Month: April 2021

How things have changed since the sixties

All of you that stop by twinstrivia.com from time to time know that I have followed baseball for a long time. Back then when I had some extra money I would spend it on baseball cards and some of it went towards a subscription to the Sporting News, the best place to get baseball news back then. Oh, but how things have changed since the sixties.

Hard copy newspapers and magazines, radios and even televisions are on the way out and the Internet is in. Everyone gets their baseball news by reading about it via the internet on newspaper sites, magazine sites, baseball team sites, baseball blogs and even baseball books via their phones, tablets or computers.

Recently I was using my computer and the internet to do some research about the Minnesota Twins in the 1966 Sporting News and ran across this article in the April 16 edition on page 56 that “caught my eye” and I could not resist making a copy of it to share.

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What the heck ails the Twins

Where is the win?

What the heck ails the Minnesota Twins? Are the Twins as bad as they have shown so far? After almost three weeks of play the Twins are tied for last place in the AL Central with the Detroit Tigers and no team in the AL has a worse record and only the Colorado Rockies over in the other league have won fewer games.

Then again the entire American League seems to be is disarray with the Boston Red Sox leading in the East with a 12-6 record and they are five games ahead of the last place New York Yankees (dang it feels good to say that) and the Toronto Blue Jays are just a half game better at 7-10. In the West the the high-flying Oakland A’s are 11-7 and on a ten game winning streak prior to todays game. The Seattle Mariners are also at 11-7 and the last place Houston Astros are just 7-9. In the Central which the Twins call home the leaders are the Kansas City Royals at 9-7. Has the entire AL gone nuts? I know only about ten percent of the games have been played so it is a small sample size but things are kind of crazy.

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Chuck Schilling dead at 83

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.

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Ten strikeouts and no walks is a good days work

Johan Santana – Credit Craig Jones at Getty Images

It isn’t often that a MLB pitcher gets ten or more strikeouts and issues no bases on balls in a game. The way things are headed in baseball nowadays it will probably be even an even rarer event in the future. The other day New York Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom struck out 14 with no walks over eight innings and all he got for his efforts was a “L” after he gave up a home run to the Miami Marlins Jazz Chisholm in in the second inning and his team ended up losing 3-0.

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Three or more innings saves

Earlier this week on April 5 the Twins beat the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park by a score of 15-6. Matt Shoemaker started his first game in a Twins uniform and went six innings throwing 92 pitches and allowing three hits and one run before manager Rocco Baldelli said that was enough. The Twins had a 15-1 lead at that point and Shoemaker was in line for the win.

Randy Dobnak

Baldelli brought in his long man Randy Dobnak to finish things off and Dobnak did just that going the final three innings. The first two innings were uneventful but the third and final inning was interesting. The ninth inning started as you would like to see with Dobnak retiring the first two batters. But the next hitter Victor Reyes took Dobnak deep. Then he gave up a single, then a double and then a walk to load the bases for former Twins minor league outfielder and Tigers Rule 5 pick-up Akil Baddoo who crushed a Dobnak pitch for a grand slam home run and all of a sudden it was a 15-6 ballgame. No worries, Dobnak retired JaCoby Jones on a groundout and the game was over and the Twins had the 15-6 win.

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