Last nail?

After watching the Twins' gut-wrenching, come-from-behind, come-from-ahead loss to Cleveland last night, which might have been the final nail in their coffin this season, my thoughts drifted to 1984.

Where were you in summer of 1984? That was a big year for me -- I was deep in the throes of puberty, listening to a lot of Van Halen, riding my moped around town to my first real jobs (umpiring little league baseball games and working at a drive-in restaurant), and parting my hair on the side again after an ill-fated, follow-the-crowd experiment with the center-part-feathered look. Ugh.

Anyway, in the summer of 1984, the Minnesota Twins made their first serious run at a division title in my 10 years of following the team. Powered by a dynamic young lineup that featured emerging stars Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Tom Brunansky and a rookie center fielder named Kirby Puckett, the Twins entered the last week of the season 81-75 and tied for first place with the Kansas City Royals.

Even after dropping a pair at Chicago, the Twins still trailed the Royals by only two games with one series remaining -- a four-gamer at Cleveland, a team they had just swept at the Metrodome a week earlier and that was 16 games below .500 entering the final weekend.

Now, I had just entered 10th grade that month, making the big leap from junior high to high school, so I was rather caught up with ... uh ... my studies, as well as trying to impress the ladies with said moped (verdict: unsuccessful), so I can't recall the details of that series chapter and verse. Thankfully, a wonderful site called Baseball Almanac is out there on the Internets, a great resource for baseball dorks like me.

On Thursday night, Mike Smithson took a 3-0 lead into the 8th, gave up a couple of runs and yielded to Ron Davis, who gave up tying run before getting out of the 8th. Then, with two outs in the 9th, the great Jamie Quirk took RD deep and the Twins lost 4-3.

But the Royals lost to the Angels, leaving the door open for the Twins -- two games out with three to play. On Friday night, the Twins took a 10-0 lead after two and a half innings. Staff ace Frank Viola gave back two in the third, then blew up in the sixth as the Tribe scored seven more times to cut the lead to 10-9. (Meanwhile, the Twins were getting blanked by the Indians' bullpen duo of future Twin LeRoy Purdy Smith and the immortal Tom Waddell.)

Once again, RD was the scapegoat for the loss -- the Tribe tied it off him in the 8th, and he put the winning run on in the 9th before the immortal Ed Hodge gave up two hits and allowed the winning run to score. I wish I knew who had the hits but that's not part of the box score.

Meanwhile, the Royals won in Oakland and that did it for the 1984 Minnesota Twins. One aside -- at least they didn't completely roll over. On that Saturday, they took a 3-0 lead in the first inning off Neal Heaton, but John Butcher couldn't hold it and they lost 6-4. And on Sunday, they scored twice in the top of the first off (wait for it ...) Bert Blyleven, but they didn't get another run until the 8th, by which time the Indians had tuned up Ken Schrom en route to a 7-4 win.

Of course, the AL West title that year was pretty much a consolation prize because the Royals were steamrolled by the juggernaut that was the World Champion Detroit Tigers. But still, it was a nice, unexpected run for the Twins, and it set the stage for their 1987 World Series season, with many of those young stars from '84 providing the backbone of the '87 team.

Anyway, this is a round-about way of saying it was a good run this summer, and maybe the Sox will still fall flat on their faces, but it doesn't look like it. If they play .500 ball the rest of the way, the Twins will have to go 9-2. I don't see them getting out of Tampa with fewer than two losses this weekend, and that doesn't even account for their game against 22-2 Cliff Lee tonight.

I just hope somewhere in Minnesota there's a 15-year-old kid stinking of Clearasil and Old Spice, driving a moped around town and clinging to the last dying hope of a flickering Twins season. Dare to dream, kid.