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CATHY WURZER: This is Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Cathy Wurzer. The Minnesota Twins find themselves in a tie for first place in the American League Central Division this morning, after a remarkable win yesterday afternoon at the dome.

The Twins beat the Anaheim Angels 6 to 5 on the strength of a wild play in the bottom of the ninth. Minnesota Public Radio's Jim Bickal was at the game, and he's in the studio this morning. Well, you're a huge baseball fan. You must have been just going insane here in the bottom of the ninth.

JIM BICKAL: Well, actually through most of the bottom of the ninth, it just looked like a time to pack up the bags and get ready to go home, because the first two batters got out. They were facing Troy Percival, who has not allowed an earned run against the Twins in his entire career, like 37 games. They can't do anything against this guy.

CATHY WURZER: WOW.

JIM BICKAL: So two outs, bottom of the ninth, nobody on. Justin Morneau, the rookie, just up from Rochester comes up and he draws a walk. So there's a glimmer of hope. They pinch run with Dustan Mohr, the former high school linebacker. Keep that in the back of your mind.

CATHY WURZER: OK.

JIM BICKAL: And Shannon Stewart comes up. Now, Shannon Stewart has been a hero since he joined the Twins mid-season and just come up with many, many clutch hits. He takes a 97 mile an hour Troy Percival fastball and lines it down the left field line. The Angels third baseman dived for the ball, barely gets a glove on it, but it gets past him and rolls into the corner.

So now we've got Dustan Mohr running from first. The ball is rolling around toward the left field corner. Garrett Anderson, the Angels left fielder, picks up the ball. Now Twins third base coach Al Newman has a decision to make here. Does he hold Dustan Mohr up at third? Or does he try to send him home with the tying run in the game?

CATHY WURZER: And he normally would have probably held him. But--

JIM BICKAL: On any other situation, even though Al is kind of a kamikaze third base coach, and they do tend to gamble. But this is a situation almost in any other situation where he'd hold him up because he hadn't-- the shortstop got the ball in the relay before he'd even touched third base. So anyways, but Newman decided he's going to roll the dice here, and he's going to send Dustan Mohr and essentially force them to make the play. Meaning that if they do everything right, he's going to be out by a mile. But if he makes a bad throw or it skips or whatever, the run will come in and they'll tie the game.

Well, the Angels execute the play. The catcher, Bengie Molina, has the ball and Dustan Mohr is like 20 feet from home plate. So you're saying oh, well, this is it. I mean, you're starting to walk out the exit because he's a dead duck.

But Mohr comes in, and he lowers his shoulder and crashes into Molina, and the ball comes out. And he scores. And meanwhile, the ball is rolling down the line. Molina is kind of in a slumped over in front of home plate.

And the key to the whole play is that Shannon Stewart, who hit the ball has never stopped running. He's running at full speed the whole way, even though it appears that this is a completely lost cause. The ball is rolling down the first base line.

Stewart keeps hustling all the way around. He slides in. They throw the ball home. Percival is now covering the plate. He beats the tag, scores the winning run, and they win 6 to 5, probably the most remarkable finish I've ever seen in a baseball game.

CATHY WURZER: Aren't you glad you stayed?

JIM BICKAL: Well, I saw people leaving with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. I realized it didn't look good. But, I mean, you stayed for the whole game. Why not stay for that last out? And then we saw that.

CATHY WURZER: Well, the Angels catchers, you say, was holding his wrist. How injured is he?

JIM BICKAL: Yeah, it looks like he broke his wrist. And he'll be out for the whole season. And the Twins were-- they were pretty upset about that.

And a lot of them knew Molina and said he was a really good guy and all that. But that's what they say, the breaks of the game. I mean, it was a clean play, I mean, the kind of play that people make in that kind of a situation.

CATHY WURZER: So now the Twins are tied for first place.

JIM BICKAL: Right. On the strength of former Twin David Ortiz, he hit two home runs for the Red Sox last night against the White Sox, beating the White Sox. And so the combination of the Twins win and the White Sox loss, now they're in a tie.

CATHY WURZER: Now, you must have been one of what? A handful of fans in the stands yesterday.

JIM BICKAL: Yeah, there were about 11,000, which was the smallest crowd since April of last year.

CATHY WURZER: Really?

JIM BICKAL: Well. I mean, it was a day game in September and all, but--

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, but they're doing really well.

JIM BICKAL: Yeah. The fans don't seem to be quite as excited about this year's team as they have been about past Twins teams. And there's all kinds of explanations for that. But for the people that saw it and heard about it, maybe this will create some excitement about the Twins.

CATHY WURZER: Playoff tickets go on sale today.

JIM BICKAL: Right. If you've got-- if you've got a little money in the bank, you can buy strips of tickets for the whole postseason starting today. The minimum price for the worst seats is $400.

Again, this is for all the games, and you get your money back for the ones they don't play. But if you want two tickets in the best seats, you're going to have to lay out, I think, $2,200 bucks. So you need to have a lot of faith in the Twins, I think, to put down that kind of dough.