Tony, the Killer, and Carew

By 1972 most baseball uniforms were made of synthetic fabrics, and the classic look that had been a part of baseball for decades was becoming more and more rare. The Twins first major change in uniform since the move west happened prior to the 1972 season. The team lost the pinstripes, and instead added blue and red piping down the sides of both the home and the road pants. The old-style belt was replaced with a red, white, and blue elastic band, and the same color scheme trimmed the V-neck jerseys, which remained button-down for the first season of the change. The stirrups and the cap remained the same, and the team continued to wear black shoes both at home and on the road.

The logo patch worn on the left sleeve in 1972 was a slightly modified version of the classic Twins shaking hands across the river. In 1973, the design on the patch changed, and was more closely related to the updated version of the team logo.

In 1973 the Twins finished eliminating all aspects of the classic uniform when, among other things, they got rid of the buttons on the jersey and went with the powder blue road uniforms. The team also added the uniform number under the lettering on the front of the jersey. The team didn’t touch the cap until 1976, when the home version became red with a blue bill while sporting the same “TC” lettering on the front. At some point the team also started wearing batting helmets with a white triangle in the front where the logo goes and a red bill (modeled by Lyman Bostock on the left). The uniform didn’t change much for the rest of the 70’s and the early part of the 80’s. The only difference I have spotted is that the team went with red shoes at home for a number of years.

I feel it only fair to mention that the team didn’t win much of anything during the powder blue era. The franchise won before and won after, but struggled in the blues.

While the trend in baseball during this period was for players to show as little of their stirrups as possible, the Twins seemed to enjoy being the exception to that rule. A lot of players showed a lot of blue in their socks, and some even managed to sneak in a logo (like Dave Engle, to the left, one of my new favorite cards of all time).

Here is a link to the 1972-1986 Twins uniforms at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Next time: back to the classics.

4 years ago…
8/29/2003: The Twins scored five runs over the final two innings to defeat the Texas Rangers 8-5 at Arlington. With three innings in the books, the Twins trailed 5-1, but were able to comeback largely based on mistakes made by the Rangers in the field. The go-ahead run scored in the eighth inning when AJ Pierzynski was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.

12 years ago…
8/29/1995: Brad Radke allowed just three hits in a shut out against the Rangers at the Metrodome. The Rangers’ best chance to score came in the second inning, when Rusty Greer hit a lead off double. Radke retired the next three batters, however, and Greer never made it past third base. Radke allowed all of the hits in the first five innings, and retired the last 14 Rangers he faced in order to secure his first major league shut out. Chuck Knoblauch homered in the 2-0 Twins win.

17 years ago…
8/29/1990: Greg Gagne took matters into his own hands against the White Sox, leading the Twins to a 6-1 home victory with a three stolen base effort. Gagne’s first stolen base came as part of a double steal in the second inning (Gagne took second while Shane Mack stole third). With Brian Harper at the plate in the fourth, Gagne stole third after a double, then stole home to give the Twins a 5-0 lead. The day’s hero also added a solo home run in the sixth inning.

28 years ago
8/29/1979: The Twins dropped both ends of a double header against the future AL Champion Baltimore Orioles. In the second game, Eddie Murray hit three home runs to account for all of the Baltimore scoring in a 7-4 game. Murray’s first two home runs came off of starter Geoff Zahn; his third came at the expense of Mike Marshall. Scott McGregor shut out the Twins in the first game, 4-0.

44 years ago…
8/29/1963: The Twins out scored Washington 24-3 in two games at RFK Stadium. The Twins hit eight home runs in the first game, two each by Harmon Killebrew and Vic Power, to win by the final score of 14-2. In the night cap, the Twins had “only” four home runs, including the third of the day by Killebrew, in a 10-1 victory. Lee Stange and Dwight Siebler pitched complete games to earn respective wins. Despite their 74-58 record, and the dominance on this day, the Twins remained 11.5 games out of first place.

