Section 219: A great baseball night

There are times when you can put aside the backstory of a struggling team and just take in a night at the ballpark.

Went to the game on Monday and that wasn't the case.

Went on Tuesday and it was totally so.

Good weather helps. In my season-and-a-half of going to Target Field, Tuesday night's weather was the best ever. In the eighth inning, when Joe Nathan, was taking care of the middle of the Dodgers' lineup, the guy behind me started talking about how he really liked the Dome at times like that because it was so loud. The wonderful Ms. Baseball-219 heard him say that and just said "No."

In case you're wondering, people aren't booing Joe Mauer -- and there are still more Mauer jerseys in the house than any other. The different that I noticed is that last season there was enough excited noise and anticipation when he came to bat that you could barely hear his walk-up music. This year, there's more music than crowd noise.

Kids who are into the ballgame at the ballpark are cool. The girl -- maybe 8 or 9 -- sitting next to us got through the whole game on two Killebrew root beers and some chicken fingers, and kept up running dialog throughout. Much better than the hammered guy who sat next to us Monday night. Well, he sat with us from the time he arrived in the second inning until he staggered out with his buddy in the fourth.

Ms. Baseball-219 did a root beer run and was astonished to see the concession stand sign on the 200 level advertising "Killibrew root beer." Someone fix that!

It looked like Luke Hughes was doing his best to restrain his excitement when he ran around the bases after his home run while Rene Rivera didn't bother to curb his enthusiasm when he tagged out Jamey Carroll, on Jason Repko's excellent throw, to end the Dodgers seventh.

On the excitement front, couldn't tell who were more excited about Nathan's two-strikeout, fastball-chucking eighth inning -- Nathan himself, the teammates who congratulated him between the foul line and dugout or the fans. I'm calling a three-way tie.

Amusing to see Tsuyoshi Nishioka charge a ground ball and trot all the way to home plate for a back pat from Rivera before returning to shortstop. It reminded me of when the great Tony Bastista trotted almost to the right field corner after a ball he hit went foul against Detroit back in his Minnesota half-season. I'm disappointed in Nishioka's play so far but not ready to give up. More on that some other time.

All the other teams in the division lost. I'm not getting too excited about that, though.

We won at Twingo! First time ever! Thanks for Rivera for his fly out to left to seal the victory.

Day game today.