Tony, the Killer, and Carew

In honor of February being Black History month, I’d like to do a few posts on black players for the Twins and their contributions to the team and MLB. The first player I’d like to take a look at is Jim “Mudcat” Grant.

Grant’s career spanned from 1958-1971 while making a stop in Minnesota from 1964-1966.  Besides pithing for the Twins, Grant saw time with the Cleveland Indians (1958-1964), LA Dodgers (1968), Montreal Expos (1969), St. Louis Cardinals (1969), Oakland A’s (1970-1971) and Pittsburgh Pirates (1971).

Grant found sporadic success during his career, but managed to become the first black to win 20 games in the American League during his 21-7 campaign with the 1965 Twins. Grant’s success helped the Twins win the 1965 American League pennant.

Grant pitched a complete game in Game 1, out dueling Dodger Don Drysdale in a 8-2 Twins victory.  In Game 4, Drysdale turned the same trick on Grant by tossing a complete game and beating Mudcat 7-2. Grant came back on short rest to pitch Game 6 of the series and again turned in a complete game gem by beating back the N.L champs 5-1. This gave Mudcat a 2-1 record in the series with 2 complete game gems. Had the Twins pulled out Game 7, a good case could have been made for Mudcat winning the series MVP. Giving even more fuel to his case was what happened in Game 6 by Grant at the plate. With the Twins up 2-0 in the 6th inning, Grant came up and blasted only the second HR by a pitcher in Worrld Series history. With 2 outs and Bob Allison and Frank Quilici on base, Grant went deep off of Howie Reed to give the Twins a 5-1 lead.

Grant’s baseball cards don’t offer anything special, but I’d like to focus on his card in the 1965 Trade Bloc set. According to the 2006 Standard Catalog of Baseball cards, “These cards were produced as part of a baseball game which was marketed at Metropolitan Stadium for $1. The blank-backed cards measure 2-1/4″ x 3-1/2″ and are brinted in either blue or sepia tones. Besides Twins players and staff, the set includes cards of various team souvenir items as well as old Met Stadium. Besides the player photo, cards include a facsimile autograph, stats, and personal data.”

The set is a very sought after treasure for Twins fans. While the cards themselves don’t really light the collecting world on fire, it simply a matter of supply and demand. I’m sure many of these sets exist in the basements and attics of the Twin Cities area, I’ve only run across a few people that have had the cards and the game. Until today, I hadn’t seen anything but the cards, but a luckily timed search on eBay has turned up a complete set…still in the box!

While completely out of my price range, the auction shares some awesome shots of the game and I’d like to share those with you here. I am especially psyched about the back side of the box and game instructions. They’re a little difficult to read, but if this blind bat can manage to make most of out, maybe you can too. It certainly isn’t Strat-O-Matic or APBA but I’m sure young Twins fans enjoyed it just the same.

If anyone had this game or remembers playing it, I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts and memories about the game and the cards.

November 28, 1960

Almost immediately following the announcement that the former Washington Senators would be moving to the Twin Cities and the American League would be expanding with a new teams in Washington and Los Angeles, Commissioner Ford Frick temporarily froze major league rosters. None of the clubs were allowed to make any moves, so the first few months of the off season were quiet for the junior circuit.

The first allowance for any player movement came on November 28 in the Flag Room of the Kentucky Hotel in Louisville. All of the teams gathered for an event that combined the Rule 5 draft, first-year minor league player draft, and a special draft for the new Washington club that just became officially recognized at the meeting. After a few opening announcements by Frick, and a challenge to his authority by White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who attempted to sell a player despite the roster freeze, the draft was underway. The first order of business was the Rule 5 draft.

The teams chose in reverse order of the standing alternated by league. Calvin Griffith’s team had finished fifth in the American League, so were scheduled to draft eighth. It became clear that it was going to be an uphill battle for Griffith to make the name “Minnesota Twins” stick when Secretary Charley Sager called out “Minneapolis-St. Paul” when it was Griffith’s turn to draft. Whether the mistake was intentional or not, Griffith made the first official move for the Minnesota Twins when he selected catcher Ron Henry from Toronto of the International League, an affiliate of the Milwaukee Braves.

Henry did not have a particularly distinguished career for the Twins. He appeared in 20 games in 1961, making just 31 plate appearances. He spent the next two years in the minor leagues before his second and final stint with the team during the latter half of the 1964 season. In all, Henry played in 42 major league games and batted just .130/.176/.261.

Later in the day, Griffith selected pitchers Gerry Arrigo and Gary Dotter as part of the first-year player portion of the draft, but Ron Henry holds the distinction as the original Twin.