This is the 12th post in a series detailing the 20 21 best pitching performances in Twins history based on Bill James’ game scores. The games are posted in chronological order.

Wednesday August 27, 1975
County Stadium
Milwaukee, WI

By 1975, Bert Blyleven was 24-years-old and was already a veteran of five major league seasons. He had established himself as a very good pitcher early, and was being touted as a major star of the future. By August 27th of that year, he was already having a very typical year (though somewhat below the standard he had set in 1973 and 1974) with a 13-6 record accompanied by a 3.04 ERA.

Despite Byleven’s numbers, the Twins were in the midst of a disappointing season. Though they hadn’t been world-beaters in the previous three years, the Twins at least were able to finish at or above the .500 mark. Before play started on August 27, 1975, the Twins had a 62-69 record that had them in fifth place and out of contention in the AL West. Thankfully, there were teams like the Brewers that could make the Twins look good. Blyleven’s start was the third game of a three game series in Milwaukee, and the Twins sent him to the mound looking for a sweep of the lowly Brewers.

Milwaukee sent 22-year-old lefty Bill Travers to the mound. Travers joined the Brewers’ major league club in June, and had a decent 5-7 record for a team that was 17 games below .500.

Both pitchers were sharp early on. The only Twins to reach on Travers in the first five innings were Craig Kusick (hit by a pitch in the second), Jerry Terrell (two-out double in the third), and Lyman Bostock (walked in the fifth). Blyleven allowed just a first inning single to George Scott, and had already tallied eight strikeouts through five innings.

The Twins put together their first real threat in the sixth. With one out, Dan Ford singled to left, only the second hit off of Travers. Ford was eventually replaced by Rod Carew at first on a fielder’s choice. Carew looked to be caught stealing second, but an error charged to the second baseman kept the inning alive. Kusick was hit by a pitch, the second bean ball thrown by Travers, before the Brewers got out of the inning when Johnny Briggs flied out to center field.

Kurt Bevacqua started a threat for the Brewers with a lead off single in the sixth. He successfully stole second when there was still nobody out. Blyleven was not bothered be the first Brewer in scoring position, and promptly retired the next three in order, the first two on strikeouts number nine and ten.

The teams exchanged singles in the seventh, and each had a few more base runners in the regulation nine innings. None of those runners, however, reached beyond first base, and the game entered extra innings with no score. For his part, Blyleven became a more democratic pitcher, setting aside the strikeout for innings seven through nine. He made up for it in the bottom of the tenth, however, when after his team failed to score Blyleven worked around a one out single by striking out three in the inning, running his total to 13 for the game.

The Twins finally found home plate in the 11th inning, and the rally was started when Travers hit Kusick with a pitch, the third bean ball in the game. A Briggs walk moved pinch-runner Steve Brye into scoring position for pinch-hitter Tony Oliva, who singled off of reliever Tom Murphy to knock in the only run of the game.

Blyleven allowed a single in the bottom of the 11th, the sixth hit for Milwaukee, but retired the other three batters he faced to wrap up his 11-inning shut out.

Minnesota Twins            IP     H   R  ER   BB  SO  HR    ERA   
B Blyleven, W (14-6)       11     6   0   0    1  13   0   2.89   

				BF  Pit-Str   GB-FB  GmSc  IR-IS
				39     -       6-13    97    - 

The 97 Game Score represents the highest for a Twin at that time, a number that will hold up for two decades.

Box

This is the 11th post in a series detailing the 20 21 best pitching performances in Twins history based on Bill James’ game scores. The games are posted in chronological order.

Tuesday June 26, 1973
Comiskey Park (I)
Chicago, IL

After four underwhelming seasons pitching for the Cubs in Chicago, Joe Decker, a pitcher with a reputation for wildness, was thrown in with a trade to Minnesota that also sent fellow pitcher Bill Hands to the Twins in exchange for Dave LaRoche. Hands was the pitcher the Twins wanted, while Decker had to fight for a roster spot and a chance to pitch occasionally out of the bullpen. That all changed when Hands faltered over the first few months of the season, going 5-7 with a 4.65 ERA over his first 14 starts through June 18. Hands’ struggles, along with those of the rest of the Twins pitching staff in early 1973, opened the door for Decker to get a few starts, which soon turned into a regular spot in the starting rotation.

