Rollin' Dice with Timmah, Pt. 1.1

Got a call last night from old friend Tim Kolehmainen, hard by the banks of the receeding Red River in Morehead, Minnesota.
"Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiister Carpenter!"

I couldn't help but note the timing: My Sox, trailing 3-1 in the fifth inning to Timmah's Twins at the Metrodome.
"Tim, how un-Midwestern of you to call and bust my stones."

"Oh?"
He suddenly sounded like Margie's decoy-carving husband in "Fargo," O's and lower jaw elongating. "What's the score?"

"To be honest with you, Tim, I can't really be sure, because I've finally gone ahead and done it. At long last, Dice-K has made me gouge out my own eyes like the mother of Oedipus. What was her name again? Clytemnestra? Okeefenokee? I can't think straight for all the blood."

"You've gone wild, Mr. Carpenter."
"Yes. How many wild pitches are the Sox up to?"

"Let's see ... I think it's four, which if extrapolated over the course of nine innings -- well, eight, if the Twins hold their lead -- will eventually, if we apply the Pythagorian principal of exponential sandbagging, a theory I learned at the Upper Peninsula Institute of Technology, Logging, Edible Roots & Wildnerness Survival and applied to this spring's flooding, will, I say, add up to 8.325. Yes, most definitely 8.325."

"You got a date tonight with Iris, Rain Man?"
"Nooooope. Just watching my girls and watching Kevin Slowey pitch."
"That's another thing: We're losing to a pitcher named Slowey."

"Yep, he was one of the guys pitching for the Rock Cats when I covered them two summers ago."

"And Cuddyer and Morneau and Mauer were around when I was on the beat before that, Tim. That's why I cannot root against them with the same sort of hatred that bubbles up in me for all other Red Sox opponents. But, Tim, the blood! The blood!"

"Try cold compresses."

"No! What I need is for Dice-K to be put on the permanent DL. We called you 'Central Standard Time,' Tim, because you always seemed to be an hour behind the rest of us, but Dice makes you look like a New York Minute at a meth lab."

"Speaking of which, you called me when the Yankees were beating the Twins two weeks ago."

"Yes, but I wanted the Twins to win. I was pissed that Gardenhire left Blackburn in to get torched by Teixeira in the eighth inning of Saturday's game. Was it Blackburn? I can't recall now. I'm growing faint. The Twins should have won at least two of those games. Alas ... the Yankees are gathering steam and Big Papi still isn't hitting his weight, two numbers that seem destined to head in opposing directions."

Another wild pitch ricocheted off the armor of George Kottaras. Was that Dice still pitching? Delcarmen? Masterson? I was very faint, my frame of reference all askew.
"Adieu, adieu, remember me..."

"Miiiiiister carpenter" repeated and dwindled in my ears ... those Midwestern O's got even longer ... a hit batsman with the bases loaded ... "there's more to life than a little baseball, don't cha know?" .... OK, Margie ... the landscape's turning white ...

...

I confess to passing out and not waking until just now, moments before the first pitch in the Sox-Twins series finale.
Was last night's game for real?
I grab the paper. Yes, there it is 4-2. Six wild pitches to tie a Major League record.

"Hah, Kolehmainen!" I say into a phone long dead, "so much for 8.325! We'll see who makes the telephone call today."