Who's afraid of the big bad ghosts of Yankee Stadium?

NEW YORK - The Twins' futility in the Bronx has grown from odd to strange to bizarre to grotesque. After their 7-1 loss on Saturday at new Yankee Stadium, the Twins have lost 12 straight in the vicinity of 161st Street, and manager Ron Gardenhire's record here is 5-29.

Saturday afternoon, the Twins' clubhouse was quiet. Voices were hushed. There was no music playing, and the big-screen TVs hovering over the middle of the room stood blank and silent.

As I took the pulse of a handful of key players and Gardenhire himself, I heard a combination of gallows humor and burglar's hope.

"I promise you it's not the end of the world," Gardenhire said. Then he smiled and said, "If we lose tomorrow, then maybe it is, but not yet."

It was like talking to people who had just seen a ghost. Some of them didn't want to believe their own eyes. Some didn't want to talk about it, for fear of making it more real. Some wanted to hire an exorcist.

Sunday's game provides an interesting psychological test. The Twins, even those who won't admit it, are desperate to end their losing streak against the Yankees, and yet they could lose 20-0 and still go on to make the playoffs and even win the World Series.

"Nobody likes to get beat by the same person over and over and over," center fielder Denard Span said. "It does kind of get to you."

Saturday afternoon, he said, "I would love to come out here tomorrow and just put up 30. But then, they'd probably put up 27."

Justin Morneau said the only thing worse than losing to the Yankees is worrying too much about losing to the Yankees.

"I've been around long enough to know that the only game that matters is the game you're playing that day," said Morneau, who turned 29 on Saturday. "Nothing in the past matters. You can't change anything that happened the day before or the last year or whatever. You've got to come out and win tomorrow, but by winning tomorrow you're not going to erase what happened today."

Does he agree with Span, that a 20- or 30-run outburst would solve a few problems? "That's the difference between having a couple of years in and having more than a couple of years in the big leagues," he said. "The longer you play, the more you realize that one at-bat can change a game. If you're 0-for-4 it doesn't matter, because you can win the game in your fifth at-bat.

"That's kind of how this is. You can lose however many in a row you want to a team, but all that matters is how you play that day."

"You want to win series, and you want to win series against good teams, but the bigger picture is winning the division," Morneau said. "If we beat these guys five out of six games this year and we don't win the division, does that mean we had a successful year? No. We won the division last year and we lost every game against them."

Outfielder Michael Cuddyer smiled as he put a twist on an old baseball cliché: "You want to go one game at a time, but you definitely want to win one of those games."

Competitive starts by Scott Baker and Francisco Liriano didn't break the streak. Sunday, Nick Blackburn takes the mound, pretending he hasn't seen any of the ghosts of Yankee Stadium. "It's just another game," he said. "It's not like we're making a playoff push right now. No need to treat it differently than what it is. Obviously, we don't want to get swept, but I'm just going to go out and do my job, and I'm assuming that's what everybody else is going to do."

But... "we have to go out there and beat them," Blackburn said. "We're tired of getting beat by these guys. But if you try to treat it as something special, that's when you put too much pressure on yourself."

I'm with Span. The Twins need to score 30 early, and hope Jon Rauch can hold on for the save.