June 26 at Chicago marked Decker’s fifth start with the Twins. So far, he was 1-2 with a 3.90 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 27 2/3 innings pitched over the four starting appearances. The White Sox team he was facing was in a virtual tie with the Kansas City Royals for first place in the AL West, but they were far from an offensive juggernaut, scoring just about the league average 4.3 runs per game.

The Twins started well, taking advantage of a White Sox error to score twice off of Sox ace Wilbur Wood in the top of the first inning. Decker worked around a two-out double in his half of the first to hold the White Sox scoreless. He recorded his first of many strikeouts when he caught lead off hitter Johnny Jeter looking to start the inning.

Decker struck out two more White Sox in the second inning, then followed a lead off walk in the third with consecutive strikeouts of the top three hitters in the Chicago batting order to run his game total to six K’s in three innings. He added one in the fourth, two in the fifth and two more in the sixth to total 11 through six innings. By that time, the Twins had scored again to run the score to 3-0, this time on a Rod Carew double that scored Jerry Terrell from first base in the fifth inning.

The seventh was the only inning in which Decker struck out the side in order, but it was enough to bring his total to 14, one shy of the team record set by Camillo Pascual in 1961. The Sox managed to avoid striking out in the eighth inning, the only such inning in the game, but did no harm due to a ground ball double play. The record tying K came in the ninth when Jorge Orta struck out for the second time, one of six White Sox hitters with multiple strikeouts at the hands of Decker.

The Twins added a run in the ninth to make the final score 4-0. Decker had allowed just four hits in the shut out victory.

Minnesota Twins         IP     H   R  ER   BB  SO  HR    ERA   
J Decker, W (2-2)        9     4   0   0    3  15   0   4.17   

			BF  Pit-Str   GB-FB  GmSc  IR-IS
			34     -       9-2     91    -

Box

Decker had his best season in 1974, when he compiled a 16-14 record with a 3.29 ERA. His fall was pretty rapid after that, and he only appeared in 32 more major league games after the age of 27.

On Tuesday night, Garret Anderson of the California Angels knocked in 10 runs in a 18-9 thrashing of the Yankees. This just happens to be the most RBIs ever (or since 1957) against a Yankees team. This got the hamster wheel in my brain spinning and I decided to head over to my favorite research tool, the Baseball-Reference Play Index to look up a few things loosely related to Anderson’s barrage on the Gotham pinstripes.

The first thing I wanted to look at was who holds the mark for most RBIs by a Twins player against the evil empire. A familiar name tops the list, as Gary “The Rat” Gaetti stands alone with a 6 RBI game against the Yankees in April 1989. Ten other players have had 5 RBI games, including 2 more by Gaetti and 2 by Harmon Killebrew. Pretty underwhelming numbers considering how long the teams have been playing each other, but interesting to see the “The Rat” has had some of his best games against the Yankees.

Next, I wanted to expand the search to not just games against the Yankees, but all teams. The Play-Index revealed this list of all-time Twins leaders for RBIs in one game. You can see from the list that two of the biggest Twins sluggers of all-time top the list with 8 RBIs in one game…Randy Bush and Glenn Adams. A quick glance at the rest of list and one thing really stood out. On April 26, 1978, “Disco” Dan Ford drove in 7 runs in a 9-8, 12-inning loss to the Oakland A’s. After contemplating how pissed off I’d be if I drove in 7 runs and still lost, the other hamster wheel started spinning and another trip to the magical Play-Index told me that only 25 times in major league history has a player had 7 or more RBIs in one game and had his team lose. Former Twins, Phil Nevin and Vic Wertz also show up on the list, but while playing for other teams.

