First Inning

Baseball is structured for immense suspense. There’s no clock, and the number of things that can happen in an inning is nearly boundless. Still, it’s easy to lose track of the suspense because baseball largely consists of very, very small gestures. And baseball seems long—there’s always time to get that run later.

So tonight, as the Twin host the Mariners, I decide to try watching as if the first inning mattered most. I have a secret theory that this is often true, though I don’t know how to prove it. Tonight seems to fit the case. Could the inning when many fans are still ordering their snacks or looking for parking, when viewers haven’t even tuned in, be the most important of the nine?

Nick Blackburn starts for the Twins. He’s a sinkerball pitcher and I think I see solid potential in him, but he didn’t have any pattern of success in his debut last year. I’m watching with big hope since Blackburn is going to have to be the real deal if our young rotation is to prevail this season.

He gets a first pitch strike on Endy Chavez, the pesky hitter filling in for Ichiro as he recovers from a stomach ulcer. A first pitch strike is a little like an amulet that’s supposed to keep you safe, but Chavez chips away into a 3-2 count and finally gets a tiny single.

Not a big worry, but you hate to give up anything in the first inning. The first inning, and already the pretty picture is ruined by that slap single. The first inning of the first game of the season the Twins can win. Yesterday, they lost to a torrent of home runs from Seattle and fine pitching from Felix Hernandez. One win doesn’t mean much, but the first win somehow does. And now there’s Endy Chavez sittin’ on first base.

Franklin Gutierrez is also the recipient of a first pitch strike, so you figure Blackburn isn’t rattled. But Gutierrez hauls off and parks one in the right field corner, where Denard Span has to watch it bounce once before he can field it. A clean double, and now runners are on second and third with no outs.

Ken Griffey Jr comes to the plate. Now, Griffey isn’t any true power threat these days, but he hit one last night and suddenly he seems to have that mojo about him again. Blackburn can’t locate his pitches now, and it’s easy to imagine a very bad end to this inning. So much so that conceding one run starts to feel like a reasonable tradeoff.

Though Blackburn isn’t in control of the at-bat, he is rewarded with Griffey hitting a high infield fly that was never in any danger of scoring a runner. Whew. From none out and no force at any base, Blackburn is starting to breathe a tad easier. But the scoring threat is still there.

Adrian Beltre comes up, and the days of the first pitch strike seem well over. Beltre soon enough deposits a giant sac fly in left, scoring Chavez. Gutierrez remains stranded on second with two outs, and Russell Branyan makes the third of them. Blackburn walks off the mound having given up only one run. Since we were poised for a thorough shellacking for a moment there, the Twins seems to have gotten off the hook. Relatively speaking, how bad can one run be?

Well, it can mean you’re behind for, say, the entire game. In the Twins half of the first, Span chops the ball down so hard in front of the plate that he can run to first in the time it takes to come down to earth. A single. Maybe we’ll match the Mariners blow for blow.

Alexi Casilla sacrifices Span to second. We are really scratching here, and if any runs come out of this, it will feel like we got them in the least glorious way. There’s a reason why the big power hit inning feels more satisfying. Michael Cuddyer is up and out, and now we’re down to Justin Morneau.

Morneau is strictly speaking the most talented Twin, capable of hitting for power and for average. It seems that he begins every season in a personal, gloomy quest for his first home run, and until he obtains it, there’s a Pigpen-like cloud of despair around his batting helmet. Well, wait—that cloud is there after he hits that homer, too. It’s there all season, really, and whether Morneau takes the weight of the team on his shoulders too much or he just has a low-key presence, I’ll never know. All I can say for sure is that he never looks like he’s having any fun.

Morneau has an obvious assignment, the one he’s handed at least once a game all season long—get the stinking RBI! That’s exactly what he did 129 times last year, ending up maybe second in the AL. But knowing what’s required is not enough, and Morneau flies out to center.

The first inning is over, and it looks inconsequential enough. The Mariners lead 1-0. Blackburn shouldered his way through trouble and came out with nearly the least possible damage. The Twins mounted a bit of a threat but didn’t cash in. A one-run difference is minuscule this early in the game.

