What was it like?

"It was just like, `Wow. Is this really happening?' " A.J. Pierzynski said.

"Tough to swallow," Torii Hunter said.

"I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it was happening," Eddie Guardado said.

They were talking, of course, about the bottom of the seventh inning Sunday.

The Anaheim Angels got out their Thunder Stix in that half of the inning. They scored 10 runs and almost batted around twice.

And everyone knew, when the inning finally ended, that the Twins were about to conclude the season that almost wasn't.

"You just try to be real with yourself," Hunter said. "They had it in the bag when they got those runs."

Yeah, they did. The Angels bagged a trip to the World Series with their 13-5 victory over the Twins. The Angels won all three games in Anaheim to clinch the best-of-seven series 4-1.

For a brief time, it appeared the series might head back to Minnesota. When the Twins scored three runs in the top of the seventh to take a 5-3 lead, that possibility was on a lot of minds.

And then, as the bottom of the seventh sent them spiraling through the corridors of hell, the Twins realized they would be heading back to Minnesota alone. The Angels would be staying behind to party.

"It was frustrating to see the game slip away right out of our hands," Hunter said.

Through several rounds of interviews after the game, Hunter kept referring to the eight runs the Angels had scored in the seventh inning. Maybe he lost track. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Eventually, he was told the Angels scored 10 runs.

"It was 10?" he said. "I'll think about that a lot."

Doug Mientkiewicz thought a lot about what all those runs meant as the inning dragged on and on and on.

"We knew we were nine outs away from going home," Mientkiewicz said.

It might have been the only time all season when contraction didn't sound like such a bad idea.

"We couldn't get anyone out," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "They hit bloopers. They hit bullets. We weren't able to stop them."

The Twins had overcome the threat of contraction, the possibility of a strike, doubts about their ability to win the American League Central, the Oakland A's in the first round of the playoffs. They overcame everything put in their way except the Angels.

The Angels were just too much. Especially in the bottom of the seventh Sunday.

"I looked at Gardy after our third pitching change and said this has turned into our worst nightmare," Pierzynski said. "You could have told me a million times, and I would have said it would never happen."

It happened because the Twins' bullpen, so reliable throughout the season, crumbled. It happened because the Angels have an entire team in a zone. You kind of get the idea it's not your day, or your series, when a guy like Adam Kennedy, who had only seven home runs in the regular season, cracked three in a row.

"Adam Kennedy blew up," Hunter said. "The bottom of their lineup, nobody took seriously until now."

"We ran into a buzz saw," Mientkiewicz said. "When nine guys get hot, it's tough to win."

"They just got on a roll," Pierzynski said, "and we couldn't stop them."

Sort of like the roll the Twins were on for a while. They looked the part of a team of destiny, didn't they, the way they battled through contraction and all manner of adversity and injury?

"It was a hell of a season," Pierzynski said. "It was a hell of a run."

They all would like to have another run next season.

"You'll see guys in the weight room in about three days," Pierzynski said.

"I wouldn't mind doing this again," Hunter said. "I had so much fun in the ALCS and playoffs. Now we know what it takes. We can't be sad at all. We've got a young squad that got to the ALCS. We went out to prove a lot of people wrong. We went out to prove we can play."

They did do that. Aside from the bottom of the seventh inning Sunday, they certainly did do that.