The Twins opened their first spring training on this day back in 1961 at Tinker Field in Orlando with manager Cookie Lavagetto at the helm. Back then the team had just three coaches, Eddie Lopat, Clyde McCullough and Sam Mele. The team brought in Floyd Baker and Tony “Angelo” Giuliani as spring training coaches to help out.
The number of players in camp was different back then too, in their first camp the Twins had 33 big leaguers and 14 farmhands as they called their minor league invites back then. The PDF below will show you who was invited to the Twins first spring training at Tinker Field.
1961 Twins Spring Training Roster
The Twins of course had a medical staff made up of Dr. William E. Proffitt Jr. and Trainer “Doc” George Lentz. Some of their techniques might be questioned today. The main tool trainers used back then was ethyl chloride, which had long been used by physicians as a local skin anesthetic to reduce pain when lancing boils and making small incisions. The numbness is produced by freezing the skin, however; the use of too much ethyl chloride results in frostbite.
The Twins have 28 spring training games scheduled with the first game to be played at Tinker Field on March 11.