I recently did a post on the 1961 & 1962 Cloverleaf Dairy cards (panels), but up until now, the site has had no actual images of the 1961 panels. If you remember, the only way to distinguish between the two sets was by the stats portrayed at the bottom of each panel. The 1961 set would have 1960 stats displayed and the 1962 set has 1961 stats displayed. Thanks to the site’s newest contributor, Mark Halvorson, we now have to full panel examples from the 1961 set with the Lenny Green and Don Mincher. It’s also nice to have an example from each, Clover Leaf and Apple Fresh.

Former Twin and longtime Tiger’s coach, Billy Consolo passed away on Thursday of an apparent heart attack. Consolo was 73. His playing time with the Twins was brief (11G, 5AB, 1R, 0H), but he did manage 179 games as a utility infielder with the Senators in 1959/1960.

Consolo signed with the Red Sox straight out of High School in 1953 and was their starting second baseman and leadoff hitter at the start of the 1954 season.

Billy Consolo’s TwinsCards.com page

Billy Consolo’s Baseball-Reference page

Billy Consolo’s Baseball-Reference Bullpen page

Billy Consolo’s Baseball Cube page

Billy Consolo’s Baseball Almanac page

Billy Consolo’s SABR Minor League Database page

Please check out Twins Trivia and John Swol’s interview with former Twins’ pitcher, Dick Woodson. John does a great job with the interview and it’s a great read. Dick played with the Twins in the late ’60s and early ’70s and was the first MLB player to go through arbitration.

It’s Friday and time to share a vintage Twins card. Today’s card is a 1965 Topps card depicting the 1964 Home Run leaders (Killebrew, Powell and Mantle). 1964 was a great year for the long-ball in Minnesota as six Twins hit more than 2o HRs…(Killebrew, 49; Allison, 32; Oliva, 32; Hall, 25; Mincher, 23; Versalles, 20). In fact, 1964 marked the most 20+ HR seasons in Twin’s history.

Anytime you can share a card with Boog and the Mick…it’s a plus. When you headline the card above a guy like Mantle, you know you’ve made it the big time. I think Killebrew is one of the most under-rated power hitters of all-time. Look where he ranks on the list of most home runs hit during the 1960’s. That’s right baby…numero uno! The Killer’s 393 round-trippers out-paced Aaron’s 375, Mays’ 350, and Robinson’s 316. For comparisons sake, Mantle ranked 9th with 256 HRs and Powell ranked 18th with 202.

Topps has named an all-rookie team each year since 1959. Each year, eight position players are chosen (four infielders, three outfielders, one catcher) and 2 pitchers (one left-hander, one right-hander). The Baseball-Reference Bullpen has this to say about how the cards are identified,

The first team featured a special card design that included a trophy symbol of a batter on a top hat and the phrase, “Selected by the youth of America.” For the second set (1961) the cards had a trophy symbol that included the phrase “Topps 1961 All-Star Rookie” on cards that followed the same design as the rest of the regular issue. This practice continued until 1973, when the symbol was changed to a gold cup bearing the words “Topps All-Star Rookie.” Topps left the symbol off the 1974 cards but the gold cups reappeared in 1975 and stayed through 1978. From 1979 to 1986 the symbol was once again left off the cards. In 1987, the gold cup symbol was brought back and it has remained to today.

This will be the very first in a series of posts chronicling the inclusion of Twins’ players in this select group. Twenty-two Twins have been selected to the Topps All-Rookie team, beginning with Bernie Allen being selected in 1962 through Francisco Liriano in 2006. Each post will cover one player and his corresponding Topps All-Star rookie card.

1962: Bernie Allen, 2B - Bernie was probably pretty well-known to Minnesota fans before he was drafted as an amateur free agent in 1961. In 1960, Allen quarterbacked the Purdue Boilmakers past the 1960 National Champion, Minnesota Golden Gophers, in what turned out to be the only regular-season blemish on the Gophers 8-1 record. Allen made a big splash when he debuted for the Twins in 1962, but unfortunately it turned out to be his best season in the majors hitting .269/.338/.403 with 12 Hrs in 159 games. Bernie finished 3rd in the AL ROY voting in 1962 behind Tom Tresh and Buck Rodgers, but his playing steadily decreased the following two years. Early in 1964, a collision with Washington Senator, Don Zimmer, left Allen with torn ligaments and eventually led to the end of his playing time with the Twins. After playing in 74 games in 1964, Allen spent the majority of the 1965 season at AAA Denver and was traded prior to the 1966 season with Camilo Pascual to the Senators in exchange for pitcher Ron Kline.

