The past week or so everywhere I went there was talk of the Twins and that was pretty cool.

Whether it was at lunch or at the gas station it seemed the Twin were on the forefront of everyone’s mind and it was pretty neat to see so many people rally behind the team. It’s something that I hadn’t seen for a long time with a pro team from Minnesota. The playoff run the Wild made was similar but you didn’t hear about it as much as it seemed. The one-game playoff has a much more urgent sense and importance naturally, but it was really special to go just about everywhere and receive updates of the games the Twins were playing.

It’s hard to fault the Twins and the season they produced. Sure it would have been nice if they would have wrapped up the Central Division title earlier, but it’s pretty amazing that the team was even in the race after all the parts it lost and the questions coming into the season. Some will criticize the management for not going out and finding a big bat at the trade deadline, but it doesn’t seem prudent. Part of the makeup of the Twins is that they don’t go out and spend money on big name players to help them for part of the season. They say every year that they tried to make a play for someone and that it didn’t work out at the time and it seems like many fans have already resigned themselves to the idea that the team will not add big free agents to be. The fact that they don’t do that, almost endears the current roster to the people because the players can be viewed as overachievers.

That’s what the Twins were this season. After all many predicted that the team would finish in fourth place in the Central. It was a lot of fun to see the young arms of Nick Blackburn, Scott Baker, Glen Perkins and Kevin Slowey develop over the course of the season. Carlos Gomez became an enigma and Delmon Young turned it on late in the season. Joe Mauer was healthy and fans got see what a healthy Mauer can do. Morneau had an MVP-caliber season with his ability to hit in the clutch, although he slumped in the final week of the season, and the team got lucky with Alexi Casilla suddenly becoming a major league second baseman after coming up as a de facto solution to the problem at second base.

Tuesday’s game with the White Sox was everything you could want in a one-game playoff to decide which team would go to the playoffs. Two starting pitchers matching each other pitch for pitch, an old nemesis striking late for a crushing home run and a veteran in the twilight of his career making a play just like he did when he was in his prime. The Blackburn-Danks pitching matchup was intriguing as well because neither had logged as many innings as they had this season and Danks was pitching on short rest to boot. Both had rocky starts their last time out but they put together one heck of a show Tuesday night.

The hype entering this one-game playoff was so great that it might have catapulted the White Sox-Twins games into a full-fledged rivalry and that would be great. There really aren’t any big rivalries in the Central Division, not like in other division. With A.J. Pierzynski and Ozzie Guillen making the comments that they often do, it would be easy to turn this matchup into the most heated in the Central Divison. The Twins had a thing with Cleveland a few years back, but that never developed into much of anything, but this White Sox-Twins matchup has started to build some backstories that help forge the big rivalries. Of course the teams both have to be pretty good too, but that doesn’t look like that will be a problem for the next couple of years.