Nothing here in Mark Whiten territory, but we have had a look into some of the top Twins RBI performances over the years. Hope you enjoyed the journey.

3 years ago…
8/22/2004: The Twins, behind a solid outing by Brad Radke and a Corey Koskie home run, defeat C.C. Sabathia and the Cleveland Indians 7-3 at the Metrodome. The Twins win completed a three game sweep over the second place Indians, who started the series just four games back, but will drop out of second place in the race by the beginning of September.

9 years ago…
8/22/1998: With the score tied against the Red Sox in the ninth inning, Paul Molitor laid down a perfect bunt single to win the game. He came to bat with two outs and runners at the corners and fit the bunt perfectly down the third base line. With the win, the Twins “improved” to 57-71, 13 games out of first. Though the Red Sox had a much better record (75-52), they were a full 19.5 games out of first in their division.

23 years ago…
8/22/1984: The Twins swept a pair of games at Milwaukee to take a 5.5 game lead in the AL West. Mike Smithson pitched a complete game win in the first game, and the Twins won 5-2 thanks to a three-run seventh inning that was started when Tom Brunansky hit a lead off home run. Kent Hrbek hit a pair of home runs in game two, and the Twins came back from a 3-1 deficit to win the game 4-3. Ron Davis pitched a perfect inning and a third to earn the save in the night cap.

32 years ago…
8/22/1975: In his first major league at-bat, Dave McKay homers off of the Tigers’ Verne Ruhle. The home run came as part of an 8-4 Twins win at Metropolitan Stadium. McKay will only add 20 more to his career total in eight major league seasons.

39 years ago…
8/22/1968: Jim Merritt carried a two-hit shut out into the ninth inning in a game against the Yankees at the Met. Mickey Mantle spoiled the party a but when he led off the ninth inning with a pinch-hit home run. The Twins still won the game 3-1.

Continuing the 1987 celebration, I was trying to find something about the 1987 season or someone on the 1987 roster to research and write about. While there were a ton of story lines from the season and some great characters to look at, I finally settled on a quick look at back-to-back games in early September that, in my opinion, vaulted the Twins toward an eventual division title and ultimately a World Championship.

The games in question were back-to-back, extra-inning, 2-1 victories. On September 3, the Twins defeated the Red Sox in 10 innings and followed with a 12-inning victory over the Brewers the next night.

Going into the game against the Red Sox, the Twins held a 1.5 game lead over the A’s and left with a 2 game lead as the A’s were idle. With the following day’s victory (and an A’s loss), the Twins increased their division lead to 3 games. This was the closest the A’s would get to the Twins until the lead dropped to 2 games on the last day of the season. Two losses in these games would have kept the Twins 1 game ahead of the A’s and very possibly altered the outcome of the season.

The two games were eerily similar in several ways. The first thing that stood out to me was the starting pitching for each game. Much has been made about the starting pitching in 1987. Frank Viola went 17-10 and Bert Blyleven when 15-12, but past that the starting pitching was M.I.A. Luckily for the Twins, it was back-to-back Bert and Frank and they did not disappoint; Bert threw 9 innings in the first game (9 IP, 6H, 1R, 4BB, 11K) and Frank threw 8 innings (8 IP, 7H, 1R, 2BB, 4K) of 1-run ball the following night. These two performances couldn’t have been a better example of how the season had went for the Twins.

