Minnesota 7, Boston 3
May 13, 2008
The Minnesota Twins have now swept the White Sox and Tigers and taken three of four from defending champion Boston in their last three home series. Not bad for a squad most people left for dead after losing Torii, Johan and Silva this offseason.
So I run downstairs after the game to get quotes and wind up on the Boston side first because Terry Francona likes to get his news conferences out of the way. With hordes of Asian media on the premises thanks to Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima, and the fact that its the Red Sox we’re talking about here, I wound up near the back of the considerable-sized pack. Everyone is just sort of standing around looking at Francona, so I start asking a question. Well, it turns out there’s a soft-talker right in front of Francona who was already mid-question when I opened my mouth. So Francona shoots me a look and asks me in a way somewhere between average and rude if he can answer her question. I apologize and say that I couldn’t hear her. Then the media relations guy standing behind all of us decides he needs to scold me as well, so I shot back that I couldn’t hear her and gave another sarcastic apology.
It certainly wasn’t as bad as the time I asked Glen Mason about his quarterback situation during the 2001 season right after the Gophers were beaten by Purdue in a game where Travis Dorsch kicked a 50-yarder to tie it — arguably after the clock ran out — following a drive from inside the 10-yard line with less than a minute left. Then Tony Henderson’s overtime touchdown didn’t count because the officials didn’t understand the color scheme in the end zone and thought he was out of bounds. If it weren’t for television cameras in the room, I would have been killed that day.
But I digress…here’s the story: http://nationalpost.pa-sportsticker.com/default.aspx?s=mlb-game-centre&mid=5199
Punting Baxter 
I remember that game! It was the first game after 9/11 and it was also the day of my first AP assignment. Soup sent me up to Collegeville to cover the 100th anniversary of the first St. Thomas-St. John’s game. I watched the first half of the Gopher game on TV — as stale an environment as you could ever create — then walked through the curtain of pine trees at the cathedral of football in central Minnesota. Great crowd, great atmosphere. I interviewed Ryan Keating after the game, and we agreed that playing D-III for St. John’s was a better choice for him than sitting on the bench for Dan Monson.
What did you say to Mason that set him off? I suppose, given the circumstances that day, “Hi, Coach” would have done it.
If my memory serves me, the exact quote was something like, “so what about your quarterback situation?”
In my defense, the Gophers had been switching from Asad Abdul Khaliq to Travis Cole seemingly by possession for a couple of weeks, and as part of a two-headed tandem covering the game for the Daily my counterpart had asked me to ask the question — albeit before all the craziness went down.