But first, a shout out to Delmon Young for the throw he made from the left-field wall to double off Nick Swisher at first base and end the eighth inning. You can have reflex diving stops by third basemen, lucky stabs by pitchers and web gems of that ilk. I’ll take the throw — 250 or so feet on the fly and right into the glove of second baseman Brendan Harris. For one thing, it kept Gardy from having to bring in Joe Nathan, well rested as he may be, to finish the eighth before going out for the ninth. (Or was Rincon warming up too?)

Second of all, I’m trying to imagine that play if Jason Tyner had been in left field. First off, the guy was a bit squeamish going toward the wall and, more importantly in this case, even if he’d made the catch Tyner would have needed a driver and a 7-iron to reach Harris.

That play rocked.

Now, back to Oof. That was a fine job, everything from the wrist-breaking curves that were locking up the White Sox batters and sending them back to the dugout shaking their heads and cursing their kin. I especially liked when he took down Swisher in the third inning and, um, adjusted himself in celebration. Talk about, “I don’t care what you think because you’re not hitting me tonight, boys” confidence. And maybe that’s what we got so many crowd shots from FSN as the game went on.

Seven innings, eight strikeouts, one mistake pitch that ended the shutout bid.

Oof was 70 percent strikes, 98 percent solid and reminded me of the pitcher that he was when he closed out 2006 with 10 or so important and clutch starts. The ‘08 Twins need more of that.

And he fielded his position with a couple of plays that Ms. Baseball rightfully deemed Santana-like. Whether the 425-pound Boof of old (like 2007) would have made those plays doesn’t matter because the slimmed-down Oof K. Onser made ‘em and made ‘em with style.

Gotta ask one favor, though. Can someone do something about Oof’s hair? That’s just not a good look — and the Tuesday night hair trifecta of Oof, Anthony Lapanta and Roy Smalley was enough to get me to the barber shop today. I don’t want to be in that picture.

Day game today. You all can leave work at noon.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.