TWINS TRIVIA is hopefully a fun and informative site that will help you to better enjoy the Minnesota Twins and their wonderful history. “History never looks like history when you are living through it” – John Gardner, former Secretary of Health
Chuck Schilling was born on October 25, 1937 in Brooklyn, New York and passed away on March 30, 2021 in West Chester, Pa. After graduating from high school Schilling attended Manhattan College, majoring in electrical engineering but then switched over to mechanical engineering. While still in college in 1958 Schilling signed a $25,000 bonus contract with the Boston Red Sox, eschewing the New York Yankees, a team he disliked even though they had actually started scouting him first.
Schilling played second base and started his pro career in 1959 playing in Class D ball and after 95 games was bumped up to class B and after just 15 game there was called up by the AAA Minneapolis Millers (managed by Gene Mauch and who also played in 8 games) to see if he could help them in the playoffs. He didn’t make that playoff roster but the next season he played for the Eddie Popowski managed 1960 Minneapolis Millers. Both of these Millers teams are full of names that played in the big leagues at one time or another.
Ron Perranoski a big league relief pitcher for thirteen seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers and California Angels passed away at his Vero Beach, Florida home on Friday, October 2, 2020 of complications from a long illness, his sister Pat Zailo told the Associated Press on Saturday. “He was a ballplayer and he loved that life, he thrived on it,” Zailo said.
With the Minnesota Twins having 57 MLB seasons in the rear view mirror, the Houston Astros winning the World Series in 7 games, the temperatures in the mid 40’s and with no snow on the ground it is a good time to look back on and revisit the hitters that have found Twins pitching to their liking over the years.
Today we are going to take a look at Twins opponents that have 200 or more hits against the Twins, there are 23 players who fit this criteria. 200 hits is a lot of hits. Six of the 23 hit from the left side, 13 were right-handed hitters and just four (Vizquel, Martinez, Wilson and Murray) of them were switch-hitters. Just missing out on this list were Frank Thomas with 194 hits, Al Kaline with 192 and Sal Bando with 190 hits.
One oddity that I noticed when looking over this data was that only two players got their 200 or more hits from one spot in the batting order. Ricky Henderson had 214 out of his 215 hits against Minnesota hitting lead-off while Carl Yastrzemski had 228 of his 321 hits out of the three-hole.
WOW! Look at the Hall of Famer’s on this list plus some of the others will be in shortly. Anyone on this list surprise you? How about players that you thought would be on the list but are not?
Left Fielder –Jim Rice is my choice here but it just as easily have been Carl Yastrzemski, Rickey Henderson, Alex Gordon or Joe Rudi. Rice, a Hall of Famer was a Boston first round selection in 1971 as a high school outfielder and debuted in 1974. Rice was the 1978 AL MVP, an eight-time All-Star and he won two silver slugger awards. Rice wasn’t known as the friendliest player around but we are not giving away any congeniality awards here, we are looking for the Twins all-opponent team and Rice fits that description well. Did I mention that he walked off the Twins twice during his career?
In 470 PA’s against Minnesota scored 83 times and hit .335 with an OPS of .975. Twenty seven of his home runs came off of Twins pitchers as he notched 94 RBI against Minnesota.
Our previous selections for the Twins all-opponent team
A bomb scare caused a 43 minute delay in the fourth inning of the Twins and Boston Red Sox game at the Met.
“Leave the stadium quickly,” Twins public address announcer Bob Casey declared. “There is going to be an explosion in ten minutes.”
Bob Casey
The people of the Twin Cities were already on edge when Casey made his ill-advised announcement during the fourth inning of the Twins-Red Sox game at Met Stadium on the evening of August 25, 1970. Just three days earlier, a bomb had exploded inside Dayton’s department store in downtown St. Paul, injuring one person. Police and Twins officials had little choice but to stop play and evacuate the stands when they received a phone call warning that a bomb was set to explode at the stadium at 9:30 p.m. Their mistake came in entrusting the gaffe-prone Casey with the task of telling 17,697 people they needed to leave the stadium. Despite Casey’s alarmist announcement, the evacuation went smoothly. Most fans headed to the parking lot while the rest joined the players in center field.
The game was scoreless going in to the eighth inning when Twins reliever Tommy Hall gave up a home run to Tony Conigliaro after striking out Reggie Smith and Carl Yastrzemski for the first two outs of the inning. The Twins had no match for the home run and ended up losing the game 1-0
In their final July game the Twins were helpless against Lee Stange, a former Twins pitcher and current Red Sox starter. Stange had a perfect game going until Harmon Killebrew singled with two out in the seventh inning at Fenway Park. The Twins final two hits took place in the ninth but Stange retired Tony Oliva and Killebrew on fly balls and he and the Red Sox closed out the 4-0 win. The Boston crew had only 4 hits themselves but three of them including a 3 run home run belonged to Carl Yastrzemski and Stange had the other Boston hit. Even though the Sox lost the five game series three games to two they held on to second place just 2 games out of the lead.
With 2/3 of the 1967 season in their rear-view mirror the Twins find themselves with a 53-47 record, good enough for fourth place tie and 5 games behind the league leading White Sox. With 17 wins and 13 losses in July the Twins scored 122 runs and held the opposition to just 94 runs.
