Patience is a Virtue

For the first time since May 13 the Twins are in sole possession of first place!

As the calendar turns to August we've reached the time known in baseball as the dog days of summer. The weather is hot, the players are tired, and the long season becomes a grind. But the dog days are when the contenders truly separate themselves from the pack. Today on August 3rd, the Twins proved themselves to the rest of the baseball world that they too are contenders!

It seemed fitting that on the day the Twins took over first place with a victory over Cleveland their young phenom lefthander, Francisco Liriano, was on the mound to pick up the W. Liriano's last win came against the Indian's on July 23, of 2006. It has certainly been a long and winding road back to the majors for Liriano but today he reached his goal.

"He looked more like the old Liriano, like the one before," catcher Mike Redmond said. "It's only going to get better. He's only going to get stronger."

On this big day for Liriano and the Twins, the Chicago White Sox had a big day of their own. They had an ugly 12-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals that became even uglier as a bench clearing brawl lead to Ozzie Guillen and multiple players getting ejected. The Sox are just 3-9 in their last 12 games and maybe this will be the start of a downward slide.

Denard Span, who hit his second career homerun today, admitted to watching the scoreboard out in rightfield today, "I was watching [the scoreboard] -- from like the fifth inning. I saw it was 8-0, then all of a sudden 10-0, and I was like, 'Uh-oh!,' then 12-2," Span said. "I knew Kansas City was taking care of business, and it feels good. It feels good to finally say we're in first place, for at least a day. We can't sneak up on anybody anymore this year. Everybody knows we are for real this year."

Patience turly is a virtue.