Month: February 2021

Former Twins reliever Stan Williams gone at 84

Stan Williams

Stan Wilson Williams was born in Enfield, New Hampshire on September 14, 1936 and passed away at the age of 84 on February 20, 2021 at his Laughlin, Nevada home. Williams had been hospitalized on February 11 and in hospice care due to the effects of cardio-pulmonary illness.

In 1954 the Brooklyn Dodgers signed the big fire-balling right-hander straight out of high school at the age of 17 and sent him to Shawnee of the Class-D Sooner State League and gave him an invite to spring training, primarily because he could throw over 90 miles per hour, but as you might expect was a bit on the wild side. In 1955 he pitched in class B Newport News where he posted an 18-7 record striking out 301 batters and walking 158 in 242 innings. On the fast track to the big leagues, in 1956 he split his time between AA Ft. Worth and for the AAA St. Paul Saints. In 1957 he spent the entire season with the AAA St. Paul Saints going 19-7 with a 3.04 ERA but he still walked over five batters a game.

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Are Twins games and baseball games really too long?

How about some fun facts about the length of Twins games?

  • During the Met Stadium era (1961-1981) Twins home and away games averaged 2 hours and 36 minutes.
  • During the Metrodome era (1982-2009) Twins home and away games averaged 2 hours and 49 minutes.
  • During the Target Field era (2010-current) Twins home and away games average 3 hours and 3 minutes.

For additional information on the length of Twins games year by year and how the Minnesota Twins compare to the the AL, NL and MLB in general you need to stop by our Length of games including longest Twins games page. There you will also find the longest games played by the Minnesota Twins in terms of time and innings.

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What will Twins fans experience at Spring Training in 2021?

Front entrance sign

Twins pitchers and catchers are due to report to Ft. Myers on Friday, February 19 to start preparations for the 2021 season with position players reporting the following Tuesday. Normally I would have been in Ft. Myers for almost two months and I would have been out to the CenturyLink Sports Complex numerous times checking on the early arrivals and getting a few pictures but life is still not back to normal and I don’t see it happening in the near future.

Instead I find myself back home in Minnesota where the temperatures are colder than Mitch Garver’s bat as I wait for my second COVID vaccine and then with a bit of luck we might head south to enjoy what beautiful SW Florida has to offer. The question is what will fans get to see when and if they do go down to Ft. Myers? The Twins spring training complex has historically been one of the best spring training sites to get up close and personal and watch the players get ready for another baseball season. Don’t count on that this year.

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2021 MLB Season just around the corner

The temperatures might be below zero and there is about 8″ of snow on the ground here in Minnesota but the boys of summer will be reporting to spring training camps all across Florida and Arizona on February 17, just about a week away. But once again in 2021 things will not be like they always have been when it comes time for the pitchers and catchers to report, we are still battling COVID-19 and we have less than 10% of the United States vaccinated.

A few days ago MLB proposed that spring training and the regular season be delayed a month and that a 154 games schedule be played versus a 162 game schedule and that players would get their full pay but the MLBPA shot that down. So this morning MLB in agreement with the MLBPA came out with the following health and safety protocols for 2021 season.

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Life at Twinstrivia.com goes on

I have had some serious web site issues here at twinstrivia.com with my site provider the last six weeks or so that I hope have finally been resolved and life at twinstrivia.com goes on, at least I hope it does. It all started when my site provider decided they would go through some server migrations and my number so to speak, came up on December 16. After a two day outage they finally got my site up and running but it was slower than molasses in Minnesota in February.

After at least 16 calls and God knows how many hours on the phone over six weeks all I got from them was that they “might” have some server issues that they are working on but they had no idea when things would be resolved. They kept telling me to hire an engineer and redesign my web site, a site that was running fine until they decided to do a server migration. I was so frustrated I was ready to give it up and close down Twinstrivia.com after 15 years of blogging.

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