Tony, the Killer, and Carew

After a long hiatus, “Tony, the Killer and Carew” is back. I can’t promise to be as prolific as some of the other card bloggers out there, but I do promise to blog about Twins cards…and Twins history, Twins trivia and anything else Twins I can think of.

First off, welcome to the new, improved TwinsCards. We are now linked to the largest baseball card database on the web. Okay, maybe Beckett has a bigger database, but not with images! You will also notice that we have maintained the services of blogger Scot Johnson who writes the superbly informative franchise history blog, Coffeyville Whirlwind. Scot will continue to share his posts with us here at TwinsCards as well under the blog link to the left. We also invite other “would

Senor Smoke...at his worst!

be” bloggers to join the team. It has to be Twins and/or collecting related, but we are trying to cultivate a user community here and are always looking for others to share their passion with the rest of us.

Okay…enough with the pleasantries…on with the card blogging.

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about Jack Morris. You see, my friend is a die-hard Tigers fan and we were reminiscing about past players and he was whining because Morris left the Tigers to win a championship in Minnesota. Once we got past Morris, I started listing all the other past Tigers who played for the Twins…okay, it was a short list….in fact, the only other player I could think of besides Jack Morris was Senor Smoke, Juan Berenguer.

Senor Smoke

This is Berenguer’s 1989 Bowman card and is my favorite “non-action” shot and exactly how I remember him…flowing locks, an intimidating stare and a nasty forkball! Berenguer played with the Twins from 1987-1990 and had a 33-13 record with 9 saves. Berenguer started 6 games in 1987 but was used primarily as a set-up and late inning guy for Jeff Reardon and Rick Aguilera.

Berenguer was a fan favorite during his time in Minnesota and ventured into the music video industry. Capatilizing on the success of past celebrity sports videos (The Chicago Bears and the Super Bowl Shuffle), Berenguer created the regrettable, but hilarious Berenguer Boogie.

The video is probably one of the worse things ever created, but it’s like a trainwreck waiting to happen. You don’t really want to watch, but you just can’t look away!

Hey…it’s been a while, but we’re still here. While real life has taken precedence over the site for a while, we have still been working behind the scenes to make improvements to the site. You might notice that their are now two blogs listed on the site…a history blog and a card blog.

While TwinsCards.com was created as a team baseball card site, we have morphed into much more than that over the years. When we brought Scot Johnson on board last year as our lead blogger, we dove directly into Twins history with frequent posts by Scot and an occasional post by myself. All that time, Scot was pulling double duty at his own blog, Coffeyville Whirlwind. Scot’s blog deals with franchise history while his posts here at TwinsCards dealt strictly with Twins history. Needless to say, pulling double duty between two blogs that have overlapping content seemed a waste of time and energy. With that said, Scott will now be publishing the same content on both blogs. We welcome Scot’s content that covers both the Twins (post-1961) and the Senators (pre-1961) and look forward to uncovering the rich history behind a franchise that has much more to offer than just Tony…the Killer and Carew.

The new blog will have it’s own page and keep Scot’s original blog title, Coffeyville Whirlwind, while our current blog, Tony…the Killer and Carew will focus on the collecting aspect of the site. While I do not claim to be an expert on baseball cards, I do share an interest in the collecting side of things and will try and post relevant content relating to such. In addition, Joel Thingvall (aka Twinkie, Rosterman) has promised some insight into the autograph collecting hobby with tips, insights and stories relating to his years pursuing every single Twins’ autograph.

Content on the “card blog” may still be light for a few weeks. I’m in the process of moving homes (also countries) and have to concentrate on making that a smooth transition, but have no fear…we will have it and running soon. If you have an interest in possibly contributing to the “card blog”, please drop me a line at info@twinscards.com.

Editor’s Note: This entry is courtesy of TwinsCards.com contributor and autograph collector extraordinare, Twinkie. He spent some time at TwinsFest and files this report from inside the HomerDome.

Since the early 90s, the Twins have held a winter celebration — TwinsFest — usually tied around their Winter Caravan tours of the Upper Midwest and often corresponding with the annual writer’s awards banquet. It’s often a good time for the players and management to touch base — albeit in the often cold confines of Minnesota. The Twins pay for a coach ticket, room and expenses and many players bring their spouses. It sparks interest in baseball with spring training on the horizon. The ultimate Hot Stove experience.

It tends to be very well attended by current players, some select minor league guys, and often a few souls who may never make it out of spring training (last year Randy Choate and Ken Harvey, the prior year C.J. Nitkowski). A few local veterans (Leius, Laudner, Goltz, Stigman, Becquer) usually show up for the fun of it and sometimes the Twins bring in bodies from years past (one season the duo of Bombo Rivera and Hosken Powell were in attendance). But it’s the stars of the current roster that sell the tickets and draw the fans.

