#-1: Gopher softball (Last Week: 0). Yeah, the Minnesota softball squad gets the top spot for absolutely annihilating poor Maryland at Cowles Stadium this weekend. All three games were mercy-ruled at the minimum five innings, and the Terrapins scored only one run, on Saturday, while the Gophers pounded out 30 for the three-game series.
I was at Sunday's 9-0 rout. Although the fences are moved in to just over 200 feet, seeing players jack home runs deep over the outfield walls remains a powerful, majestic thing to behold, and it gets better the more you see it -- and on this day, I saw it a lot. On the other side, Sara Groenewegen was throwing a Perfect Game until she was pulled with, I think, two outs in the fifth, when the PG was ruined by a pop-up that fell at Shortstop. Nevertheless, this is a team that humbled a very bad club. Now they finish the regular season by playing three at Iowa this weekend. The Hawkeyes are 3-17 in conference play and 13-36 overall. The U. maybe be working the minimum of 15 innings again this weekend.
(Aside: As Sunday's sellout game wore on, I became less interested in the field of play as I was the crew that put up the "K"'s whenever Groenewegen struck somebody out. It's one of those gas station sign thingies, where you have a pole with a suction cup attached, you attach that sucker onto a "K," then slide it into these plastic brackets on a display. The trick is to dislodge the suction cup while the "K" remains in place in that holder. And truly, the two members of the U. crew had the worst time removing the suction cup from the "K" while keeping the letter on the sign. It was funny!)
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -1). A 4-1 week. They won the series at Illinois, dropping Friday night's nightcap 2-0. They then beat the hell out of visiting Kansas midweek, winning by scores of 19-7 Tuesday and 12-7 Wednesday. I was at Tuesday's game and there were six Home Runs. I got pretty cold near the end of the game; man, this is the time of year where weather that makes you feel hot while the sun is out can feel kind of cold once the sun is on the other side of the world. Anyway, I witnessed Jerry Kill bounce the first pitch (that's a no-no, Jer!) and a Gophers club that can absolutely mash the ball. I don't think I saw this much confident offense in this program's best teams of years of yore.
Even more surprising is that when I checked on the standings, the Gophers are actually on top. And this weekend they face a pretty important matchup; they host the second-place team in the B1G, Indiana, for a three-game series. I want to see at least one game, but I don't know if I can.
#-3: Twins (Last Week: -2). Honestly, I didn't think this organization would regress this badly. But indeed they have, part of the reason being a horrid 1-5 screening week. They got swept by Detroit at home, then managed to win only one game at Houston. That one game, however, was Monday's series opener, where Twinks wunderkind Jose Berrios won his first game (after only his second appearance), the lineup got to reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Dallas Kuechel, and they won away from Target Field for only the second time this season. Then, of course, they lost to the Astros by scores of 6-4 and, ahem, 16-4.
I don't know what the hell is going on with them. They open up a three-game set at the White Sox tonight (Friday night), then immediately come home and host three versus the Bastard St. Louis Browns.
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