Twins are making up ground

Who put a quarter in the Twins? No, seriously. What can explain this amazing turnaround from the team that was the worst in baseball not too long ago? Well, things have improved. Clearly.

The Twins are riding an eight-game winning streak, have gone 15-3 in the month of June, swept the San Diego Padres in interleague play and have won 10 of their last 11 games. Oh, and they put up eight runs in the first inning in San Francisco against the defending World Series Champions Tuesday night.

I'd say that's a pretty decent stretch of baseball. Plus, you know something is up when Alexi Casilla homers for the second consecutive game. He hit one out in the ninth inning Tuesday, to seal the 9-2 win.

Making their way back
The Twins have crawled out of the AL Central basement and are now 6.5 games behind the leading Cleveland Indians. The Tigers are right with the Indians, but the Twins only trail the Chicago White Sox by a couple games, meaning a jump into third isn't that far out of reach.

How big of a leap in the standings has the Minnesota club made? Well, it was 16.5 games out of first place on June 1. So the players have rallied together to make up 10 games of the deficit in less than a month. Not too shabby.

Negatives have turned to positives as of late. Pitching and hitting have improved, which should go hand in hand with improving your ball club.

Shaking off the injuries
Also, it's helped that some players have returned from the injury line, most notably Joe "Mr. Minnesota" Mauer and the Japanese player Tsuyoshi Nishioka who hasn't played enough with the team for anyone to make a strong evaluation of him yet. The lineup has been almost unrecognizable at times; I can't keep up with who's in, who's been called up or sent down and who's hurt.

Veteran slugger Jim Thome is down with an injury right now. He's the guy I'm willing to give a pass to though, because he's 40 years old. However, I'm not too excited about Justin Morneau being banged up with multiple ailments, landing on the disabled list, like it's mid-September. He's definitely a missed bat in the lineup.

Jason Kubel and Denard Span are also ailing, hence the need for all the AAA players called up to the bigs. But Delmon Young is still around; you need someone to be out there making fans nervous as he plays left field.

Stepping it up
Michael Cuddyer has certainly turned up his offense. He has 10 home runs and 29 RBI. While I appreciate his willingness to be a "gamer" and play whatever position is needed, I still prefer him and his strong throwing arm in right field. Cuddyer's name is being thrown around for the Twins representative in the All-Star game.

I'm really warming up to outfielder Ben Revere. He reminds me of Jacque Jones, and no, it's not just because they share the No. 11 jersey. I like Revere's effort in the field and at the plate. I also like Danny Valencia, providing some much-needed consistency at third base. But he's also been hit with a small injury bug lately.

As I mentioned, pitching is also better. The Twins went into the top of the ninth inning with a one-run lead on both Friday and Saturday. Manager Ron Gardenhire handed the ball to Matt Capps for the save attempt. I write "attempt" because he's 11-for-16 in save opportunities with a 4.06 ERA. He got the job done on those two occasions.

Division title? Let's slow down a little.
A friend asked me last Friday if the Twins were going to win the division. I said no. They've been playing better lately, but they also dug themselves a large hole to start the season, and keeping pace with 15-3 ball is tough to do over a longer span of time.

It's just turning around and going the Twins' way right now. We shouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves. Now, could the Twins come back and win the division? Well, stranger things have happened. They are a second-half team and have made comebacks before in recent memory.

I will say this: If the Twins do manage to come back and win the AL Central, it will prove once and for all how extremely weak the division is.

Videos: 2011 Indianapolis 500

A few of my videos from the turn four stands of the Indianapolis 500.

Parade lap




Green flag racing




Under caution

Restart




Restart

Centennial Indy 500

It's quite fitting that my 100th blog post will be about the 100th anniversary of the greatest spectacle in racing, the Indianapolis 500. The Centennial celebration Sunday was the 95th running of the great car race. (The first race was in 1911, but the event wasn't held during the World Wars.)

My parents, brother and I had the chance to attend the race in 2009 (the first year of the Centennial Era), and now in 2011, ending the era. It was a pretty great experience to be part of history.

There's still nothing like attending an IndyCar race in person, but the Indy 500 is like a whole other machine. It's the biggest single-day sporting event in the world; it's like one giant party at times too. Where else can you have 250,000 cheering fans circling the 2.5-mile oval?

Anything can happen
The anticipation for this event was huge, even more so because the qualifying field of 33 wasn't exactly typical. The two dominating teams of Penske and Target Chip Ganassi had their issues. Dario Franchitti ran out of gas on his qualifying run, starting him ninth on the grid for Target. And Team Penske's best qualifier was Will Power, starting fifth.

Team Target's Scott Dixon was a favorite heading into the race, because he started second behind polesitter Alex Tagliani.

I was kind of interested to see how the race would play out with such a jumbled field. But boy, did this field deliver. Fans were treated to 23 lead changes, 10 different leaders and a crazy finish where a rookie driver came oh-so-close to drinking that bottle of milk.

It all came down to the very end
Due to various pit strategies and cars that needed to come in toward the end to get fuel, the last stint of laps out of the 200 were pretty exciting. Golden-girl Danica Patrick led for 10 laps, and she was likely a caution flag away from her first Indy 500. But she needed to pit, and then I assumed Franchitti would be in position to take the race, since he pitted earlier and is always competitive.

But he must have been off the pace. Suddenly, here comes rookie JR Hildebrand into the lead with two laps to go. Anything could still happen, but when he came around turn four on the final lap, I assumed he'd have the race.

I, and probably everyone else, was wrong.

In what's being dubbed a rookie mistake by Hildebrand, he made the decision to go on the outside and pass the lapped car of Charlie Kimball in turn four. Bad move. He got up into the "marbles" on the outside of the track and hit the wall coming out of four and onto the main straightaway.

I can't believe that finish
I saw him hit the wall, stood up on the bleachers and tried to figure out who actually won the race. I had no idea who was running directly behind him. It wasn't until a few seconds later when I heard it on the public address system that Dan Wheldon had come out in front. Hildebrand still managed to cross the finish line in second place.

It was Wheldon's second Indy 500 win, in his only race of the 2011 season as he is without a full-time ride in the IZOD IndyCar series (like so many other talented drivers). The end was pretty shocking and exciting. A finish to remember like 1982, 1992 or 2006.

There was some question as to whether Wheldon should be named the official winner though. Because you can't pass cars once the caution comes out, in this case, because of Hildebrand's wreck. But replays clearly show the yellow light came on after Wheldon passed the wrecked rookie on the main straight for the win.

This call wasn't as close as the controversy with Paul Tracy and winner Helio Castroneves in 2002 (a race that should be Tracy's, in my opinion).

Such a great race
Thankfully, the weather for race day was perfect. It had been raining in Minnie and Indy for what seemed like weeks. But the skies finally cleared and temperatures rose - a nice, sunny 90-degree day was in store for the 500-mile journey.

The race didn't disappoint at all. It was a blast.