ALCS NOTEBOOK
MINNEAPOLIS – Was Rick Reed, who left his heart with the Mets – but upon further reflection might wonder why – surprised to see his old team implode?
“Oh, absolutely,” said the Twins’ starter for Game 2 tonight. “If you look at that team on paper, they should be sitting where I am. But you know, that’s just baseball.”
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Bud Selig, who wanted to fold the Twins last winter and earlier this season called their success an “aberration,” watched last night’s game from the box of team owner Carl Pohlad, his contraction co-conspirator.
“Look, everything in life runs in cycles,” the commissioner said on an early-inning visit to the press box. “Having lived through something like this myself when we lost a team [the Braves leaving Milwaukee for Atlanta in 1965], I understand how people felt. But it’s over now. The focus is on the field.
“I know I’m the lightning rod I keep reading about ‘Bud’s contraction.’ I would remind you that contraction was a 30-0 vote by the owners.
“We divide teams into four quartiles of payrolls. Over a seven-year period there were 224 playoff games, and the top won 82 ½ per cent of the games the second quarter won 15.8. It means this is an aberration from the norm. No one was saying that this team or Oakland’s team wasn’t wonderfully talented.
“This is a community I was told, ‘Why don’t you fix the economic problems of baseball?’ And now we have a labor agreement. This is a wonderful club, they’ve had a great year. They need a stadium but they have time now to get one.”
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Twins reserve infielder Denny Hocking, out for the ALCS with a badly split nail suffered in the celebration pile, said before Game 1 last night that he was being sarcastic when he refused to identify Jacques Jones as the player who stepped on his hand, saying, “It’s somebody I’ve been feuding with.”
“We beat the A’s and people wanted to talk to me about my finger,” said Hocking. “If people thought that I was serious when I said it was premeditated, they should have their journalist license revoked. Nobody in the media who knows me and heard that quoted me.”