The card itself is a great example from the 1963 Topps set. I especially like how large the All-Star Rookie trophy is displayed. It extends past one-fourth the length of the card. In later years, the trophy would get much smaller and less prominent on the cards. Like many of the 1960’s era cards, it looks like Bernie is “posing” for the photo instead of capturing him in an actual swing. I really like this card for another reason too. Although not a full frontal view of the 1962 uniform, it does give us a nice view from the waist up and a nice, if not blurry, view of the teams first sleeve patch…the classic handshake across the Mississippi logo.

As much fun as it is to look at the card fronts, I find it much more interesting to investigate the backs of player cards. The 1963 Topps Bernie Allen is a nice example of how the backs of cards should look. There’s not anything distracting about it, it provides year-by-year stats (both major and minor leagues) plus some personal information about Allen. It also includes a great cartoon-type drawing of Bernie as a college quarterback. In fact, I used this very card in last month’s trivia contest.

Although some may think this is Allen’s true rookie card, he did have a few others that were produced prior to the 1963 season. His first card was the 1961 Cloverleaf Dairy…a very rare set that displayed players on the sides of Cloverleaf and Apple Fresh milk cartons. Allen’s true Topps rookie card was the 1962 Topps #596, Rookie Parade where he was featured with fellow Twins infielder Rich Rollins and Yankees Phil Linz and Joe Pepitone.

For a very well written Bernie Allen retrospective, please give Will Young’s article a good read…you won’t be disappointed!

Here is the complete list of Twins that have been named to the Topps All-Rookie team, with links back to each post:

• 1962 - Bernie Allen, 2B
• 1963 - Jimmie Hall, OF
• 1964 - Tony Oliva, OF
• 1967 - Rod Carew, 2B
• 1971 - Steve Braun, 3B
• 1973 - Jerry Terrell, SS
• 1975 - Dan Ford, OF
• 1976 - Butch Wynegar, C
• 1978 - Hosken Powell, OF
• 1979 - John Castino, 3B
• 1980 - Doug Corbett, RHP
• 1982 - Tin Laudner, C
• 1982 - Kent Hrbek, 1B
• 1982 - Tom Brunansky - OF
• 1984 - Kirby Puckett, OF
• 1985 - Mark Salas, OF
• 1991 - Chuck Knoblauch, 2B
• 1995 - Marty Cordova, OF
• 1999 - Corey Koskie, 3B
• 2000 - Mark Redman - LHP
• 2004 - Joe Mauer, C
• 2006 - Francisco Liriano, LHP

Why I like this photo: Here’s a photo from 1962 when Tony was playing for Charlotte in the South Atlantic League (SALLY). Before joining the Twins late in the year, Tony hit a whopping .350/17/93 in 127 games for the Hornets. Although I have no proof to the contrary, I am certain that this photo was taken during a solar eclipse on June 14, 1962 prior to a game against Nashville.

Random Tony Oliva Stat: Even though Twins fan believe Tony should be in the Hall of Fame, his career certainly didn’t start out on a great note. Tony struck out in his very first at-bat with the Twins. He replaced pitcher Frank Sullivan and was struck out by Bob Humphreys for the second out of the ninth inning. Earlier in the inning, Bernie Allen homered to cut the Tiger lead to 10-9, before Humphrey retired three straight for the save. Despite his auspicious start, Tony hit a blistering .444 in 9 games. Perhaps it was the game on September 14, 1962 that hinted at what Twins fan would see for the next 15 years. In that game, Tony went 2-3, 2 Runs, 3 RBI, 2 BB, 1 2B. On the flip side, he was picked off first base by Indian catcher Johnny Romano.

One of the very few pictures in which Harmon Killebrew is the least accomplished ballplayer. Killebrew is actually referred to as the “baby” of the group on the back of this card that was issued in 1968 by Topps. For a frame of reference, Killebrew turned 32 that year (Mantle was 36, Mays 37). The back of the card also does some math for us. The picture on the front represents 1,462 career home runs, presumably through the 1967 season. All told, these three sluggers hit 1,769 home runs. That’s a lot for one baseball card.

For you card experts: any idea where/when this picture was taken? My best guess would be at an All Star Game. The 1967 game was played in Anaheim, meaning that the AL would have been the home team. In the picture, Mantle and Killebrew are wearing road uniforms while Mays is in the home whites. The 1966 game was at Busch Stadium. Any ideas?

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.