This Matchup Is Much Better Than Some Fool’s Gold

First there was no strike. That was good.

Now there is this, the Minnesota Twins and Angels playing in the American League championship series. This is great.

The Twins hung on, barely, and beat the Oakland A’s, 5-4, Sunday in Game 5 of the AL division series, earning themselves a spot with the Angels in the league championship series.

There can be nothing better for baseball than for fans around the country to finally see these two teams.

“We have a lot in common,” Twin first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz said. “Us and the Angels, we play the game right. You ask Tim Salmon to sacrifice in Game 7 of this series, he’ll do it and he won’t complain. You ask Brad Radke and Jarrod Washburn to come out of the bullpen, they’ll do it.

“You watch this series, you’ll see bunts and sacrifices, small ball, guys doing all the little things your coaches used to try to teach you. It’ll be great.”

The Twins played for themselves, Radke said, played for each other and for the fans of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, of the upper Midwest, who were angry and sad, discouraged and fighting mad.

A year ago it seemed the Twins would disappear, sold as spare parts, picked apart by the vultures of Major League Baseball in the name of contraction. The New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves and Dodgers, they would have been bidding for Radke.

But it wouldn’t have been fun, Radke said, pitching for the Yankees or Braves or Dodgers or whoever would have picked Radke from the Twins’ carcass. He wouldn’t have been playing with his no-name buddies, with Mientkiewicz and A.J. Pierzynski, with Michael Cuddyer and Cristian Guzman and Corey Koskie, he wouldn’t be in the rotation with Joe Mays and Eric Milton, he wouldn’t have Eddie Guardado saving his wins.

“You look around this room,” Radke said, “yeah, we would have all had jobs, but we wouldn’t have this.”

It’s not that the Twins aren’t supposed to be in the AL championship series. It’s that the Twins shouldn’t be at all.

“Everybody wanted us gone but us,” Mientkiewicz said. “The guys in this room, we wanted to stay together. For one reason. For this.”

Carl Pohlad, the 80-something owner of the Twins who desperately wanted to sell the Twins to somebody, anybody, contract and go away, toddled into the Twin clubhouse 35 minutes after the celebration had begun. He fit in about as well as Michael Eisner did in the Angel clubhouse Saturday, another wealthy man who wants to dump his team. Outfielder Jacque Jones came up behind Pohlad and sprinkled some champagne on the old man’s back.

“You need some of this,” Jones said. “Thank you, young man,” Pohlad said.

Otherwise, Pohlad was pretty much ignored. He still is possibly the most unpopular man in Minneapolis-St. Paul, blamed for trying to dump the Twins.

Radke is as popular as Pohlad is unpopular. Radke might very well have saved baseball in Minnesota. When the Twins were dreadful, piling up last-place finishes for Pohlad, who said five times in two minutes Sunday that, “I love young guys because they play hard,” Radke signed a four-year contract extension.

“He’s the one who gave us authority,” Twin Manager Ron Gardenhire said. “When Brad said he wanted to stay here, it meant a lot of his good friends on this team wanted to stay, some of the other pitchers, some of the other young guys. It showed that this organization had some commitment to it. It said that baseball belonged in this community.”

Radke, much like Angel ace Washburn, was scouted by, drafted by and groomed by the Twins. He won 20 games in 1997 but also had five losing seasons before going 15-11 last year and 9-5 this year. (He missed all of June and July with a groin pull.) Still, during the losing years, when the Twins were 144 games under .500 during six seasons, Radke was only six games under .500.

“Brad never let the losing change his focus,” Mientkiewicz said, “and he always felt committed to this team and our town. He wanted to win for the fans in Minnesota. It means a lot to him, just like it means a lot for Salmon to win for Anaheim.”

Radke, who pitched 6 2/3 innings of one-run baseball Sunday on three days’ rest, has owned the Angels. He is 11-4 with a 1.72 earned-run average against them and 6-1 with a 1.38 ERA at Edison Field, where Radke might get the start in Game 3. But that was too far ahead for Radke to look, while champagne was still flooding his eyes and the ice pack on his shoulder hadn’t begun to melt.

“Let’s talk about the Angels later,” he said. “Let’s talk about us now.”

Mientkiewicz was eager to talk about the Twins and the Angels. “This is great for baseball,” he said. “It shows it’s not all about the money.”

Mientkiewicz played in college for Florida State while Angel shortstop David Eckstein was playing for Florida. “We hated each other,” Mientkiewicz said, laughing.

“But, really, he’s like the Angels and I’m like the Twins,” he said. “I can tell you there wasn’t a scout in major league baseball who didn’t look Eckstein in the eye and tell him, ‘Son, you’re not going to make it.’ Just like me.

“And there’s not a person around right now, outside of our clubhouse and theirs, who can look you in the eye and say he thought the Twins and Angels would be in the AL finals.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.