Oh. My. God.

Today had to be one of the very best days of my life as a Twins fan. Ho-ly cow, I am in heaven right now. We went into today’s game (the last game of the regular season) tied with the Tigers for first place in the division. The division winner will play Oakland at home, the wild card winner goes to Yankee Stadium. We had been in first place for a total of several hours for the whole season, and were now tied for a few days for the division lead. And it all came down to today. What needed to happen? We absolutely needed to win today’s game and Detroit absolutely had to lose. If we BOTH won or BOTH lost, Detroit would be the central division champions because they had a winning record in the season series of the two teams. We had to win against the White Sox, Detroit had to lose at home against the Royals, who have lost 100 games this year. 162 games in the season, and so much was riding on this last one. We won easily, but it wasn’t looking hopeful when the Tigers jumped out 6-0 in four innings. Then, the Royals, (who had also won the first two games of the series) amazingly started scoring runs. The Tigers were unraveling. By the seventh inning, the Royals were on top 7-6. By the end of nine innings, the two teams were tied 8-8. Those scrappy Royals just wouldn’t give up. They had nothing to play for and even less to lose. The Tigers were forced to bring in their would-be starter for the first playoff game. They had bases loaded in the eleventh and couldn’t score. Finally in the twelfth the Royals scared two and went on to win, giving Twins the central division. At the Metrodome, well after the Twins game was done, 60,000 fans were screaming, “Let’s go ROY-ALS!” watching the improbable unfold on the jumbotron.

That isn’t nearly all that happened today, the last day of the regular season. Joe Mauer won the batting title! The first American League catcher to win the title and the first catcher to have the best batting average in both leagues. He was the first Twin since Kirby did it in 1989 which made the occasion bittersweet. We have the AL batting champ, and a shoe in for the Cy Young. Johan Santana finished with the pitchers trinity: leading the AL in ERA, wins and strikeouts. Justin Morneau has a very good chance of being named MVP (that’s not as clear cut as the other two), but he also tied the record for most runs batted in for a season by a Canadian (tied with Larry Walker). Very cool for Justin also.

We wished so badly we could have been there to see all this live, but with the baseball package we were able to flip between the Twins, the Tigers and the Yankees (both Jeter and Cano threatened to overtake Mauer for batting title today). We settled for buying a couple bottles of champagne and talking about the events incessantly. I am so pumped for the post season!

GO TWINS!!!