Saints fall after three rain delays shorten game

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Rain delays ended the St. Paul Saints’ road game after just five innings on Tuesday night, with the Louisville Bats taking the win 8-1.

When a leadoff double from Jair Camargo gave the Saints their first hit in the second inning, the Bats were already up 4-0. Louisville added three in the third. Then after a rain delay, Edouard Julien got his fourth home run with the Saints, their sole score of the night.

In the fourth inning, Brock Stewart began his rehab assignment, which had been in the offing after a successful bullpen session before the Twins’ Friday night game against the Houston Astros at Target Field. Stewart struck out one and walked two.

Ronny Henriquez took over for him at the bottom of the fifth and surrendered a solo home run to the Bats’ Hernán Pérez.

The rain returned, bringing the game’s third delay, and after 30 minutes the umpires called the game.

The teams meet again in Kentucky for game two of the series at 5:35 p.m. today.

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Rosemount native Charlie Stramel determined to prove Wild were right about him

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Charlie Stramel knows the haters are talking.

He grew up in the age of social media, and while he has done a pretty good job steering clear of some of the negative things being said about him online, it’s virtually impossible for him to avoid all of it.

“Everybody has their opinion,” he said. “It is what it is.”

Never mind that Stramel is still in the early stages of his career and doesn’t turn 20 years old until this fall. Some people are already labeling the him as a bust after the Wild selected him in the first round of the 2023 NHL draft.

Not that the outside noise matters much to him.

As far as Stramel is concerned, proving the Wild right is way more important than proving the haters wrong,

“It definitely helps put a chip on my shoulder,” he said. “I’m coming into this season with something to prove.”

Talking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon at TRIA Rink in St. Paul with development camp in full swing, the 6-foot-3, 225-pound center wasn’t hiding from the fact that his play last season left something to be desired.

He was supposed to be an impact player for Wisconsin, who used his massive frame to dominate whenever he hopped over the boards. Instead, he struggled to produce much of anything in a limited role, and ultimately transferred to Michigan State in search of a fresh start.

“I think adversity is going to come and go, for sure, in a guy’s career,” Stramel said. “Obviously we went through a little bit of that.”

After making his decision to transfer this spring, Stramel returned home to Minnesota this summer knowing he needed to improve every part of his game. He has spent time working out at Royalty Sports Performance near White Bear Lake, while also skating at Braemar Arena in Edina.

The most important thing for Stramel, however, is finding a way to play with a sense of physicality once again.

His combination of size and strength was a big reason the Wild took a chance on him on the first place as they forecasted him as somebody who could make a difference in front of the net. He admitted that he got away from that at Wisconsin, and he knows he needs to harness that at Michigan State.

“Just getting back to my identity,” he said. “I’ve got to stick to the player I am and the player I’m hopefully going to be at the next level.”

Asked about his confidence, Stramel said he has felt it steadily increase this summer as he has continued to put the work in. You can see glimpses of that with the way he’s carrying himself at development camp. Now the key for Stramel is continuing to trend in the right direction.

“I feel like I’m in a good spot right now,” he said. “Just got to keep working.”

Wisconsin’s Charlie Stramel (28) against Penn State during the second period of an NCAA hockey game on Friday, Oct 28, 2022, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)

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Marney Gellner makes history as first woman to call Twins game

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CHICAGO — Marney Gellner may not have achieved her lifelong goal yet — becoming a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” — but if you had told a young Gellner growing up in Minot, North Dakota, that one day she would be announcing her favorite baseball team’s games, well, she probably wouldn’t have believed you.

Gellner has vivid memories of hopping in the family’s Chevy Impala and driving from Minot to the Twin Cities to catch games at the Metrodome.

She wasn’t, as she put it, “laying in the weeds, praying for her chance,” to call Twins games. But when Twins senior broadcast director Andrew Halverson called to ask if she wanted to fill in for Cory Provus this week in Chicago, she jumped at the opportunity.

“If I had ever known that that girl would be sitting, calling the game, that would have blown my mind,” she said of her younger self. “Now it feels like it’s been a natural progression. But from that point, I would have been in complete disbelief.”

When Gellner took the microphone on Monday to call the Twins’ game against the Chicago White Sox, she also made history, becoming the first woman to call play-by-play in the club’s history.

Gellner had previously called three Twins spring training games on the radio in March 2019. It was then when she introduced her home run call, “Better call Mama.”

She broke that out after Trevor Larnach launched a first-inning home run on Monday. And she took her own advice earlier in the day, calling her own mother, Lola, before her history-making first game.

Gellner said she was “super proud” of the trailblazing aspect of the achievement — and also ready to move on from that because this feels like a natural step for her in her career.

“The way that Dan Gladden, Justin Morneau, (Timberwolves analyst) Jim Petersen, the way they treat me is not as a female broadcaster,” Gellner said. “And I forget about the part that it’s kind of rare and the female part. … We have come to a place where it’s so much more normal and accepted, and that’s where I like to be.”

While Gellner has extensive experience covering the Twins, her focus has been primarily on basketball of late. She is currently in her 14th season as the play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Lynx, and she spent the past week researching the Twins in between calling WNBA games.

In the days leading up to the series, she reached out to Provus and his predecessor, Dick Bremer, going over things like timing with analysts, logistical things and pronunciations to help prepare.

And then, on Monday, she took the microphone and made history.

“Somebody did say something to me about, ‘What a wonderful example for your daughter to be able to see you,’” Gellner said. “And I was like, ‘Yes, that is true. And also for my son to see it, for the boys to be hearing a woman call a baseball game and not go, ‘What?’ So both are true.”

