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
The Minnesota had just completed a 97-65 season winning the AL West Division but lost three games to zip in the 1969 ALCS to the Baltimore Orioles. On the morning of October 13th Twins owner Calvin Griffith called his manager and told him that he would not be returning to manage the club in 1970.
Twins fans loved Billy Martin and were very unhappy when Griffith fired Martin and I was one of those fans who didn’t attend any games for two season after Martin was sent packing.
The 1969 Minnesota Twins were the first major league team that Billy Martin managed but they would not be his last. Martin went on to manage the Detroit Tigers from 1971-1973, the Texas Rangers from 1973-1975, The New York Yankees in 1975 through 1978, again in 1979, before moving to Oakland from 1980-1982 and returned to manage the Yankees in 1983, 1985 and again in 1988.
When he hung up his spikes for the final time he had managed for 16 seasons winning 1,253 games and losing 1,013 and winning one World Series (1977) and winning two )1976 and 1977) pennants.
All of you that have the 1987 Minnesota Twins Home Hanky stashed away somewhere should check on its condition because that hanky is 30 years old. 30 years old, can you believe it? Most of us kept at least one as a souvenir and maybe, just maybe it would increase in value over time. Well, 30 years has passed and the hanky is worth about the same price a lot of us paid for it back then, a buck.
Hankies went out of style years ago but this is no regular hanky, it is the red and white hanky that everyone was waving back in the Metrodome as the Twins were beating the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1987 World Series.
Check out this first hand recollection by Tim McGuire who was managing editor of the Star Tribune at the time. The story is a fun read and worth a few minutes of your time and it may even surprise you as to how it all came about. Click here to see the story.
A bomb scare caused a 43 minute delay in the fourth inning of the Twins and Boston Red Sox game at the Met.
“Leave the stadium quickly,” Twins public address announcer Bob Casey declared. “There is going to be an explosion in ten minutes.”
Bob Casey
The people of the Twin Cities were already on edge when Casey made his ill-advised announcement during the fourth inning of the Twins-Red Sox game at Met Stadium on the evening of August 25, 1970. Just three days earlier, a bomb had exploded inside Dayton’s department store in downtown St. Paul, injuring one person. Police and Twins officials had little choice but to stop play and evacuate the stands when they received a phone call warning that a bomb was set to explode at the stadium at 9:30 p.m. Their mistake came in entrusting the gaffe-prone Casey with the task of telling 17,697 people they needed to leave the stadium. Despite Casey’s alarmist announcement, the evacuation went smoothly. Most fans headed to the parking lot while the rest joined the players in center field.
The game was scoreless going in to the eighth inning when Twins reliever Tommy Hall gave up a home run to Tony Conigliaro after striking out Reggie Smith and Carl Yastrzemski for the first two outs of the inning. The Twins had no match for the home run and ended up losing the game 1-0
1961 – The expansion Los Angeles Angels play their first home game bowing to the Twins at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, 4-2. The 74-year old baseball legend Ty Cobb, in his last-ever visit to a ballpark, throws out the first ceremonial pitch. This was the first American League game to ever be played in Los Angeles. Box Score
1965 – Camilo Pascual hits a grand slam home run off pitcher Stan Williams in a 11-1 Twins win over the Indians in Cleveland Stadium. Camilo pitches a complete game two hitter and strikes out five in the process. Pascual is the first and only Twins pitcher to hit a grand slam home run. Pascual had also hit a grand slam home run as a Washington Senator at Yankee Stadium I on August 14, 1960 in a 5-4 win over the New York Yankees. Box Score
1969 – Harmon Killebrew hits his 400th HR and the Twins take over first place in the AL West by beating Chicago 4-3. Box Score
1980 – The Twins score 10 runs in the first inning on their way to a 20-11 thrashing of the Oakland A’s. Minnesota starter Geoff Zahn can’t hold the 10-0 lead, allowing 8 runs in 4 1/3 innings, and Doug Corbett picks up the win in relief. Box Score
1994 – Scott Erickson, who allowed the most hits in the majors the previous season, pitched Minnesota’s first no-hitter in 27 years and the Twins third no-hitter as the Twins beat Milwaukee 6-0 at the Metrodome. Box Score
2010 – In a very unusual game at Comerica Park, the Twins beat the Detroit Tigers 2-0 as Francisco Liriano beats Justin Verlander. What’s unusual about that you ask? It was one of those rare baseball games when neither team scores an earned run. The Twins used two pitchers and the Tigers had four hurlers take the mound. Since 2001 this has occurred to the Twins just three times and two of the three occurrences were against the Detroit Tigers. Box Score
2011 – The Tampa Rays beat the Twins 8-2 in Target Field on a cold blustery night in a game that we attended. The temperature at the start of the game was 40 degrees with a stiff 17 MPH northerly wind blowing in from left field. Shortly after the game began, the snow started falling and flurries lasted the entire game making Target Field look like a giant snow globe. The Twins played Christmas carols as the game went along and a fan that came to the game dressed as jolly old St. Nick danced in the stands. It was a weird day at the old ballpark to be sure. I even over-heard some fans saying that the Metrodome wasn’t all that bad……… Box Score . Kind of like today I guess.