* Historical non-Twins note: The combo of Viola/Blyleven reminded me a lot of a poem that was written about Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain when they pitched for the Milwaukee Braves. HERE is the poem, but it basically says Spahn and Sain followed by two days of rain. That’s how we felt in 1987…Viola and Blyleven and two days of anything except Straker, Smithson or Niekro! We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog…

Besides the pitching, it was also interesting to see how both games went offensively. To no ones surprise, Kirby Puckett was smack dab in the middle of pushing each game to extra innings. On September 3, Kirby hit as dramatic a home run as was hit all year when he blasted a two-out, game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth. The Twins went on to win in the 10th on a bases loaded walk to Al Newman. The light-hitting Newman was a key role player for the Twins in 1987 appearing in 110 games. Despite hitting a measly .221 for the season, Newman already owned 2 of the Twins 6 hits. Prior to drawing the bases loaded walk, Don Baylor started the inning with a fly-out to right field. Eventual 1991 World Series hero Gene Larkin, foreshadowed his heroics with a double, before reliever Wes Gardner issued three straight walks to Randy Bush (Intentional), Roy Smalley and Newman to allow the Twins to escape with the victory.

The very next night, Kirby hit a 7th inning home run for the Twins only run prior to winning the game in the 12th on a Billy Beane single. What’s that you say? Billy Beane? The same Billy Beane who is the current day Oakland A’s GM and controversial subject of Moneyball? Yes…the same Billy Beane who very likely ended his future team’s season with a game-winning, extra-inning hit. It was Beanes first appearance of the year after being called up from Triple A Portland and he came into the game as defensive replacement in the 11th inning before singling in the 12th for the win. Earlier in the inning, Gary Gaetti reached first by getting plunked by Dan Plesac. He moved to second on Tom Nieto’s single and when Tom Brunansky reached on an infield error, the bases were loaded. Plesac then got Steve Lombardozzi to strikeout and Tim Laudner to pop out to second base before Beane singled sharply to center field for the win.

So there you go…a microcosm of the entire 1987 season in two days. Two days of outstanding starting pitching. Two days of heroics from the one-and-only Kirby Puckett. Two days of clutch play from key role players and two days that quite possibly won the Twins a division title and an eventual World Championship. 

This weekend the Twins celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the 1987 World Series Team. The event has been well covered, and there is plenty of nostalgia to be found around the Twins blogosphere. Here are just a few links.

The Star Tribune had a “where are they now” feature in Friday’s edition. I did not realize that Al Newman was not scouting anymore, though I would like to see an Aflac commercial with Newman and Yogi Berra. Also from the Strib, 10 things to know about the 1987 Twins.

Last Strib link, but Howard Sinker has left a place just for folks to post their memories of the 1987 season at his blog.

Seth at sethspeaks.net also has his 1987 memories posted, as does Curlz and Curveballs, Joe Christensen (I lied about the last Strib link), and Twins Killings.

ESPN.com covered the event with more of a tragic spin (thanks to Andy for pointing the article out in the comments). A few months ago I saw a feature about Jeff Reardon on HBO’s Real Sports. It was a well done piece (as is usually the case on Real Sports), and worth a look if it ever comes around on a rerun again. It sounds as though he is doing a lot better now, something that didn’t really come through in the HBO piece. I know that I can come across as somewhat critical of Reardon as a pitcher (particularly when discussing Ron Davis’ Twins career compared with Reardon’s), but he was the “Terminator” out of the bullpen for the last half of the 1987 season, and got the job done in the post season.

Kelsie Smith wrote about Kirby Puckett in the Pioneer Press, and also recapped the 1987 World Series.

If you want a recap of the entire 1987 season, some dude with too much time on his hands did that here.

On Sunday, Gary Gaetti was inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame with a pre-game ceremony, complete with a “first pitch” thrown from third base, Gaetti to Hrbek one more time. Additionally, Gaetti is now the third baseman on my bobble head team, moving Corey Koskie to the bench.

It would be wrong not to mention that this weekend also produced a game which will be recapped here in a few weeks as part of my “Top 20 21 Pitching Performances in Twins History” series. Needless to say, there is a new number one on that particular list.

In 1959, the Washington Senators broke a long-standing team tradition when they played in uniforms that included a script “Senators” written across the front. Prior to that time, the home uniforms simply displayed a capital “W” on the left chest of a pinstriped background, while the road uniforms recently changed to a curved “Washington” on simple gray (changed from the “W” on gray in 1955). The new uniforms included the script “Senators” on both home and road uniforms, the only variation being that the home uniforms were pinstriped on white, while the road uniforms remained gray.