First, a word about tickets. It’s really is a free event. You buy your tickets for $8 ($12 at the door) and you can — during the course of the weekend — switch them out for game tickets (nope, not opening day or those popular games against the Yankees, Red Sox or Brewers). Except for the expense of parking (some park for free at the Mall of America so other family members can shop and such, then take the light rail to the stadium and back for a modest fee), it an inexpensive fun time for family — if you don’t want autographs.

People line up hours before the event. Why? To get in that line for Mauer and Morneau (Santana or Hunter in the past) when the doors open at 5:30 p.m.. This is just about the time the sun sets and the cold concrete creeps up through the feet into the heavily garbed bodies, often supplemented by large mounds of paper photos, cards and other collectibles. This year the Mauer/Morneau line was limited to the first 300. It was the in-shape fans that got to the head of the line. The event can get expensive if you like autographs. The fives and tens fly out of your hands every hour as you line-up for signatures. These are more so for the “big guns”, although all monies go to the Twins Community Fund. The fund does quite a bit in the State of Minnesota, which is well-documented on the Twins website.

My spouse, Risa, and I delayed out trip to the Metrodome for the Friday opening, eating a leisurely box supper while waiting for tickets to go on sale at 5:30 and waited only 10 minutes before scoring tickets for opening day on-line. Last year the initial wait at the dome was too long, and nose bleed seats for opening day were all that were left. With that success out-of-the-way, we popped in the car wearing our Twins garb and went to TwinsFest 2008.

My wife is a Twins fan and she blogs (I can contribute, I guess) at “Curlz and Curveballs“. But one of her better qualities is that she likes to buy tickets…I just have to come along and enjoy. She finds excitement at TwinsFest with the crowd, listening to the radio booth interviews with players, watching the youngsters play the variety of games from whiffle-ball to jumping on the blow-up TC Bear, enjoying the kid questions of players, drooling over auction items, or just soaking up the baseball atmosphere. Unfortunately, there was no GameDay booth, which was kinda the meeting place for some bloggers in the past…so she and I failed to hook up with other bloggers that we knew were in attendance…(kept looking for the red-hatted SethSpeaks guy).

The floor is full of dealers selling baseball collectibles. Al Newman had his own booth promoting an advertising idea he had. Bob Feller was on hand signing baseballs. Chuck Foreman was around (hey, it’s a baseball show, Chuck). You could try to drop a ball in a Dodge Truck from the upper deck, take a clubhouse tour, watch promotional videos, sing the national anthem, view a gorgeous model of the new stadium, see examples of the numerous Minnesota Twins uniform designs, and buy grab bags or T-shirts from Twins wives.

Twinkie was there for the autographs. A handful of minor league prospects signed for free in the “down on the farm” area. The Twins minor league booth was selling mini-posters of prospects that you could get signed, or there was a lame piece of minor league logo stationary, if you didn’t have cards. I pulled out cards or images for all the guys…when I got home I discovered I had the majority of the cards already in a signed state from my summer correspondence, but it was a pleasant experience to introduce myself to the guys, mention TwinsCards, and then head to the spending areas.

There were two other signing areas on the main floor, usually $5 or $10 for 4-5 players signing. Up in the concourse area you could find the M&M boys, Cuddyer, Delmon, Hrbek, Blyleven, Carew or Oliva signing for $15-25. Gardy wasn’t there on Friday (bowling) and Nathan was pretty much alone…he’s such a good signer during the year for fans in the stands. Killebrew always has a line.

It’s all pretty organized. Although the Twins frown on picture taking or multiple autographs, most players don’t care as long as things move smoothly. I found the new guys — Harris, Lamb, Young, Monroe all very personable and friendly. I think they felt the love of baseball from the Minnesotan fan base.

The star of Twinsfest, though, was Francisco Liriano. Fans started lining up right away for his signing and by the time he came out before 8 p.m., he could have signed until the midnight hour. This fan skipped that love-fest (and the people signing with him) and after a couple of trips up-and-down the many Metrodome steps, called it a night. It was a comfortable crowd and if it wasn’t so cold, I would have brought along my daughter who would’ve enjoyed the sounds of the event.

I tend to avoid Saturday. This year I heard it was extremely busy in the morning hours, thinning out pretty fast as the afternoon wore on. Francisco Liriano was sent back to the hotel because he was feeling a bit under-the-weather. Hey, Minnesota in January can be an experience for those who spent most of the last year in Florida.

