That was your afternoon of inimitable Metrodome postseason baseball. It was a production you couldn't possibly see anywhere else on earth. But we mean that as a compliment. If you believe October baseball games should be as entertaining as possible, well, you couldn't beat this one.

	“	There's no place. like this. Everywhere else, if you look at the sky, you see the ball. ”
		— Scott Hatteberg, A's first baseman, on the Metrodome

So we'd like to thank the A's, the Twins and, last but not least, whoever it was who decided to make the roof of the Metrodome the same color as baseballs.

"There's no place," said Hatteberg, "like this. Everywhere else, if you look at the sky, you see the ball."

In the Metrodome, on the other hand, if you look at the sky, there is no sky. There is only a vast sea of whiteness up there that makes baseballs disappear. Literally.

For our first witness, to testify on this rarified phenomenon, we call Hatteberg to the stand.

There he was, in the first inning, feeling pretty darned good about life. He'd just hit the home run that put his team two runs ahead two hitters into the game. He'd just trotted out to first base and taken a little glance at the roof and the lights to think about what he would do if a pop-up drifted up into either of the above. He had it all under control, he thought.

Then, alas, Zito threw his first pitch of the day.

And Jacque Jones, as Hatteberg recalled it, "decided to try to hit a ball one inch from the ceiling."

So Hatteberg looked up -- and saw nothing. Then he looked again -- and picked up the ball "for a second."

"So I put my head down and went to where I thought it was going to come down," he said. "And I was only off by 30 yards."

He "heard a thud" behind him, he said. So he knew that wasn't good. And the ball actually landed in fair territory. Which really wasn't good.

But fortunately for him, it skipped back into foul territory, and Jones eventually struck out. So the worst that came of it is that Hatteberg will receive a life sentence of being forced to watch this play on blooper tapes for the next 150 years.

"Hey," he chuckled, "I've gotta make some highlight reel."

This, however, was one of those days when every pop-up seemed to help him, or somebody, make a highlight reel.

In the second inning, Hunter hit another pop-up toward first base. This time Hatteberg saw it, called for it and camped directly under it.

Which threatened to make this play almost routine -- except, Hatteberg said, that his second baseman "now thinks I can't ever catch a pop-up. So he decides to try and climb up my back."

"Well," Ellis reported, "he did scare me after that first one."

So what happens when two people try to catch the same pop-up? Nothing good, usually. Ellis knocked this one out of Hatteberg's glove -- and got an error to show for it.

You would have thought that after those two escapades, pop-up peace would have been restored. But four innings later, Luis Rivas hit yet another pop-up up the first-base line.

This time, Hatteberg, Zito and catcher Ramon Hernandez surrounded it. This time, it was Zito who decided he wasn't taking any more chances -- and began waving for it himself, even though he knew he was just inviting a three-infielder pile-up.

"I was waiting for Ramon to crash into me, with the mask and everything," Zito said. "But he never did."

So Zito gathered it in, for one of those unique "P1"s in your scorebook. And that wasn't even his most unique development of the day, either.

In the second inning, Zito wound up to throw a pitch to Doug Mientkiewicz -- only to have the baseball hit the ejector button halfway through his delivery.

His arm kept heading toward home plate. But the ball floated to the left of the mound, came down on the 10-yard line, then continued untouched into the end zone. Overrule the touchdown and score that one: "Ball one" and "wild pitch."

"Aw, that happens to me all the time," Zito said. "Just never in a game. I've done it in the bullpen. I did it in Texas one time playing catch on the side. I knew I'd do it in a game sometime. I just didn't think it would be in a playoff game on national TV."

But since he also escaped that inning without giving up a run, he seemed to be rooting for that pitch to find its way onto about a billion videotapes.

"I threw one over the screen in Toronto and didn't even make the bloopers tape," he said. "So at least now, I'll make the bloopers tape."

Then again, this game, at times, was practically one humongous bloopers tape. And even when it wasn't, it was still 100-percent wild.

The last time the Twins played a postseason game in the Metrodome (Game 7, 1991 World Series, Jack Morris vs. John Smoltz), nobody scored a run for the first nine innings.

So of course, the next time they played a postseason game in the Metrodome (Friday), there were two runs scored before the first out.

And that launched the roller-coaster ride. Long hit the third home run of the day in the fourth inning, and the A's led, 3-0. Within two innings, the Twins had pulled even.

But then Twins starter Rick Reed couldn't make that lead hold up for even one hitter. He hadn't given up a home run to a right-handed hitter since July 17 at that point. But three pitches into the next inning, he served one up to Jermaine Dye. And the A's never looked back.

They're now within one game of winning their first postseason series in 12 years -- or, to put this in better perspective, since Zito was 12 years old.

And while the popular theory was that The Dome or The Noise or The Pressure would somehow intimidate them, guess again. If anything, the Dome ambiance simply seemed to increase their enjoyment of the moment.

"We love this stuff," Zito said. "This is what we worked our tails off all season for, to play these games."

Zito, meanwhile, completed yet another successful day at the office in what might be remembered as a Cy Young season. He's now gone 23-3 in his last 30 starts. And 9-0 in his last 11 starts. Not too bad.

That Metrodome bedlam was supposed to be the Twins' secret weapon against him, too. Instead, Zito just enjoyed every raucous moment of it.

"I came in today with a headache anyway," he said. "So it couldn't give me a headache -- because I already had one."

Best headache he ever had, too. Now he turns the job of conquering the Metrodome over to Tim Hudson, who starts Game 4 on Saturday. He was asked if he had any advice for his pal, Hudson.

"Yeah, I'd tell him it's pretty sweet out there," Zito said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

And when the one, the only Metrodome is the scene, you can take that any way you wish.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.