Anyone who has been to a few Twins games with us knows we have a deep and abiding love — as well as a freakish good luck streak — when it comes to Twingo, the bingo-esque game that involves scoring plays. We’ve won twice in past years (including last year), and last night we would have won if not for one thing: Jason Kubel stopped running. Kubel, you see, laced a ball to right field with a runner on first and two outs in the bottom of the fourth. Kubel isn’t the fastest guy on the Twins, but we didn’t care. All we needed was a triple to complete our Twingo, and this at least seemed like a good bet — particularly with a runner on first. But as Joe Mauer chugged around third, Kubel rounded second and stopped. Nooooooooooo! The throw went home and Kubel started up again, making it to third. We hoped against all hope that the Twingo (and official scoring) gods would smile upon us, but we knew in our hearts that when “double” was flashed on the board, it was the right call. No luck.

(That picture, by the way, is of the Renault Twingo, a French car reborn last year. The name is said to “denote the ‘fun and active personality’ of the car,” sayeth Wikipedia. Who knew? But we do know this: All Twingo winners throughout the year in 2009 should be entered in a drawing to win one of those things.)

You can have your “runs created,” “VORP,” “OPS” and whatnot. What we really want to examine is the Twins’ RBBH factor.

Fact: The Twins are 2-0 in games attended by the RBBH, 5-8 in all other contests.

Fact: Joe Mauer and Carlos Gomez are each 5-8 in games attended by the RBBH (.625 batting average). In all other games, Go-Go and 4+3=7 are a combined 22-for-99 (.222).

Fact: The Twins’ bullpen has pitched 5 1/3 scoreless innings in games attended by the RBBH.

Case closed.

What else? Good angle by LEN3 on today’s Twins’ gamer. What was Carl Crawford thinking by catching that ball and giving the Twins the game? Also, an underrated play earlier in the game: CF B.J. Upton threw home, completely missing the cutoff man, when Carlos Gomez scored (easily) on Joe Mauer’s two-out single in the fifth. Mauer took second, which paved the way for a pitch-around walk to Justin Morneau, which ultimately led to two more runs on Jason Bartlett’s throwing error (Delmon Young). Fundamentals. … Our initial reaction to the Wolves’ win was “How could they do that?” but we have to stick to our original guns. Don’t mess with karma. A win is a win, and this will work out in the long run because they did things the right way down the stretch this season. … Kevin Love makes his decision today.

Game 5 tonight. Can you dig it?

Fasola-link! The art of the save.

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