Minnesota Twins left fielder Oswaldo Arcia, center left, and reporter Marney Gellner, center right, are doused during an interview after Arcia drove in the winning run against the Los Angeles Angels in the 12th inning of a baseball game Sunday April 17, 2016 in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Andy Clayton-King)

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Chaos swirling since Biden’s debate flub is causing cracks in a White House known for discipline

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By COLLEEN LONG

WASHINGTON (AP) — Internal drama. Leaks. Second-guessing. The pressure and chaos swirling since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance is causing cracks in a White House that until now had been marked by discipline and loyalty.

For three-plus years, the Biden administration has been mostly a restrained and staid operation, defined more by an insistence on showcasing policy and an avoidance of palace intrigue. Aides generally kept any criticism of their boss or their jobs out of the public eye. Not lately, though.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reflected Tuesday on the extraordinary moment for the president and his team, as questions about the 81-year-old’s age and mental capacity threaten to torpedo his reelection dreams. “It has been an unprecedented time,” she said of scrutiny of the president. “We are meeting a new moment that has never really existed before.”

Biden’s shaky June 27 debate performance has led to an unusually public blame game, leaks of private phone calls between the president and Democrats and questions about his son Hunter Biden’s presence at the White House. It has prompted current White House officials to anonymously vent their concerns about Biden’s ability to do the job and even led to the departure of a radio journalist after details emerged the Biden campaign had fed her and another reporter interview questions.

Not to mention all the drama playing out on Capitol Hill, where a handful of House Democrats have publicly called for Biden to step aside and there is closed-door hand-wringing by others over whether to publicly come out against the president as party leaders try to bring members to heel.

Biden has been adamant that he is not leaving the race, and the chorus of criticism may be dying down, but it’s not clear yet whether the White House drama has been a momentary lapse or will continue as the nation barrels toward the 2024 election.

Andrew Bates, a senior deputy press secretary, said Biden had “restored compassion, honesty, and competence to the Oval Office” and built the most diverse administration in history.

“As President Biden has fought for and delivered the strongest record of any modern administration, there wasn’t a single week that Washington didn’t doubt him and his team,” Bates said. “The staff are deeply proud of him and each other and know the key is to focus on the work and the American people, not the noise.”

The buttoned-up vibe at the White House under Biden has been intentional — he wanted his administration to be viewed as a return to normal governing operations after the leaky Trump White House, when half-baked policies ended up on the front pages and details of private meetings appeared in public sometimes while they were still underway.

It was also reflective of the deep loyalty of Biden’s inner circle, where many top advisers have worked with the president for decades.

Biden’s debate performance prompted a surprising amount of public criticism from some of his biggest fans, including former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield, who was on a cable TV panel immediately after the faceoff.

“It was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden. I don’t think there’s any other way to slice it. His biggest issue was to prove to the American people that he had the energy, the stamina — and he didn’t do that,” she said on CNN.

After Biden’s interview on ABC, meant in part to show he can talk off the cuff, former White House communications official Michael LaRosa posted withering public criticism: “Just when you thought the President’s communications teams had lost all of their credibility …. they are racing to the bottom and determined to continue humiliating the President and First Family with misguided and BAD media relations practices that erode his standing day by day.”

In private, aides and allies were quietly shaken over how Biden performed in the debate, and wondered whether the campaign was salvageable, particularly as the negative reviews kept pouring in.

At Camp David the weekend after the debate, Biden’s family — in particular Hunter Biden and first lady Jill Biden — encouraged the president to stay in the race, and questioned whether his staff had prepared him properly. (Biden, for his part, has said firmly the debate disaster was “nobody’s fault but mine.”)

Not long after, the presence of Hunter Biden — awaiting sentencing on three felony convictions in a gun case — at the White House was unsettling to some people, who worried about his influence with his father, according to two Democrats close to the White House who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

And there’s been the second-guessing over the long-term strategy to limit Biden’s public interactions, especially with journalists, under a mandate led by senior aides. Biden has granted fewer interviews than his modern predecessors, and he’s held fewer news conferences than any president since Ronald Reagan.

Bates said the strategy “is and has been for the American people to hear directly from Joe Biden.” He noted Biden gave an interview Monday to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” has taken questions from reporters more than 580 times and travels the country speaking to people directly.

White House officials recently vented their concerns about the president and his abilities in stories spread across national media. One official who raised alarms on The New York Times sounded a little like “Anonymous,” the Trump staffer who signaled discontent about the Trump presidency in a New York Times op-ed and later went public with his grievances.

“This is not like the last administration where we try to find out who is speaking or leaking, that’s not something we do here,” Jean-Pierre said when asked about the official’s comments. “Everybody has their opinion.”

She said she had not heard anyone voice criticisms like those appearing in publications.

In an effort to boost staff morale, Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients urged White House aides last week during an all-staff meeting to tune out the “noise” and focus on the task of governing.

There have also been public missteps. Jean-Pierre told reporters Biden had not been seen by his doctor since his physical, but the president later told campaign workers on a private call that he had been seen by his doctor after he felt sick returning from grueling back-to-back foreign trips.

White House aides declined for days to explain a neurologist’s repeated visits to the White House that had sparked speculation that Biden was getting treatment, and Jean-Pierre misspoke when talking about the issue Tuesday.

On Sunday, a radio host departed her job after news that she and another interviewer at a different station had asked questions of Biden that had been fed to them by the campaign.

The interviews were meant to be part of an effort to restore faith in Biden’s ability not just to govern over the next four years but to successfully campaign, but the revelation only added to criticism that he couldn’t handle unscripted questioning.

___

Associated Press Writers Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.