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
April 22, 2011 – Twins catcher Earl Battey is seen here showing a batting helmet that was fashioned for him after he was beaned by Cleveland Indians pitcher Bobby Locke in the 7th inning of the July 23, 1961 games at Met Stadium and suffered a broken cheek. Earl Battey was tough and less than two weeks later, August 4th to be exact, Battey was behind the plate as the Twins faced the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.
Earl, a four time all-star was an original Minnesota Twin and played for Minnesota between 1961 and 1967. Battey won three Gold Gloves between 1960-1962. During his eight years as a Washington Senator (1960) and Minnesota Twin (1961-1967), he played in 990 games, had 3,228 at bats, scored 346 runs, hit 91 home runs, had 410 RBI’s, stole 12 bases while hitting for a .277 average. Between 1960-1965, Battey who was strictly a catcher, averaged 138 games per season. In 2010, Earl Battey was selected as one of the “50 Greatest Twins”. Earl Battey passed away on November 15, 2003 at the age of 68.
The Twins opening day 3B and hitting star of the game was 1 for 2 with a two-run home run and 2 runs scored.
April 18, 2011 – The Twins opening day third-baseman in the Minnesota Twins first ever game back on April 11, 1961 against the New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium I, Reno Peter Bertoia, passed away on April 15th after a brief battle with lymphoma cancer. Reno Bertoia is the fifth member of that opening day line-up to pass on.
Bertoia was born in St. Vito Udine, Italy on January 8, 1935 but his family moved to Windsor, Canada when he was just an infant. He grew up next door to another famous Windsor athlete, Hank Biasatti who made it to the majors and Reno is reported to be the last Italian-born player to reach the major leagues.
Bertoia graduated from Assumption College high school and in August of 1953, Reno was voted Most Outstanding Prospect in the City of Detroit, and sent to play in the Hearst All-Star game in New York City. He’d also been given a baseball scholarship to the University of Michigan. After New York, John McHale, general manager for the Tigers pursued him, and offered Reno his first major-league contract. Without playing a minor league game, Reno Bertoia was in the majors. Bertoia’s first major league at bat came at the tender age of 18 at the Tigers Briggs Stadium against the St. Louis Browns on September 22, 1953. His first at bat is a well known bit of local Windsor lore because it came against Hall of Famer Satchel Paige. “He told us he swung once, he swung twice, he swung three times and he sat down” recalled Beth Daly, his stepdaughter. That one appearance was Bertoia’s only big league plate appearance that first big league season because shortly after his first at bat, Bertoia was spiked while playing 2B and he was forced to leave the game. That was some welcome to the “big leagues”. Bertoia played for the Tigers through the 1958 season before being traded to the Washington Senators where he had his most productive season in 1960. When the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961, Bertoia became a Minnesota Twin and was the starting third-baseman, but on June 1, 1961 the Twins traded Bertoia and pitcher Paul Giel to the Kansas City Athletics for Bill Tuttle. In his brief 35 game career as a Minnesota Twin, Reno had 104 at bats, 1 home run, 8 RBI’s and finished with a .212 batting average. Bertoia’s stay in Kansas City was also short-lived and he was again traded back to the Detroit Tigers where he finished his big league career in 1962. Bertoia played in the minors in 1963 and then went to Japan in 1964 where he played for one season with the Hanshin Tigers.
Reno Bertoia
Bertoia was a Canadian baseball pioneer and blazed the way for Canadian players of today like Justin Morneau and Joey Votto. Reno Bertoia was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988. Retired Windsor Star columnist Marty Gervais wrote a book about Bertoia’s baseball career, simply called “Reno”.
Reno then went on to his second career of teaching and he taught for 30 years for the Windsor Catholic school board. “He was in many ways prouder of his teaching career,” Daly said because he felt he impacted a lot of people’s lives. Bertoia also spent some time scouting for the Detroit Tigers and the Toronto Blue Jays after his retirement from baseball.
Bertoia is survived by his wife Joan Daly, three children and three step-children. The funeral mass will be held on Tuesday, April 19 in Windsor.
April 18, 2011 – Brian Duensing defeated Tampa Bay’s Jeremy Hellickson on Sunday to snap Minnesota’s four-game losing streak. The Twins entered the game win-less in eight games this season in which they had faced a right-handed starting pitcher. That was the longest such losing streak to begin a season for the franchise since the Washington Senators began the 1904 season by losing their first 10 decisions in games against right-handed starters. Source: Elias
April 15, 2011 – The 31 year old Steve Holm was called up when Joe Mauer was put on the 15 DL after Thursday’s game against the Tampa Rays. Holm was originally drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 17th round of the June 2001 free agent draft. Steve made his major league debut in 2008 when he played in 42 games with the Giants. In 2009 Holm was with the Giants for just four games and at the end of the 2010 season Holm became a free agent and signed with the Minnesota Twins in December of 2010. In his 46 big league games, Steve has .264 batting average in 91 at bats with 1 home run (off of JC Romero) and 6 RBI’s.
A conference on the mound during a Twins – Red Sox game between Twins pitcher Dave Boswell in one of his early career starts, manager Sam Mele and catcher Earl Battey after Boswell’s first three pitches were hit for two doubles and a home run.
Manager Sam Mele: What’s he got?
Catcher Earl Battey: I don’t know, I haven’t caught a pitch yet.