The rest of the stories that I have done on the 1967 AL pennant race can be found here.
Fifty years ago the Boston Red Sox won the American League pennant in 1967 in what many think is one of the most if not thee most exciting AL pennant races ever. The Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins finished one game back and the Chicago White Sox finished 3 games behind the Red Sox. My plan is to do some postings as the year goes along about the 1967 AL pennant race. I found an article in the April 17, 1967 Sports Illustrated called “RISING DYNASTY FOR THE BIRDS?” that does a recap on each AL team and predicts their chances for the 1967 season. Kind of a fun read. The Boston Red Sox of course played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series and lost 4 games to 3.
Carl Yastrzemski won the triple crown in 1967 although he and Twins 1B Harmon Killebrew each had 44 home runs that year. Even though you know how the story ends, it will still be fun reliving it.
Derek Jeter, as usual, rose to the occasion in his final All-Star game appearance, going 2-for-2 with a double and a run scored in the American League’s 5-3 win. Jeter finishes his career with a .481 (13-for-27) batting average in the All-Star game, which currently stands as the second highest for any of the 100 players with at least 15 All-Star at bats in major-league history, behind Charlie Gehringer, who went 10-for-20 (.500) in six appearances in the Mid Summer Classic.
Jeter became the second player in major-league history with multiple hits in the All-Star game in his final major-league season, joining George McQuinn, who had two hits representing the Yankees in the 1948 game. Jeter, at 40 years and 19 days old, also became the oldest player with at least two hits in an All-Star game. Only one player over the age of 38 had done that prior to Jeter: Carl Yastrzemski, who had two hits in the 1979 contest at age 39 years, 329 days.
Jeter’s first-inning double was his fifth career All-Star hit in the opening frame, tied with Wade Boggs and Stan Musial for the second most first-inning hits in All-Star history, behind Willie Mays (6).
Trout is the All-Star MVP
Mike Trout
Mike Trout had two hits and two RBIs and was named the Most Valuable Player of the 2014 All-Star game on Tuesday night. Trout, 22 years and 342 days old, became the second youngest player to win the All-Star game MVP, behind Ken Griffey Jr., who captured the award in the 1992 game at 22 years, 236 days old.
Trout became the fourth Angels player to win the All-Star game MVP, joining Leon Wagner (1962), Fred Lynn (1983) and Garret Anderson (2003).
American League jumps on Wainwright in the first
The American League jumped on Adam Wainwright for three runs in the first inning in the All-Star game on Tuesday night. Derek Jeter led off with a double, Mike Trout followed with a triple and after Robinson Cano struck out, Miguel Cabrera unloaded a two run home run. It’s only the second time in major-league history that three of the first four batters had an extra-base hit for a team in the All-Star game. The only other time that happened in the Mid Summer Classic was in 2004, when Ichiro Suzuki led off the first inning with a double, Ivan Rodriguez followed with a triple, and then after a Vladimir Guerrero ground out, Manny Ramirez hit a two-run homer.
Wainwright allowed only four extra base hits (three doubles and a homer) in the first inning in the 19 starts he made prior to the All-Star break this season.
Cabrera goes deep out of the cleanup spot
Miguel Cabrera – the American League’s cleanup hitter – hit a two-run home run in the first inning to stake the A.L. to a 3-0 lead in their 5-3 win over the N.L. in Tuesday’s All-Star game. Cabrera’s 14 home runs this season are the fewest for the American League’s cleanup hitter in an All-Star Game since 1990, when Cal Ripken batted fourth for the A.L. with nine homers to that point.
Perkins saves it for the A.L. in his home ballpark
Glen Perkins
Minnesota’s Glen Perkins pitched a perfect ninth inning to record a save in the American League’s 5-3 win in the All-Star game at Target Field. Prior to Perkins, only two pitchers registered a save in the All-Star game in their home ballpark: Detroit’s Mickey Lolich (1971 at Tiger Stadium) and Seattle’s Kazuhiro Sasaki (2001 at Safeco Field).
A rough All-Star debut for Puig
Yasiel Puig had a rough night in his first All-Star appearance, striking out in each of his three trips to the plate. Only three other players in major-league history struck out in each of their plate appearances with at least three trips to the plate in an All-Star game: Jim Hegan (1950), John Roseboro (1961) and Johnny Bench (1970).
The Minnesota Twins have had some power hitters over the years and Harmon Killebrew was the greatest of them all. The Twins called Met Stadium home when Harmon played and he hit 262 home runs as a Twin at the Met and added two more when he was a Kansas City Royal.
But I want to test your memory here, I want to see if you can complete the list of the top 10 visiting player home run hitters at Met Stadium. You don’t have to tell me how many home runs the player hit at Met Stadium, all you need to do is give me his name and I will add the player to the correct spot on the list and fill in how many home runs he hit at the Met and how many games he played there. I will tell you this to get you started, the most home runs hit by a visiting player is 20. I will also start you out by telling you that Sal Bando is number 10 on the list. There are no prizes, this is just a memory exercise. Send me your guesses at jjswol@twinstrivia.com. Have fun!
