Twins 9, Yankees 3

There's nothing like beaning the other team's marquee player to get them riled up, as New York's Kevin Brown learned yesterday while nursing a two-run lead in the sixth inning. He hit Torii Hunter in the elbow with one out and no runners on, the two exchanged some heated words as Torii made his way to first. Manager Ron Gardenhire could be seen in the Twins dugout, telling his boys to sit down and calm down, when some of them seemed ready to rush the field. They sat, but they didn't calm down.

Jones got his revenge with a single to right.

LeCroy showed his contempt for such low tactics by smacking an RBI double to right. (You heard me--LeCroy got a double. The fact that the only ML player slower than LeCroy is Yankees right fielder Gary Sheffield certainly helped.)

Cuddyer sneered as Brown intentionally walked him to load the bases.

Brown doesn't take being sneered at well, so he plunked catcher Mike Redmond to bring the tying run home and re-load the bases.

Young Luis Rodriguez stepped up to the plate, and you could actually read the thoughts going through Brown's head. "Ah-ha, a rookie," he gloated to himself. "And a replacement player, too. I'll get a double play out of him, and leave with a tie."

So L-Rod, who doesn't like being thought of as an easy two outs, fouled off about a half-dozen pitches just to make Brown squirm, then lined an RBI single to right. Brown squirmed his way right on into the visitor's dugout, and the inscrutable Tanyon Sturtze took the hill for the Empire, facing recent call-up Michael Ryan.

Ryan did the last thing anyone (including Ron Gardenhire) expected. He bunted up the third base line. He took off for first, Cuddyer took off for home, Sturtze scrambled for the ball, and Cuddyer slid in just as the ball was arriving at the plate, knocking it away from catcher Jorge Posada.

Recent call-up Brent Abernathy (for the record, only four of the nine the Twins put on the field to open the game are regular starters) hit a sac fly, and the Twins were up by three.

The Bankees made it close again in the top of the eigth, scoring one to make it 5-3 Twins. In the bottom of the inning, our boys responded with four more runs, because that was marginally more polite than blowing raspberries at the other dugout, which is what they really wanted to do.

Lew Ford was brushed by a pitch in the midst of the scoring frenzy, making New York the winner of the beanball war by a score of 3-0, though I don't suppose that will comfort Emperor Steinbrenner much.

Poor George. He spends all that money on aging All-Stars, and he gets...aging All-Stars. Gee. Who knew?