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
This is a general blogging category.
We all know that the Bomba squad could hit home runs, after all, they hit an MLB record 307 of them in 2019. But just for fun here in mid-winter let’s take a look and see who Rocco Baldelli’s boys ranked as compared to the other 58 Minnesota Twins teams going back to 1961. Those folks over at Baseball-Reference.com or going to help us do just that.
I was watching the MLB channel last night when they interrupted their programming with breaking news that the Boston Red Sox and manager Alex Cora had mutually agreed to part ways after the previous days bombshell of the “caught stealing” penalties dropped on the Houston Astros by MLB. Then just a few minutes into that, they had more breaking news, this time the report was that a source (turned out to be MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand) had reported that third baseman Josh Donaldson had agreed to accept a four-year deal with Minnesota for $92 million guaranteed, including an $8 million buyout of a $16 million club option for a fifth year.
Back in early December I ran across a newspaper special insert that the Star Tribune had put out with their Sunday edition on April 16, 1961 that was over 100 pages long and was intended to introduce professional baseball to folks in Minnesota and the upper Midwest. The 100+ pages of course included a lot of advertisements but they in themselves are cool to look at and see how prices have changed over the years.
I finally have gotten the insert into a PDF format and I think Twins fans young and old will really enjoy it. It is a cool peak back into Twins history when life was a lot simpler and baseball was more fun. One of the funnier articles I found was a piece telling women how they should dress to attend a baseball game, don’t miss that one, it will make you laugh or maybe just scream. The ads will bring back memories of companies and businesses long since gone. Oh, and the prices of merchandise will astound you. One of the things that surprised me was as ad for a TV that had a remote, I didn’t know they had remotes back then, I thought we kids were the remotes.
As we start a new year in 2020 I wanted to share a list of former Minnesota Twins players that passed away in 2019. We lost some great ones.
Pitcher Greg Booker appeared in 161 big league games over 8 seasons with three different teams. Booker spent about 6 months with the Minnesota Twins in 1989 appearing in 6 games, all in relief. Booker was “Trader” Jack McKeon‘s son-in-law.
Outfielder Lenny Green played in the major leagues for five different teams over 12 years. Green, a Korean War veteran was with the Washington Senators from 1959-1960 and became a Minnesota Twin when they moved to Minnesota and became the Twins after the 1960 season. Green was the Twins opening day center fielder when they began play in 1961. The Twins traded Green to the Angels in a three-team-trade in June of 1964. Lenny Green has always been in my list of top 10 Twins players.
2020 will be my 14th year of blogging about the Minnesota Twins and their history as Twinstrivia.com albeit on a couple of different platforms. I started my blog to have something to do that I would enjoy after my retirement from Norwest/Wells Fargo in April of 2007 where I worked in IT for 38+ years.
Thaddeus Stanley Lepcio was born in Utica, New York on July 28, 1929 and passed away on December 5, 2019 at his home in Dedham, Massachusetts. The right-handed hitting Ted Lepcio was not a baseball superstar but he loved baseball and always wanted to be a big league player. He achieved that goal and played in the major leagues for 10 years playing second base, third base and shortstop for five different big league teams.
Happy New Year!!
Baseball is a fun and interesting game and 2019 was no exception. Jayson Stark wrote a cool article in The Athletic today called “Strange But True Feats of the Year, 2019 Edition” and the Twins were mentioned a couple of times. If you don’t subscribe to The Athletic (and you really should), you won’t be able to read it but I will steal his Twins mentions and put them here for you to see the kind of writing you are missing by not subscribing.
On August 5 at Target Field, Miguel Sano did something very cool. He didn’t just hit a walk-off homer. He hit the Twins’ first walk-off homer against the Braves since the Kirby Puckett Game 6 We’ll See You Tomorrow Night shot that set up the epic Jack Morris–John Smoltz Game 7 in the 1991 World Series. But then … guess what Ronald Acuña Jr. did on the first pitch of their next game? Yessir. Hit a leadoff homer. It’s the only time in any of the past 13 seasons when one game ended on a last-pitch homer and the next game started with a first-pitch homer.
The Twins’ Ryne Harper had a July 7 outing in which he faced four hitters, struck out all four of them and still managed to record a total of … five outs — thanks to a little miracle we like to call the old strike-’em-out-throw-’em-out inherited-runner double play.
Four Orioles did manage to hit two homers in a game at Camden Yards. Which sounds encouraging until you remember that four Twins did that in one day (April 20). All right, so they played a doubleheader that day. But still …
The Yankees blew away the all-time record for home runs in one season — but didn’t even lead their league, because the Twins hit 307 of them. Five different Twins hit at least 30 home runs in 2019. Which was kind of notable because only five different Twins had had a 30-homer season in the previous 30 seasons put together!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
The players listed below had just one hit while wearing a Minnesota Twins uniform. Most had more than one big league hit in their big league careers but for our purposes we are just looking for those players that had just one hit while wearing Minnesota Twins colors.
As you might suspect, since this list covers players that played for the Minnesota Twins from 1961 (when pitchers still batted) through 2019 the list has a lot of pitchers on it. The right-hand column on the list shows you the positions played by that player.