Living with the decisions we make

I understand the decisions that were made on a night when no single thing cost the Twins a chance at winning Game 1. The loss was yet another unhappy confluence of missed opportunities and coming up short, the kind of game that makes you sit on the edge of your seat and then realize afterward just how much you hurt.

I keep replaying the sixth inning, when the Twins' 3-0 lead started shrinking and Francisco Liriano was struggling to finish off the Yankees one more time. You could see the slippage. One of the TV guys called it "caveman" pitching, when fatigue sets in and you swap your arsenal of pitches for trying to bull your way through with hard stuff.

It worked against Marcus Thames, as Liriano got his seventh strikeout -- two outs, two runners on, a two-run lead.

Falling behind Jorge Posada, though, meant throwing a fastball to a guy who's pretty much helpless against breaking pitches. Single to right and it's 3-2.

Jose Mijares is ready in the bullpen. Here's the decision. Do you let your No. 1 starter take a shot at lefty Curtis Granderson or do you bring in Mijares, whose role is to retire lefties but who has been vexingly unreliable? Gardy stayed with the ace and Granderson -- historically flawed against lefties -- stayed with a fastball and the fly ball triple that followed erased the Twins' lead.

Have we seen this? The Yankees take a lead with a triple and break a tie with a home run. The Twins strike out going after pitches outside the strike zone. That would be J.J. Hardy to end the sixth, Jim Thome to end the seventh and Michael Cuddyer to start the eighth, if you want specifics.

The three-and-four guys in the Yankees order start a rally (in the sixth) and keep one going (in the seventh).

That will have to change. So will this 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position nonsense.

But back to the pitching. The Twins are intent on considering Liriano their ace and there are many times when he fills that expectation. He found ways to get through the Yankees order despite struggling the first time through. Then he breezed through the second time.

The third time through showed the difference between considering and being.

This isn't just me rambling. It was Jack Morris who pointed out on the radio afterward that the good ones never let those leads slip away -- all the more in the postseason.

Takes one to know one.

Crain, after all, had given up only four runs in his previous 44 appearances -- during which only 41 guys had reached base against him in 41 2/3 innings and his slider was a reliably dirty deed.

In Game 1, we got the new adventures of old Jesse -- a hanging slider that Mark Teixeria turned into the game-winning home run.

There was every reason to believe that Crain could get through the seventh, including the fact that his numbers were even better against lefty batters than righties, making him a good choice in an inning with two switch-hitters coming up. Blame Gardy for that move and you're not being fair.

So the scar tissue yields a little more blood.

And we will be back at Target Field today hoping -- no, expecting -- it to stop.

Jack Morris update: A couple of people have noted that Morris' postseason record goes beyond his hallmark Game 7 performance in the 1991 World Series -- and Twins fans can be forgiven for zeroing in on that performance to the exclusion of all others.

David Brown of Yahoo! Sports looked it up and saw that Morris pitched in 13 postseason games and gave up leads five times.