Friday game notes

As usual, random notes taken in the random portions of the game I heard with pen, paper, and some attention span to spare.

Jack Wilson played short with Stansberry at second. I thought he was a third baseman.

Victor Santos was good early, with a nice fastball tailing away at the knees, but then tired after the Twins bunted like crazy when the Pirates' minor-league infield showed they could not make a play on a bunt. Then it was falling behind, 2-0 on all the Twins' hitters.

Little Nicky Punto played a corner in the outfield, which is nuts.

Pittsburgh favorite Randy "the horror" Marsh was behind the plate. Both teams were giving the little tyrant the evil eye about the usual arbitrary-bordering-on-passive-agressive ball/strike calls.

McLouth homered early; not sure he stood around to admire the shot, but he was beaned with the first pitch in his next at-bat.

The Twins people were not impressed by the quality of the Pirates they saw. "They are going to have a hard time turning it around with this talent level," one of them said, more or less, at one point.

The broadcast was very good. I like the Twins' #2 guy, John Gordon, who did a solid no-nonsense play-by-play. There were no ads between innings on the commercials--this I just love. What do we hear? It's not dead air. It's more like this, faintly, in a mixed-up ballpark babel:

Program! program! program!
laughing, talking,
the occasional distinct laugh rising above the rest
the sound of warm-up pitches hitting the catcher's mitt
Ice cold beer!

And later, the park emcee doing the ticket lottery, calling the pierogie race. The word for all this is "ambience." This ad-free ballpark mic is what got me hooked on the internet broadcasts. If I'm not in the car or outside, I'll often listen to the web stream when I could be pulling KDKA on the GE Superadio. This, the hope for ballpark noise between innings, is one reason.