The change was significant because two years later, when the team moved to Minnesota, the same basic style was used for the new Minnesota Twins uniform. The home uniform kept the same color scheme with “Twins” written in script across a pinstriped background. The jersey remained the same, button-down design that most teams had throughout the middle years of the century. The hat was essentially the same, though the “W” for Washington was not replaced by an “M”, rather an overlapping “TC” in white and red to be inclusive of fans on both sides of the river.

The left sleeve of the Twins uniforms proudly displayed the patch of the official team logo, the twin ballplayers representing Minneapolis and St. Paul shaking hands over the Mississippi River with a baseball for a background. The logo was part of a baseball-wide trend towards “silly logos” (a term coined by Susan McCarthy in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract) that included the grinning Oriole and the cute Cubbie, and that today is similar to the “We’re gonna win Twins!” jingle; cheesy but beautiful in a retro sort of way.

The Twins uniforms stayed pretty consistent through the decade, with the most major change coming in 1969 when all of baseball wore a 100th Anniversary patch on their left sleeve (shown to the right on Leo Cardenas’ uniform, see the patch here). The traditional logo moved to the right sleeve temporarily, then moved back to the left for the 1970 season.

During this era the Twins, like most teams, played with the traditional stirrups showing. The Washington Senators’ stirrups had a red and white horizontal stripes on their blue stirrups. The stripes disappeared during the move to Minnesota, and the Twins sported solid blue stirrups, worn in the traditional way here by Jerry Zimmerman. The team wore black shoes throughout the decade.

See all of the uniforms from 1961-1971 at the Hall of Fame online exhibit here. Next time: the powder blue era.

Inspired by Sean Foreman’s awesome site, Baseball-Reference.com, the even more awesome B-R Play Index and the ever insightful B-R Stat of the Day blog, I have decided to start my own Stat of the Day type entry here at TwinsCards.com.

My first entry centers around the Matt “Hard Luck” Garza. Despite a stellar 2.05 ERA in 7 starts, Garza has only a 2-3 record to show for it. In his two wins, the Twins have given him great run support…a 12-0 win versus the ChiSox on July 6 and an 11-3 win versus the Mariners on Tuesday night. Two of his three losses have been 1-0 defeats…July 17 against the Tigers and August 9 against the Royals.

This got me thinking about other Twins pitchers who have suffered 1-0 losses in their careers. Thanks to the B-R Play Index, I was able to narrow my search to all starting pitchers (1961-2007) who gave up 1 run or less and was credited with the loss. I couldn’t quite drill the information all the way down, but got pretty close. The search counts runs given up by the starting pitcher but also includes 21 games in which the relievers gave up further runs (thus the game not ending 1-0).

If we take away those 21 games, we find 62 times where a starting pitcher has given up 1 run or less and was credited with the loss. So…now that we have the information, lets look at how unlucky Mr. Garza has been compared to other Twins pitchers.

- Jim Kaat lost 6, 1-0 games…2 in 1962
- Bert Blyleven lost 6, 1-0 games…2 in 1974 and 2 in 1975
- Dave Goltz lost 5, 1-0 games
- Dick Stigman lost 3, 1-0 games
- Frank Viola lost 3, 1-0 games…2 in 1987
- Kevin Tapani lost 3, 1-0 games
- Carlos Silva, Geoff Zahn, Pete Redfern, Jim Merritt, Neal Heaton (both in 1986), Scott Erickson, Roger Erickson (both in 1980), Jim Deshaies, Dean Chance and Matt Garza have all lost 2, 1-0 games.

So it looks like Matt Garza has a little ways to go before he can claim to be Mr Hard Luck Twin, but he is certainly well on his way.

Matt Garza’s Career Player Page on TwinsCards.com