All Things Considered’s David Molpus interviews Gorden Wittenmyer, who covers the Twins for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, about big series against Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox. The Twins’ chief rival for the American League Central Division crown is in town for the first game of a three-game series.
Heading into the game, the Twins hold a half-game lead over the Chicago White Sox. Though neither team can clinch this week, one will come out of the series with a lead that could be challenging to overcome in the last 10 days of the regular season.
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SPEAKER 1: Game one features the Twins' hottest right-hander, Brad Radke, the ace of their staff, against a guy going for 20 wins and possible Cy Young Award this year. This is the marquee match-up of the series right away.
SPEAKER 2: It's a big game for the White Sox and their fans too, not to get-- I don't want to be too parochial here. But I mean, they rarely get this close at the end.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, actually the series is probably bigger for the White Sox than it is the Twins. Their schedule after this series is a lot tougher. So if they lose ground or don't make up very much ground in this series, then they've got a huge uphill battle the rest of the way, even more so than the Twins.
SPEAKER 2: What does the return of the pitcher, Eric Milton, mean to the Twins for the stretch?
SPEAKER 1: Well, he is a very intense competitor who is one of these guys that was emerging into an ace type of a pitcher and always gave confidence to the team when he took the mound. So to see him back at such a critical time now means a lot to these guys.
SPEAKER 2: The Twins have had their ups and downs this season, but the team seems to be playing quite well in these last several series. What's brought out the improved play late in the season?
SPEAKER 1: Well, I think probably the same thing that's brought the best out of these guys for three years. Every time somebody writes them off, they seem to rise from the grave. Whether it's contraction, whether it's labor strife in the industry that's going to threaten to shut down a playoff season, or whether it's just a really critical loss at a bad time in the season or a losing streak, where you just think that it's over, they're like the Phoenix. It's ridiculous. They can't handle not having adversity is what it seems like sometimes.
SPEAKER 2: How about the chemistry between these two teams? Is there more bad blood than usual between them this year?
SPEAKER 1: Surprisingly, at least to me and a lot of other observers, is that there seems to be less bad blood than there has been in previous years. And that might have as much to do with the fact that they have played so closely this season, that one team's not running away with the division like it has the last couple of years.
I think that if you're trailing the other guy by 10 games in the standings and it's September and they've beaten you up all year long, you tend to be a little more ready for a fight away from the baseball when the baseball is as intense as this is and played as closely and as well as this has been. There have been fewer of those flare-ups.
SPEAKER 2: What has to go well, then, for the Twins to win the division?
SPEAKER 1: As long as they win one game in this series, they're in great shape. Seven of their last nine games are against the Detroit Tigers, which are-- they might be on their way to the worst record in modern baseball history.
The White Sox have a schedule the rest of the way that includes another contender in the division, Kansas City. Seven of their last 10 are against Kansas City, and the three others are against the New York Yankees. You would think that if the Twins come out of this, even trailing by a game or two, that they would still be in good shape.
SPEAKER 2: Do you feel baseball fever in the air, though, right now?
SPEAKER 1: There hasn't been a mid-September game-- series of games like this ever in this place. I mean, you go back '87 and '91 when they won World Series championships. They had much bigger leads at this point in September last year. They had a huge lead. In fact, they had clinched by now.
The fact that you've got two teams separated by a half game with less than two weeks to go in the season, I don't know how you can't be excited if you care at all about baseball around here.