To commemorate the Twins vs. Yankees playoff series, WCBS sports blogger Jeff Capellini and WCCO Web Producer Karna Bergstrom decided to battle it out online. Jeff Capellini is a full-time sports producer for the New York CBS station and Karna Bergstrom is a devoted Twins fan, who is taking time to share her thoughts about her beloved team. Please comment below and share your thoughts!

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Posted by: Karna Bergstrom

Destiny...

Hard work, smardwork ... although that has gotten the Minnesota Twins to the New York, most people just feel it is their destiny, their fate, their time.

And what a time it has been in the past few weeks. The Twins overcame a seven-game deficit in the final month. They went 17-4 to pull even on the final weekend. And on Tuesday night, in grandiose fashion, won their fifth division title in eight years.

Their time is now. The New York Yankees time ... well, let's just say it's NOT NOW.

Granted, the Twins went 0-7 against the Yankees. But only ONE game against the Yankees this year could be considered a blow-out with six of the games decided by two runs or fewer.

The Yankees have such names as Sabathia, Jeter, Rodriguez, Pettitte. Names you hear all the time on ESPN (ahem, East Coast bias).

But the Twins have the MLB Batting Champ and who could (and should) be considered league MVP in Joe Mauer. The largest regular-season baseball crowd in the Metrodome had it right last night chanting "M-V-P!" every time he was up to bat.

Of course Mauer can't carry the entire team on his back, and he doesn't need to.

Can you say Michael Cuddyer, Denard Span, Joe Nathan and even of late Delmon Young?

And those are just the starters.

As demonstrated last night, the Twins can capitalize with players from the bench (ie: Gomez and Casilla who hardly saw any playing time the last month).

You might say the Detroit Tigers imploded in the last few weeks ... but Twins fans know better. They know their team exploded.

They are the first team since divisional play started in 1969 to overcome a three-game deficit with four days left in the regular season.

It's their time ... it's their destiny.

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Posted by: Jeff Capellini

Ah yes ... destiny.

The Minnesota Twins are without a doubt destined to one day win a playoff series.

But as Curt Schilling so deftly pointed out some years back "Destiny" is just another name for a dancer in a topless bar. The Twins, as good a story as they have been this year (and seemingly have been every year under the most underrated manager in baseball, Ron Gardenhire), are in for some serious trouble in this series.

First and foremost, you have to figure they will be "hung over" in more ways than one come first pitch Wednesday night. After that, the long headache will settle in, something all the Advil in the world won't cure.

It's been a long time since 1991. A very long time. And it's about to get a little longer.

In the subsequent 17 years since that seven-game epic World Series win over Atlanta, the Twins are all of 3-13 in four playoff series, including two AL Division Series losses to the Yankees. As my esteemed colleague pointed out, six of the Yankees' seven win over the Twins this season were very close games. But one has to look at the manner in which the Yankees won those games (or the Twins lost them) to really judge whether they were just meaningless regular season games, or something else.

Check this out:

* The Yankees scored three in the bottom of the ninth to win 5-4 on May 15.
* Alex Rodriguez hit a two-run shot in the bottom of the 11th to win 6-4 on May 16.
* Johnny Damon hit a solo shot in the bottom of the 10th to win 3-2 on May 17.
* The Yanks completed a crushing four-game sweep with a 7-6 win on May 18.

The carnage, if you want to call it that, continued in the Metrodome later in the season with a three-game Bombers sweep.

My point here is not to say the Yankees are better than the Twins. They clearly are in every facet of the game that doesn't involve one Joe Mauer, but even that comparison -- the catching comparison -- isn't a slam dunk for the Twins because the combination of Jorge Posada, a proven postseason star, and defensive wizard Jose Molina levels that playing field a little. Sure, you have a catcher who hits .370 and you're golden 99 times out of 100.

This will be that one time where the gold turns to tin.

The Yankees sort of have that swagger of the Yankees of old. They have 15 walk-off wins and about a zillion come-from-behind wins. They have a 19-game winner in CC Sabathia, a proven big-game postseason starter in Andy Pettitte and a high-priced nutjob of a starter named A.J. Burnett, who, when on, can no-hit you.

The Bombers are never out of a game and truly believe they will win every game they play. And though the Twins are accustomed to playing tight ballgames and have a great closer in Joe Nathan, the Yankees have that intangible "it," whatever that "it" is, not to mention an offense from another world, the better starting pitching and the greatest closer in the history of the game locked and loaded for this series.

Now, all that said, I do respect the Twins because of guys like Gardenhire, Mauer, Kubel, Cuddyer, etc., but without Justin Morneau protecting Mauer or vice versa the one true source of power in that lineup will have problems.

So you say the Twins will instead small-ball the Yankees to death? Well, as the Red Sox learned late in the season, the Yankees aren't afraid to run. Brett Gardner, Derek Jeter, Damon, A-Rod, Melky ... they'll all be motoring around the basepaths in this series and it won't be because a ball has cleared the fence. Mauer is a tremendous talent on every level and is the AL MVP (by a hair in my opinion over Mark Teixeira), but he will probably need to have the greatest postseason performance in history -- or since they started keeping track of statistics -- for the Twins to have a chance.

I think, in the end, the Twins were "destined" to catch the Tigers. They were "destined" to give the fans at the Metrodome one more feel-good moment before they move into their new outdoor digs next season (that's a whole other rant by the way. I feel they will struggle outdoors with Favre in a parka in the dugout, but that's an argument for another day). They were "destined" to show the country that Minnesota is a beautiful place filled with true professionals. They were "destined" to prove once again how great Gardenhire is as a manager.

But now they will be "destined" to do something else.

Ride a broom to their offseason ice fishing holes.