by By Kelsie Smith ksmith@pioneerpress.com , St. Paul Pioneer Press

So what did the Metrodome game operations staff think the game needed then, while the Twins readied to bat in the bottom of the frame? A second helping of "Take Me out to the Ball Game," of course. The impromptu and unusual 14th-inning stretch was fitting for Friday's extra-inning, energy-draining, bullpen-depleting, 16-inning affair that took five hours, 7 minutes to complete.

Twice the Twins came back in their 11-9 loss, once from a 6-0 deficit, and again in the 14th when Detroit took a one-run lead. But with R.A. Dickey on the mound and Minnesota's bullpen empty, Detroit jumped ahead again the 16th, the go-ahead crossing home plate just as Friday gave way to Independence Day.

Finally, Minnesota's string of comebacks sputtered to a halt. In the 14th the Twins left the winning run at second base. In the 11th they left the bases loaded. In all, they went 4 for 18 with runners in scoring position and stranded 13 men on the basepaths. By the time it finished, it was hard to remember how it had even started -- with another curiously poor start from Kevin Slowey, who for the second straight outing lasted just three innings, giving up six runs on five hits. Afterward, Slowey went to the disabled list with a strained right wrist.

This is where the Twins are supposed to win ballgames, and this is where they hadn't played for a stretch of nine games, so despite Slowey's early letdown, Minnesota's bullpens and bats worked toward redemption. The comebacks, though, fell short, fading the spotlight on numerous Minnesota bright spots.

Denard Span said he woke up Friday feeling better than he has for weeks, and from the first pitch he proved it. The vertigo-ridden outfielder broke free from his residual dizziness with his first career five-hit game, spurring the lineup from the top down.

Span led off the game with a hard line-drive out to the pitcher, singled on a bloop to left in the third, rolled another single up the middle in the fifth, and bolstered the Twins' comeback with a two-run triple in Minnesota's five-run, game-tying sixth inning.

For Span, who entered Friday's game batting just .167 since his return from the disabled list on June 25, the breakthrough game almost certainly served as relief.

"He feels rejuvenated," Twins manager Gardenhire said of Span, who also reached on a bunt single in the eighth and finished the game 5 for 8. "We were concerned; any time you've got a guy going through that stuff and trying to figure out what it is and what they can do to make him better, sure, but he's back now. He's back out there playing and for him to say he's feeling good, that's a good thing for us."

After 16 innings who knows how Span felt at the end, but in the beginning at least, Delmon Young seemed right with him in the feel-good groove.

With Detroit left-hander Luke French on the mound for his big-league starting debut, Gardenhire opted to sit Jason Kubel's .185 batting average against lefties and start Young at DH instead. The move was logical, of course, and Gardenhire admitted logic was about all he had to go on when it came to building a lineup that could challenge the Tigers rookie.

The 23-year-old had just three innings of relief on his major league resume before Friday for a total of 50 pitches in the bigs, and when asked before the game what he knew about French, Gardenhire quipped, "I know French dressing, that's about it."

The Young-for-Kubel swap proved unusually fruitful. Young walked in the second, homered (third of the season) in the fourth, singled in the sixth and doubled in the seventh.

All of the hours and all the at-bats, couldn't make Slowey's sudden spate of ineffectiveness any less dramatic.

Two starts after climbing beside Toronto's Roy Halladay as Baseball's first pitchers with 10 wins and generating talk of a possible appearance at next week's midsummer classic, Slowey has spiraled far and fast from all-star status.

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