Yes, but. The Twins are always behind, even if they’re microscopically behind. The second inning, both teams seem to settle down into the hypnotic near-nothingness of baseball. The Mariners are out on a walk, a double play, and a fly out. The Twins depart with a strikeout, a ground out, and another strikeout.

Then a delicate little lever feels like it’s pressed, and the Mariners pick up another run in the third. The Twins keep doing nothing. The Mariners get a bit gaudy about it in the fourth and score two, and now they lead 4-0. It’s impossible to add or subtract that first inning, to find its real meaning. It was only one run, but did it pave the way for something or was it part of a chain of events? For that matter, is baseball a game of small, isolated actions or a fluid motion?

The Twins could deceive themselves about the dangers of being one run down, or even two, but the four-run difference looks nasty. Finally, they decide to do something about it, in the fifth. Starting with a pretty triple from Carlos Gomez, three runs eventually score. The recipe includes Nick Punto being hit by a pitch, Span uncorking an RBI single and then stealing second, and Cuddyer producing a 2-RBI single. It’s now a one-run game again, 4-3.

Both teams get some fine work out of their middle relievers, who are pretty well flawless. We go through some zombie innings with no big threats of scoring, and we’re back to being balanced with the same differential the first inning provided. You can talk about that first run as if it made all the difference now, even though you were all too prepared to give it up for the sake of halting the damage at one.

The top of the ninth and the Mariners come to life again. With two out, Gutierrez singles home Wladimir Balentien, whose inconsequential single now seems awfully significant. That first run looked small too, but now the Twins are two runs behind and have one inning to deal with the problem.

Brandon Morrow comes in for his first save of the season. It looks like he’ll have it, as Joe Crede strikes out and Delmon Young flies out to center. We’re not even in a very useful stretch of the batting order, and now we’re down to our last out.

Carlos Gomez hates making that last out. He walks. And he’s a restless young man, so he steals second. Jason Kubel pinch hits for Jose Morales. This is a daring move, as Morales is the backup to the backup catcher. If we need a tenth inning, the battered Mike Redmond will have to serve. Kubel, a lefty, is planted at the plate to radiate one single message to Mr Morrow: I can tie this game. Gimme a chance and I can launch this ball outta here.

Morrow wilts. He walks Kubel on four pitches—try that one more time and they’ll demand he turn in his closer’s badge and gun. Brendan Harris comes in to run for the lead-footed Kubel, and after sending Brian Buscher up to pinch hit for Nick Punto, Ron Gardenhire has run through about all his managerial moves.

Buscher walks. The bases are loaded. Morrow is yanked. And though this inning began with every face in the Twins dugout showing a healthy readiness to concede defeat, we’re now hearing the fans rocking the musty old Metrodome.

The tying run is in scoring position. True, we are down to our last out. And a one-run difference would be a lot more tolerable—back to that first inning again. The game could tilt either way with a feather to push it.

Span comes to the plate to face Miguel Batista, brought in to rescue the Mariners. He replays his own first inning at-bat by chopping down to crush the ball in front of home plate and launch it high and far enough to get that runner in from third and hustle down to first. We are back to the one-run difference.

Casilla is up and he sees what he likes as the pitch leaves Batista’s fingertips. He swings at the first pitch and launches a hard line drive to center, scoring two. Twins win.

My first inning theory would seem to require that the Twins lose, that they never overcome that initial deficit. But the theory isn’t that the first inning ordains the outcome, but rather that the first is often highly significant. If I had to pick only three innings to watch in any game, they would be the first (what does each pitcher have, is the best section of the batting order working), the seventh (will the starter tire after a good beginning or stay solid, or will the middle relief succeed or fail), and the ninth (what’s the final outcome). Tonight’s game fits that pattern perfectly.

The Twins were behind all night, often not by much but enough to make the first victory of the season look elusive. But baseball’s relentless possibility, the three outs that have to be made, gave them enough room to win tonight.