday  when he entered the game in the sixth inning.

He threw two wild pitches and committed a balk. Someone at the park did a quick search and discovered it’s been over 50 years since a pitcher has done that in an inning. We hope to get the stat mavens to look deeper into that today.

First baseman Justin Morneau was replaced by Mike Lamb after one pop up and three grounders to Robinson Cano on Monday. But Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said it had nothing to do with Morneau getting hit in the hand with a pitch the game  before. “I gave him a little break,” Gardenhire said. “He’s been playing a lot of baseball with the All-Star Game, and the whole package.”

Gardenhire was asked before the game if he planned to warn Denard Span that he was going to hear things he’s never heard before from fans in the right field corner. Gardenhire was supremely confident Span would handle himself well.

He was right, as Span when 3 for 4 with a double and triple. Span has friends and family in New York for the series and fired up to play in the historic ballpark.

“It was an exciting day for me,” said Span, who is batting .370 since being called up from Rochester on June 30.

Since I’m talking about speedy, left-handed hitting outfielders, anyone see what Ben Revere did last night? On Sunday, I wrote about his chances of hitting .400 at Class A Beloit, but he had slipped under the mark in recent games.

I thought that was it for him. Then he breaks off a game like this.

The Twins have had players hit .400 in short-season leagues (Tony Oliva, Joe Mauer) but I’m not sure if they’ve had someone hit .400 in a full season league. I’m still waiting for the Twins to get make with me on that one. It looks like Revere is going to remain at Beloit, where the Twins want him to work on his throws from the outfield. So we’ll see how long they can keep it up.

Here’s one person’s opinion on who are the Twins’ top ten prospects.

My first impressions of the new ballpark going up across the street from Yankee Stadium: Why does it remind me of the Bellaggio?

Finally, it was sad to learn that baseball writing giant Jerome Holtzman passed away yesterday. Growing up in Chicago, he was a must read and one of the reasons I wanted to cover baseball when I grew up.

I’ve failed to grow up. But I do cover baseball.

Holtzman struck me as a no nonsense guy. I met him during the 1996 playoffs and didn’t run into him again until two years later. So I re-introduced myself to him. “Why do you think I don’t remember you?” he said.

MLB hired Holtzman as its historian after he stepped down from his gig at the Tribune. One of his goals was to clear Shoeless Joe Jackson’s name. Don’t know how far he got with that one.

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