Risa and I returned on Sunday and we went to the “Tell A Story” Fox 29 booth. They were filming stories to maybe run (with some reworking) during Twins games this season. We told the story of how two years ago I tried to link-up with Risa after we talked for a bit on one of the numerous “match” sites, but she wasn’t ready to meet then. But we did get together before the season started and spent many a Twins game in each other’s company. I proposed to her via the JumboTron on September 8th, despite the best efforts of a hot dog vendor to keep the camera guy away. I remember nothing of Garza’s early game performance that night, she remembers nothing of the Twins comeback and Neshek’s (he’s our pitcher) victory. We tied the knot last June, and now are a Twins couple (do I hear that insipid e-Harmony music in the background).

I pretty much hit everyone for autographs on Friday, but still went back into some lines…no Coomer…no Punto. Delmon Young, who had such a good time the previous two days, came back on Sunday and met more fans, even though he was under-the-weather too (what are these guys going to do come April 2010 when there’s snow on the ground in the stadium!). People started lining up for Liriano again, four hours before his signing, only to be told shortly before the scheduled time that he wouldn’t make it.

Unless you make arrangements before hand, you just can’t find folks. I did, though, run into Roger Lynch, who contributes to the photo pages — a wonderful guy who recently put together an autograph collection for the Fargo-area Maris Museum of all the guys who gave up home runs to Roger Maris in 1961. I also met Randy Fredrickson for the first time (get a picture for a fantasy card). I have met his brother in person at comic book shows (another hobby of mine), but this was the first face-to-face with Randy, who was there with his personable nephew who told me he lined up at 7 a.m. Sunday to get in the Mauer line right when the doors opened. Ah, to be young.

I also enjoyed interacting with numerous fans in line, telling them about the TwinsCards site, talking about how they collect, who they collect and just good old Twins baseball. Of course, there were lots of like-minded people. Escaping from the world of autographs every now and then, I was looking over the booths on the outer edge of TwinsFest and ran into, of all people, Carl Pohlad, out and about in a chauffeured golf cart. Yes, the Twins owner is really old, but you could still see a sparkle in his eyes, and his signature is still smooth and more readable than most players.

I added quite a few items to my collection, touching base with 50 folks during my two days in attendance. The first week of February I will add more than 6-dozen items to the old collection. Check out “What’s New” every day to see my additions. Also, a list of players I met will be in “Autograph Successes” in the TwinsCards.com Forum section Febraury 1st.

And hopefully word will spread amongst Twins fans, of which TwinsFest is the perfect representation, about our great TWINSCARDS site!

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.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog to bring you this very important announcement! 

Twins fans and Neshek fans have an opportunity to put Pat where he deservedly belongs…the 2007 MLB All-Star Game. Click the banner above and vote for Pat. You can vote as many times as you like and voting ends on July 6th. Let’s do this for a fellow collector and for one of Minnesot’s finest!

When I first toyed with the idea of creating a Twins baseball card website, I also thought that the same thing might be possible with all the Vikings cards I had in my collection. During the process of building this site with co-founder and webmaster, Joe, we often mentioned the same thing. As TwinsCards.com continued to grow, my desire to make VikingsCards.com a reality never faded, but the time for such an undertaking certainly did. Fortunately for me and many other Viking fans, as well as, football card collectors, Joe decided to press forward with plans to create a sibling-site to TwinsCards and VikingsCards became a reality.

Creating the site was the easy part. As you visit VikingsCards.com, it might look a little familiar. In fact, if you blink real fast you might not notice the difference. Hey…why mess with a good thing? Joe has taken a winning formula and applied it to the web’s next great site for team collectors.

No one will argue that Joe has done a superb job in doing all the design for both sites, but Joe will be the first to admit that his collection of baseball and football cards isn’t quite going to populate the demands of these massive undertakings. This is where we introduce you to Tim Stransky. Tim is the man Joe turned to when the VikingsCards database needed to be populated and populate he did…5000+ cards (from 600+ sets), 600+ pieces of memorabilia and nearly 300 publications!

VikingsCards.com is far from finished! In fact, although we encourage you to check it out now, there is still a lot of work to do before Joe would call it “ready to go”. As with TwinsCards, the site will continue to evolve and it will very much become a “community-based” website that will only continue to expand with the help of other fans and collectors.

Yours truly will also have some involvement in the site but the majority of my time will still be spent here trying to improve this site on a daily basis.

Please visit VikingsCards.com today, check out the site, sign the Guestbook and send Joe and Tim some feedback at info@vikingscards.com. I’m sure they will be happy to hear from you and will appreciate any feedback you might toss their way.