April 9, 2011 – Carl Pavano allowed one run on four hits in 8 innings of work in the Twins’ 2-1 victory over the A’s in the team’s home opener at Target Field on Friday. Since the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961, only two other pitchers have pitched at least 8 innings while allowing four-or-fewer hits and one-or-fewer runs in the team’s home opener: Tom Hall in 1969 (9 IP, 2 hits, 0 runs against the Angels) and Kevin Tapani in 1990 (8 IP, 4 hits, 0 runs against the Angels).
March 31, 2011 – I received my 2011 season tickets the other day and as I was going through the package, I thought I noticed that something was missing. One of the benefits of being a Twins season ticket holder was that you always received a voucher for a free copy of the current years Twins Media Guide. I have a nice collection of these media guides now and I always look forward to getting a new one. Low and behold when I checked through the season ticket package, there was nothing about the Twins media guide mentioned, I found a voucher for the Twins Yearbook and the various Twins Magazines but no media guide so I e-mailed the Twins and was told that the Twins Media Guide is no longer a part of the season ticket holder package. What a disappointment! I can’t believe that the Twins have cut the media guide out of their season ticket holder package. Sure, I can go out and buy one but it just frustrates me that the Twins have dropped this from the package when their revenue is up and almost every home game is sold out. What? They have too many season ticket holders now to give everyone a free Twins Media Guide? As I said earlier, very disappointing.
March 31, 2011 – I thought that it would be fun to look over the Twins 50 year history of Opening Days and see who has started the most games at each position. Through their first fifty years, the Twins record on Opening Day is 24-26 and they are currently on a two game losing streak.
The Minnesota Twins first Opening Day was at Yankee Stadium on April 11, 1961 in front of only 14,607 fans and the Twins played and won their first ever game by a score of 6-0. Their Opening Day line-up that day had Earl Battey catching, Harmon Killebrew at first, Billy Gardner at second, Zoilo Versalles was at short, Reno Bertoia played third, Jim Lemon was in left, Lenny Green was in center, Bob Allison was in right, and Pedro Ramos was the starting pitcher. Little did anyone know at the time that the Twins second baseman that day, Billy Gardner, would become the Twins manager twenty years later. The Twins have only fielded the same opening day line-up from one year to the next on one occasion in 50 years and that was in 1970 (won 12-0) and 1971 (lost 7-2) when the Twins had George Mitterwald catching, Rich Reese at first, Rod Carew at second, Leo Cardenas was at short, Harmon Killebrew was at third, Brant Alyea was in left, Cesar Tovar was the centerfielder, Tony Oliva was in right and Jim Perry was the starting pitcher. This goes to show how much things change from year to year.
I told you earlier that I was going to find out what Twins have started the most Opening Day games by position and here is what I have found.
Total # of players that have played this position on opening day
Started most opening days at this position
Catcher
20
Earl Battey, Butch Wynegar, Joe Mauer – 6
1B
19
Kent Hrbek – 12
2B
20
Rod Carew – 9
SS
16
Zoilo Versalles, Roy Smalley, Greg Gagne – 7
3B
23
Gary Gaetti – 9
LF
25
Mickey Hatcher, Dan Gladden, Marty Cordova, Jacques Jones – 4
March 31, 2011 – Elmer Valo played in 1,806 games in the major leagues between for the A’s, Phillies, Dodgers, Indians, Yankees, and the Senators/Twins between 1940 and 1961 sandwiched around his military service in 1944-1945. Oddly enough, while he was with the Philadelphia A’s they moved and became the Kansas City A’s, when he was with the Brooklyn Dodgers they moved and became the Los Angeles Dodgers, and when he was with the Washington Senators they moved and became the Minnesota Twins, no other major league player can say that.
Elmer Valo was born on March 5, 1921 in Rybnik, Czechoslovakia and passed away on July 19, 1998 in Palmerton, Pennsylvania. Valo, an outfielder by trade only played for the Twins in 33 games in 1961 getting 36 plate appearances and hitting only .156, primarily as a pinch-hitter before the Twins released him on June 17 and he signed with the Phillies for 50 more big league games in his final major league season.
Although his Minnesota Twins career was very short, Elmer Valo had a most interesting baseball career and life and I wanted to share it with you. I am not going to rewrite a lot of what has already been written about the Wall Crusher but I will point you to a number of articles about him that I know you will enjoy if you enjoy reading about baseball going back to the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s.
Did you know that among players with at least 100 bases on ball in a season, the best walks-to-strikouts ratio, 6.31, belongs to Elmer Valo of the 1952 Philadelphia A’s who had 101 walks to just 16 strikeouts?
March 31, 2011 – I know the season started today and I am a bit slow with my predictions for this year but here is how I see things playing out. Sorry to say, but I don’t see the Twins winning the AL Central this year, the new champs of the Central will be those “dag nabbit” Mighty Whitey’s. I see the Chicago White Sox as just beating out the Twins by 1 ½ games in a season long battle for supremacy. But things aren’t all bad, as the Twins will be the American league wild card winners for the first time in their history. Here is how I see the Division races ending up.
Finish
AL East
AL Central
AL West
1
Red Sox
White Sox
Rangers
2
Yankees
Twins *
A’s
3
Rays
Tigers
Angels
4
Orioles
Royals
Mariners
5
Blue Jays
Indians
Finish
NL East
NL Central
NL West
1
Braves
Reds
Rockies
2
Phillies *
Cardinals
Giants
3
Marlins
Brewers
Padres
4
Nationals
Cubs
Dodgers
5
Mets
Pirates
D-Backs
Astros
* – Wild Card Winner
The Twins will make some progress in the playoffs this year but they will only win one series and get beat out in the ALCS by the Boston Red Sox who will face the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. The Boston Red Sox will become the World Champions in 5 games.
