I’m feeling old today and it doesn’t have anything to do with making a full day of the State Fair yesterday. I did get all of the fair food groups — grease, sugar, meat, dairy — in their various forms, including a trip to the Big Fat Bacon stand that was mocked by other members of the posse — until they tried it. (State Fair math: Big Fat Bacon is only half as bad for you when other people eat half of it.)

And I’m not feeling old because the Twins opted for fielding gaffes and tired-looking bats last night and early this morning in their 11-inning loss to Seattle. I’m going to stay away from digging into the game because my late-night attention span was a bit wandering and, if I got started on some stuff, I could go on and on and on.

I’m feeling kind of old this morning because the last baseball game I covered was on July 4, 1993. I was an assistant sports editor at the time, new to the job, and decided it would be a nice thing to give the beat writers a day off. The Twins beat the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 that day and the starting and winning pitcher, getting his first victory in the majors, was a young lefty named…

…Eddie Guardado.

Dave Winfield hit a two-run homer for the Twins that afternoon, Tom Brunansky played right field for Milwaukee and Rick Aguilera came in to get a two-inning save. (Really, I don’t remember the last part, but I found the box score here.) It was a good but ordinary game, with the thing I remember as much as anything else being a low key-but-very happy Guardado. He looked about 30 years younger than he does today.

Most of what he said didn’t find its way into my story, which was mostly about Winfield’s home run and a leaping catch he made. The Twins also helped Guardado out with a couple of nice plays in the infield.

A snippet from the game story:

“They played outstanding defense - Pags (Mike Pagliarulo) at third, (Pat) Meares at short, Winfield,” said Guardado (1-2), making his fifth start since being called up from Class AA Nashville. “That ball he caught, I thought it was gone. I turned around and looked and thought, `Dave has a chance at it.’ I usually don’t show my emotions when I’m pitching. But that moment, right there, I got kind of excited.”

Absolutely nothing that happened that day would have led me to believe that 15 years later, the Twins would be celebrating the return on their one-time closer who, save for one season in Seattle, never quite captured the success that he had with the Twins. Now, at age 38, Guardado could be one of the keys to the final weeks of the 2008 title race — providing his teammates step livelier than they did last night.

It does make me wonder which of the young players of 2008 we’ll be talking about 15 years down the road … in 2023.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 9:18 am 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.