Don’t forget to check back on the today in Twins history page every day, there is a lot of cool info out there.
In an exhibition game with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twin Larry Hisle becomes the first designated hitter in ML history. Hisle makes the new AL rule look good by collecting 2 HR’s and 7 RBI.
The story on why Hisle became the first DH is interesting in itself. The first Spring Training game in the AL in 1973 fell to the Twins. But Minnesota had plans for the recently acquired Cardinals prospect Hisle in the outfield, and he was penciled in as the center fielder as camp got under way. At least, until the morning of the first game, when Hisle injured his toe after tripping over a chair while horsing around with his son. Twins skipper Frank Quilici still wanted to get his new player some swings so he decided to leave him in the lineup at this newfangled DH spot. And while there had been designated “pinch” hitters used in Spring Training games as a trial since 1969, this was the first time a player batted as a DH under the new rule.
When the 1973 season began, 34 year-old Tony Oliva was the Twins primary DH and started 138 games in that role. Larry Hisle as it turns out didn’t appear in a big league regular season game as a DH until July 18, 1975.
Baseball’s 10th man – Pioneer or Pigeon is a interesting write-up on the DH from the Saturday Evening Post July/August 1973 edition that is worth your read.
After having a career year with the 1976 Minnesota Twins, reliever Bill Campbell becomes one of the first players to cash in on the new free-agent system. The reliever signs a big money (a four-year one-million dollar deal) contract with the Boston Red Sox after making just $23,000 this past season in Minnesota. I did a blog on this back on November 6, 2012 that you can read here. I also did an interview with Bill that you can listen to here.
This is one of those rare times when we delve back into the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins franchise history because Carlos Paula played a key role and he should not be forgotten.
September 6, 1954 – On this day in 1954 the Washington Senators played a black ballplayer for the first time. His name was Carlos Paula and he was from Havana, Cuba. The 26 year-old Paula started in left field for the Senators seven years after Jackie Robinson made his Major League debut. Paula hit fifth in the Senators batting order and went 2 for 5 with a double and knocked in 2 runs in a 8-1 win in game 1 of a double-header against the Philadelphia A’s. The Senators lost game 2 by a 3-2 score at Griffith Stadium. Only the Yankees in 1955, the Phillies in 1957, the Tigers in 1958 and the Red Sox in 1959 broke the color-line later than did the Senators/Twins franchise. Box Score.
I recently ran across a very nice write-up on Carlos Paula and his time with the Washington Senators on the National Basball Hall of fame web site called: #GOINGDEEP: CARLOS PAULA, THE MAN WHO INTEGRATED THE WASHINGTON SENATORS. Take the time to read it and to enjoy the wonderful pictures. According to the story, Carlos Paula had ties to Minnesota Twins 1965 MVP Zoilo Versalles.
July 11, 1965 – With the Twins AL lead at only 4 games and the All-Star game break coming up the next day, the Twins took on the New York Yankees at the Met and after 8 innings the score was tied at 4 apiece. The Yanks scored one in the top of the ninth and the Twins had their backs to the wall. In the bottom of the ninth, Zoilo Versalles grounded out to the pitcher but Rich Rollins coaxed a walk from Pete Mikkelsen and the Twins had the tieing run on base with Tony Oliva due up. Oliva flew out to center and the Twins were down to their last out but the last Twins hitter was Harmon Killebrew and he took Mikkelsen to a full count before hitting a walk-off 2 run homer and the Twins fans celebrated. The Twins players never looked back and ended up winning the league pennant by 7 games over the White Sox. Killebrew’s described his home run as “It’s one of the sweetest of the sweet” and it stands in Twins lore as one of their most famous home runs.
June 24, 1968 – In a one game series, the Twins beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0 in County Stadium in Milwaukee in a game called after 5 innings due to rain. The reason the game was played in Milwaukee was that in 1968, Bud Selig, a former minority owner of the Milwaukee Braves who had been unable to stop the relocation of his team three years earlier, contracted with the Allyn brothers who owned the White Sox to host nine home games (one against each of the other American League clubs) at Milwaukee County Stadium as part of an attempt to attract an expansion franchise to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Box score
Friday the 13th, June 1997. The Twins play their very first interleague game and beat the Houston Astros 8-1 in the infamous Astrodome. Chuck Knoblauch leads off the game with a single for the Twins getting their first hit and Brad Radke goes 8 innings for the win. Who hits the Minnesota Twins first interleague home run? That would be current Twins skipper Paul Molitor. Box score
