MINNEAPOLIS — The “Rally Sausage” is back (again).
For at least a night, so too was a Minnesota Twins offense previously mired in lethargy.
Desperate for a spark after losing 15 times in 21 games, the Twins revived an old friend on Tuesday night and promptly followed up with their biggest offensive showing in three weeks. Kyle Farmer, Matt Wallner and Carlos Santana all homered, and Pablo López struck out 10 as the Twins toppled the Los Angeles Angels 10-5 in front of 18,311 at Target Field.
Farmer and Wallner each drove in three runs as the Twins scored their most runs in a game since Aug. 21.
“I don’t know where it came from,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I can’t identify it as being the ‘Rally Sausage.’ It might be the ‘Rally Sausage.’ Who knows? All I know is we played well enough (Tuesday) to go out and win a nice ballgame and we’ve gotta come back and do it again. I wouldn’t mind seeing that thing again.”
While it wasn’t quite Babe Ruth pointing to center field, Farmer called his shot.
Two and a half hours before the first pitch, Farmer stopped to ask several reporters if they knew what was in a small cardboard box positioned below the bat rack. A peak inside revealed a months-old encased meat loosely wrapped in worn plastic packaging.
Though Farmer was long gone by the time reporters discovered the contents of the box, his intent was clear. Similar to Commissioner Gordon turning on the “Bat Signal,” Farmer was summoning the Twins’ offense to reappear and save the day.
Any question about the sausage’s mythical powers was answered a few hours later when Farmer launched a three-run homer to left to provide the Twins with a 4-0 lead. Farmer was handed the sausage as he returned to the dugout and held it in his right hand as teammates showered him with high fives.
From there, the Twins’ dugout rediscovered the good vibes largely absent for the better part of three weeks. Suddenly, players, who admitted to pressing recently, found a way to loosen up.
“I noticed it when Farmer hit a homer,” López said. “I don’t know where they put it. I don’t know where they keep it. But I saw it in his hand and I’m like, ‘OK. It’s back,’ and it was great. … We had it when we won 12 games in a row, and Anaheim was a part of that. I’m sure seeing the sausage made a lot of guys say, ‘You know what? We know how we can play when we have a good thing going when everyone’s just playing loose.’ There’s no need to feel pressure that’s self-inflicted.”
ALERT: THE SUMMER SAUSAGE HAS RETURNED.#MNTwins #MLB pic.twitter.com/FqvSskWNIz
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) September 11, 2024
During the team’s worst 20-game stretch of the season, a young Twins club felt the weight of the world on their shoulders as their lead in the American League wild-card race started dwindling. Once a sure bet to reach the playoffs, the teams behind the Twins have begun to make up ground during a period where they went from 17 games above .500 to only eight over.
Entering Tuesday, the team’s lead for the final wild-card spot was down to three games.
Lifeless isn’t accurate enough to describe how the Twins looked over the weekend in Kansas City when they were shut out twice, nor when they were manhandled again in the homestand opener Monday by Reid Detmers and Co. Reverting to their March/April ways when they played rigid and dull baseball and got out to a 7-13 start, the good vibes recently have been hard to find in the clubhouse.
Apparently, desperate times call for acts of pure lunacy where some poor member of the Twins support staff — in this case, it was run production coordinator Danny-David Linahan — was forced to transport the box containing the ‘Rally Sausage’ from the bowels of Target Field out to the dugout.
But sure enough, Linahan’s act of courage unleashed a torrent of upbeat feelings in the dugout.
It all began with Trevor Larnach’s single under the glove of second baseman Michael Stefanic to start the second inning. That kind of hit is one that Royce Lewis mentioned before the game as being hard for Twins hitters to find. Santana followed with a seeing-eye single of his own, and Ryan Jeffers’ broken-bat single made it a 1-0 game.
One out later, Farmer ripped a 1-0 changeup from Angels starter Griffin Canning into the left-field bleachers. As he rounded first base, Farmer stared back over his left shoulder at the dugout.
“Anybody who can do the same thing every day, you’ve got to have a little craziness in you, I think, in a way that can make it fun and switch things up,” Farmer said. “You look at our lineup and what we have right now, most of them have spent time in Triple A. So we had to shake things up a little bit and make it fun. Teach these guys, you know, sometimes you’re going to lose and sometimes you’re going to be on a cold streak, but you’ve still got to have fun and figure it out.”
The fun continued throughout the night.
An inning later, Wallner pulverized an 0-2 fastball from Canning, driving it 444 feet to make it 5-0. The Twins tacked on another run on a Jeffers sacrifice fly to extend the lead to six runs.
But it was the response to a four-run rally off López (all four runs were unearned and he struck out 10 in seven good innings) that revealed how the mood truly changed course.
Working with the 6-0 lead, López appeared to be out of the fifth unscathed when an Edouard Julien error extended the inning. Taylor Ward singled in a run to make it 6-1 and Zach Neto crushed a three-run homer to make it a two-run game.
Similar to the sausage’s undying spirit, the Twins wouldn’t go away.
Batting in their half of the inning, Larnach drew a two-out walk ahead of a two-run homer by Santana, his 21st. Santana, whom the sausage famously doinked off his helmet in Toronto in April, caught the package again near his helmet as he reached the dugout.
Then in the sixth, Wallner added on again with two outs, doubling high off the wall in right-center to make it a 10-4 game.
“A day like this is always good,” Wallner said. “I think we’re in good shape going forward, honestly. One day can turn it around, and just see how we interact with a day like this and then kind of get back to that. … We’re not a team to be shut out twice in one series and score in one inning, no matter who’s out there playing. So obviously, that’s more than just the players. It’s vibes, just confidence. Hopefully, this just slingshots us forward.”
When Matt Wallner connects, the ball goes far. It’s simple.#MNTwins #MLB pic.twitter.com/trzFSqJ0B3
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) September 11, 2024
The sausage certainly has proven it has the power to propel the Twins upward. The team first celebrated with the packaged meat product during an April 25 rally over the Chicago White Sox, only four games into a 12-game streak credited with turning the season around.
The team embraced its savory mascot through a 17-3 stretch that moved them from eight games out of first place to only a half-game behind Cleveland by May 12.
For some strange reason, the Twins left the sausage behind when they went on a three-city road trip in May in which they were swept by the New York Yankees and Guardians. Sometime during a blowout loss in the May 20 opener at Washington, the Twins shipped the sausage to the nation’s capital. They rallied with the sausage back in the dugout the next day, rolling to a 10-0 win and salvaging a series win over the Nationals the following day.
But after that, the sausage disappeared and nobody seemed to know where it went.
Until Tuesday.
“No one can kill it,” Baldelli said. “It’s probably going to be around for long after all of us.”
(Top photo of Carlos Santana: Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)
