ionship, the curious noise being a low moan as, strangely, he kept his thumb on the radio button in the aftermath of the shunt.The funniest moment came right at the start of

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Kansas City Royals head into their three-game series with the Minnesota Twins looking more and more like the team that won its first World Series in three decades last season.The Twins enter looking a lot like the team that was among the worst in baseball over the seasons first three months.In a weird quirk in the schedule, the series between the Central Division rivals is the first in nearly two months and just the third of the season. Including this weekends series, the Twins and Royals will play four more times before the end of the 2016 campaign.Kansas City has won four of its last five games, with pitching playing a critical role in those wins. The Royals won each of the final two games against the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday and Thursday to move ahead of the South Siders in the Central Division standings.Their win was also of the comeback variety, something the Royals have become good at again this season. Their eight comeback wins when trailing after seven innings are the most in baseball.They just dont give up. Even when were not firing in all cylinders we can still find ways to come back and win ball games, said Royals manager Ned Yost. Its Just a group of guys that continue to battle hard. They are not always successful. Weve got a really good defense and our bullpen seems to stand up to those challenges.The Royals will try to take advantage of their momentum over the weekend by continuing their dominance of the limping Twins, who were battered to the tune of 25 runs in getting swept in both games of a split doubleheader against the Houston Astros at Target Field on Thursday.Weve had a fairly decent run here in the short term, but the last three days havent gone well as far as the outcomes, said Twins manager Paul Molitor. Were not going to dwell on it. Its not effort, and were going to have to find a way to re-group and try to get back on track with the Royals coming in.The Twins will be counting on starting pitcher Kyle Gibson to go deep into the game after their two starters combined for just five innings in the doubleheader.Gibson hasnt done much since his season high-water mark on July 22, when he allowed just one run in eight innings against Boston. In three starts since, Gibson hasnt gone beyond six innings and has an ERA of 5.74.The right-hander hasnt faced the Royals this season but has had good success against them in the past, compiling a 5-3 record with 2.55 ERA in eight career starts, including the only compete game of his career last season.Yordano Ventura will get the nod for the Royals. His season has been inconsistent but has been on the uptick lately. His 3.26 ERA over his last six games is more than a full run lower than his season ERA (4.64) and hes allowed a total of three runs his last two times out.Ventura allowed two runs on just two hits but walked six in five innings of work against the Twins in his first start of the season on April 8.For secretive F1 teams, the expansion of radio communication is a pain in the aural canal. It is vital in respect of keeping their driver running at his most efficient and effective but it is also a bit of a giveaway when it comes to revealing the extent of any problem. At the end of the day, they will only let us hear as little as they can get away with.Can you imagine what it would be like if all chat was unfettered by privacy and we could hear every word of it? That was the potentially happy state of F1 audio in the mid-1980s when the plug-in umbilical chord linking engineer to car and driver gave way to radio transmission. The difficulty was finding a means of eavesdropping without alerting the parties involved.Discussing this problem with a mate in the pub -- as you do -- he happened to mention a bloke who was into plane spotting at Heathrow and seemed able to listen in to air traffic control. A phone call later and I was introduced to the benefit of the scanner.This may seem obvious now but, back in the day, scanners were as alien to me as a Harrods tea hamper would be to Kimi R?ikk?nen. You could find one if you searched hard enough but they were prohibitively expensive in the UK. The answer, my new-found friend informed me, was to source a scanner in the United States.By good fortune, the Detroit Grand Prix was next on the calendar. Within an hour of arrival, I was choosing my secret weapon in the local Radio Shack store. That was the easy bit. Now I had to discover the frequencies used by the teams. I couldnt give the game away by either asking outright or waving this black box and aerial around in the pit lane.By another piece of good fortune, the answer was provided by my hotel being the towering Renaissance Centre overlooking the pits. For first free practice in 1987, I sat in my room while the scanner did its work, flicking back and forth at a huge rate of knots through the wave band.It was not going to be the work of a moment because the engineer or driver needed to be speaking as the scanner was halted by the sound of activity on that particular frequency. I became familiar with the activities of security personnel, catering staff and one particularly voluble lady ordering cab drivers around the city. At least, I think thats what she was doing since her short, sharp barking of colloquialisms was totally unintelligible. This continued for at least half an hour. Practice was cracking on and, being away from the media centre, I had no idea what was happening on track.Suddenly, clear as day, the authoritive voice of Peter Warr boomed around the bedroom: Okay Ayrton, lets try the Bs. That might help the understeer.dddddddddddd. Hallelujah! Warr and I were not always the best of friends but Id never been so happy to hear either the voice of the Lotus boss or his mundane reference to a Goodyear tyre compound. We were in!I locked in the Lotus frequency and let the scanner continue its search. Over the space of two practice sessions, I gradually caught a few more big fish in the audio net. A few races later and I had all the top teams. I was now well informed, with the proviso that I could not show my hand by printing anything of a very private or personal nature in my newspaper. But at least I had a decent idea of what was going on and could avoid looking an idiot by making wrong assumptions. This happy state of affairs would continue for a few years until other reporters cottoned on to the scanner ploy and the teams, listening to each other in any case, began to encrypt their messages.Nigel Mansell would be a constant source of entertainment with his constant chatter, particularly during the races when, if everything was going well, he would actually sing to the Williams crew. During qualifying at Suzuka in 1987, I was startled to hear a very strange sound on the Williams frequency. It turned out Nigel had spun off and caused the back injury that would put him out of the championship, the curious noise being a low moan as, strangely, he kept his thumb on the radio button in the aftermath of the shunt.The funniest moment came right at the start of practice for the 1989 British Grand Prix. Derek Warwick had failed to appear at the end of his installation lap with the Arrows.Where are you Derek? I heard Ross Brawn intone. Then a pause before his driver replied. Dunno where I amWhatdyamean Derek?Cant find the entrance to the f---ing pit lane! Im stuck somewhere.This was in the day when Silverstone was flat out through Abbey and into a left-right chicane just before Woodcote. Turns out, when Warwick had raced at Silverstone a few months before in a Peugeot sports car, the pit entrance was actually the continuation of the straight leading from Abbey; in other words, a very fast entry. Nobody had thought to tell Warwick that the entrance had been shifted to the far side of the chicane. Warwick had steamed into what had become an escape road and narrowly avoided contact with a stout barrier.With the use of scanners beginning to become common knowledge, I couldnt resist telling Derek Id heard every embarrassing word. Just as well it wasnt being broadcast on tele... ' ' '