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MINNEAPOLIS - Jacque Jones sat facing his stall in the Minnesota clubhouse Saturday night, about a half hour after the Twins were eliminated from the playoffs by the New York Yankees for the second straight year.
His voice was barely audible, but Jones still tried to sound positive.
“We had a chance to win,” he said after the Twins’ 6-5, 11-inning defeat. “That’s just the way it is sometimes.”
The usual rap music wasn’t playing in the clubhouse, but the players tried to smile and talk about how proud they were to have played a good series against the big, bad Yankees.
“We battled our butts off, and we showed would could play with the talent that we have here,” Torii Hunter said.
All series long, the Twins insisted they were a far better team than the one steamrolled out of last year’s division series by the Yankees. And they might have been.
A year later, though, the result was the same: Yankees in four.
Season over.
“They played a little bit better than we played, and that’s why they’re heading to the next round,” Jones said.
Just days earlier, it looked like this might be Minnesota’s year. After an impressive 2-0 win in the opener, the Twins were two outs away from taking a 2-0 series lead before the Yankees rallied off Joe Nathan in the bottom of the 12th.
In Saturday’s loss, the plucky underdogs put up more of a fight than last season, when they were outscored 11-2 in Games 3 and 4 at the Metrodome.
Indeed, the Twins, who had a $54 million opening-day payroll, always seemed a play or two away from having the $180 million Yankees in trouble. In the 11th inning Saturday, Corey Koskie failed to guard the third-base line, allowing Alex Rodriguez’s double to sneak through. Rodriguez went on to score the go-ahead run.
“We put him on the line and he moved off a little bit for the pitch and didn’t feel the guy was going to hit the ball,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “The kid made a mistake.”
When Gary Sheffield lost a routine pop fly in the Metrodome’s Teflon ceiling to lead to a Twins run in the fourth inning, it Minnesota appeared to be on its way to forcing Game 5.
Minnesota led 5-1 in the eighth and Brad Radke was set to start Sunday in New York.
“I was ready to get on that plane and pitch a good game tomorrow,” Radke said.
Instead, the free agent-to-be may never pitch for Minnesota again.
“I’ll just try to take it day by day and see what happens,” he said. “It’ll be my choice, and I’d like to stay here and play a couple more years. But we’ll see what happens.”
The Twins had more than enough chances.
Leading by four runs in the eighth, Gardenhire called for the usually-reliable Juan Rincon, who had given up more than two runs in a game only once this season. Grant Balfour had just pitched two solid innings, and Rincon was brought in to set up All-Star closer Joe Nathan.
But he allowed a leadoff single to Sheffield, a walk Hideki Matsui, and a run-scoring single to Bernie Williams. Rincon recovered to strike out Jorge Posada, then gave up the homer that sank the season, a three-run drive by Ruben Sierra that tied it and deflated the Metrodome crowd.
“You can’t have too many mistakes against these guys,” Rincon said. “One is too many.”
Rincon’s teammates wouldn’t blame him.
“He’s been lights out all year,” Nathan said. “He’s got nothing to hang his head over.”
The Twins still had some fight left. After Nathan kept the go-ahead run from scoring by striking out Williams and Posada in the ninth, Minnesota had Jones, Hunter and Justin Morneau coming to bat in the bottom half. The trio hit a combined for 66 regular-season homers this year.
But Hunter flied out and Jones and Morneau each went down swinging against Tom Gordon, a closer on most teams but a setup man on the Yankees.
Then came the 11th, when Rodriguez scored on Kyle Lohse’s wild pitch. The fans trickled out with sad looks.
Just like last year.
“They were the better team,” Hunter said.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
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Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
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