Dwight Leroy Siebler was born in Columbus, Nebraska on August 5, 1937, as the third of four children of William and Viola Siebler. Dwight Siebler passed away on June 16, 2021 in Omaha, Nebraska at the age of 83.
Category: General Blogging
This is a general blogging category.
So where do the Twins go from here?
Minnesota Twins fans and the team itself had such high expectations going into 2021 and yet as we approach the midway point in the season we find the team floundering badly at 31-42. The season opened on April 1 and the team reached their high-water mark for the season on April 8 when they were three games over .500 with a 5-2 record. Since then it has been one step forward and two steps back.
So how do you explain this? How does a team that everyone expected to be a serious contender and pretty much a playoff lock in 2021 play such terrible baseball that it is basically unwatchable? Where do you start? Like in most businesses you have to start at the top.
Twins 1965 World Series star Mudcat Grant passes away at 85
Jim “Mudcat” Grant was born on August 13, 1935 in Lacoochee, Florida, a small town of about 500 people in central Florida. According to the Cleveland Indians, Mudcat Grant died peacefully in Los Angeles, California on June 11, 2021. Jim Grant was 85 years old.
Pitcher “Iron Mike” Mike Marshall gone at the age of 78
Mike Marshall, one of the most durable relievers in baseball history and the first reliever to win a Cy Young award has died at the age of 78 on May 31, 2021 exactly 54 years to day of when he made his MLB debut. Marshall passed away in his Zephyrhills, Florida home where he had been in hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease. Michael Grant Marshall was born in Adrian, Michigan on January 15, 1943.
Marshall began his professional baseball career when he was signed as an infielder by the Philadelphia Phillies on September 13, 1960. Marshall made his MLB debut pitching for the Detroit Tigers at the age of 24 with an inning of relief in 9-0 blow-out loss to the Cleveland Indians.
Twins are spiraling out of control
It seems like everyday the Minnesota Twins find a new way to lose a baseball game. Sure this team has some injuries but what team doesn’t once the marathon baseball season begins. If you have watched this team since April 1 you can see that this team has gotten worse and not better as the season has gone on. The Twins are spiraling out of control and are in a free-fall and the Twins FO is just sitting by watching and waiting. I am not exactly sure what they are waiting for but more action needs to be taken other than shuffling pitchers between Target Field and the CHS Field.
Baseball is a strange and funny game and I have seen teams over the years that have over-performed and I have seen teams that have under-performed. The same goes for players, tell me you haven’t seen a good player have a bad season and bounce back the following year. It happens, we all get into these ruts sometimes when we feel that everyone and everything is against us and no matter what we do it just doesn’t seems to get any better.
The 2019 Minnesota Twins had an amazing season, everyone hit home runs, and as time goes by we will look back at that team and say that most of the players on that team had career years. So why is the reverse not possible and when we look back at 2021 and say that most of the players on this team all had their worst seasons at the same time.
Former manager Ray Miller dead at 76
Raymond Roger Miller was born on April 30, 1945 in Takoma Park, Maryland and passed away on May 5, 2021 in Weirton, West Virginia.
Ray Miller attended Suitland High School where he played baseball, basketball and soccer earning All-State honors in basketball. MLB.com shows that Ray Miller served with the US Army’s First Armored Division after graduating from Suitland High School in 1963. According to Miller, he signed a professional contract with the San Francisco Giants in 1962 but he did not pitch professionally until 1964. Miller toiled in the minor leagues for ten season (1864-1974) but never got a chance to show his stuff as a major league pitcher and he retired as an active player at the relatively young age of 28. Why did he retire so young? Check out “Obituary: Ray Miller (1945-2021)” on the RIP Baseball site, a wonderful write-up you should not miss about a man that seemed to avoid publicity.
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.
What the heck ails the Twins
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.
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.
Ten strikeouts and no walks is a good days work
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.