Tag: Bill Rigney

Twins managers playing careers

December 30, 2009 – The Minnesota Twins have had 12 managers since the team moved here from Washington after the 1960 season. I thought that it would be interesting to see how many games each of them had played at the major league and minor league level before they moved into “management” so to speak and to see if there is any correlation between playing experience and managing a team at the major league level. The games listed below are strictly games played and not coached or managed either in the minors or majors.

Name Major league positions played Major league games Minor league games
Cookie Lavagetto ** 3B, 2B, 1B, SS 1,043 523
Sam Mele OF, 1B 1,046 340
Cal Ermer 2B 1 904
Billy Martin * 2B, SS, 3B, OF 1,021 510
Bill Rigney * 2B, 3B, SS, 1B 654 641
Frank Quilici 2B, 3B, SS, 1B 405 715
Gene Mauch 2B, SS, 3B 304 1,061
John Goryl 2B, 3B, SS 276 1,266
Billy Gardner 2B, SS, 3B 1,034 1,150
Ray Miller P 0 371
Tom Kelly 1B, OF 49 1,143
Ron Gardenhire SS, 2B, 3B 285 659

* = made one All-star team

** = made four All-star teams
 

Bobby Darwin

December 26, 2009 – Arthur Bobby Lee Darwin, a 6’2” right handed pitcher was signed by the Los Angeles Angels as a free agent prior to the 1962 season. He started his career in 1962 in San Jose, playing “C” ball where he was 11-6 with a 4.12 ERA in 153 innings giving up only 123 hits, but control was not Bobby’s strong suit as he also walked 149 batters in those 153 innings. Never the less, the Angels called up Darwin to start a game late in 1962 against the Cleveland Indians. With only 26 games of minor league ball under his belt, Darwin started the second game of a double header at Cleveland stadium. It was a tough start for Bobby, he lasted just 3.1 innings giving up 8 hits, 4 walks, and 6 runs, 4 of them earned and he ended up taking the loss. Little did Darwin know at the time, but he would not step foot in another major league game for a long time. In 1963 Darwin was waived by the Angels and picked up by the Baltimore Orioles where he toiled in the minors from 1963 through 1968. In 1966 Darwin also had elbow surgery and he was never quite the same pitcher after that. The Los Angeles Dodgers however; still saw something they liked in Darwin and drafted him in the Rule 5 draft in December of 1968. Darwin started the 1969 season with the Dodgers but was ineffective and appeared in only 3 games before being sent back down to the minors. Ready to give baseball, Darwin was asked by a former manager to give up on pitching and to try his luck as a position player. So in 1970 at the age of 27 it was back to single “A” ball and Darwin was working to fight his way back to the major leagues, this time as a hitter. In 1971 the Dodgers called Darwin up for a month or so but he only appeared in 11 games getting 20 at bats while hitting .250 with one home run but the real problem was his 9 strikeouts so he was shipped back to the minors.

It was after the 1971 season that things looked up for Bobby, he found out that he had been traded by the Dodgers to the Minnesota Twins who just happened to be managed at that time by Bill Rigney who was also the Angels manager when Darwin got his first taste of the big leagues, only back then, he was a pitcher. In his first year in Minnesota in 1972, Darwin wins a starting outfield job, hits 22 home runs, (second only to Harmon Killebrew) and he knocks in a team leading 80 RBI’s while hitting .267 but he strikes out a league leading 145 times. In 1973 Darwin hits 18 home runs, knocks in 90, while hitting .252 and again leading the league in strikeouts with 137. In 1974 he hits a career high 25 home runs and knocks in 94 more with an average of .264 but once again he leads the league in strikeouts with 127.The following season, 1975, Darwin struggles along with a .219 average with just 5 home runs in almost 200 at bats and the Twins decide that they have seen enough and they trade Darwin to the Milwaukee Brewers for Johnny Briggs. Darwin’s stay in Milwaukee lasts less than one year before they send him on his way to the Boston Red Sox. Bobby’s stay in Boston is less than a year before they too send him packing, this time to the Chicago Cubs. Darwin gets only a dozen at bats in Chicago before they release him and end Bobby Darwin’s big league career. During his 9 seasons in the majors, Darwin had a 0-1 record with a 10.29 ERA in 7 innings with 6 strikeouts. As a hitter, in 2,224 at bats, Darwin had 83 home runs, 328 RBI’s, 15 steals and a .241 batting average. Not Hall of Fame numbers to be sure but still some decent numbers for a player with an interesting career that started out as a pitcher and turned position player at the age of 27. The man could hit the ball a mile when he connected, but those dang pitchers kept throwing him that danged curve ball.

Forty Years Ago

November 18, 2009 – The 1968 Minnesota Twins finished with a 79-83 record under manager Cal Ermer and finished a disappointing seventh in the ten team American League, a full 24 games behind the first place Detroit Tigers and owner Calvin Griffith decided he had seen enough even though stars like Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Jim Kaat had suffered injuries that caused them to miss numerous games. On October 11th he fired manager Cal Ermer and hired the brash Billy Martin who had been managing the Twins AAA team in Denver to skipper the 1969 Minnesota Twins. 1969 would be an exciting season for Minnesota, they had a young new manager and would begin play in the newly formed Western Division of the American League along with the Oakland A’s, the California Angels, the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago White Sox, and the Seattle Pilots. 1969 brought two new teams to the American League, the Kansas City Royals who were replacing the A’s who had packed their bags and moved to Oakland under owner Charlie Finley and the Seattle Pilots who it turns out would only stay in Seattle for one season before moving to Milwaukee and becoming the Brewers.

The Twins 1969 season got off to a rough start for Billy’s boys when they lost their first two games of the season on the road to the expansion Royals, both losses coming in extra innings. They moved on to California and lost their next two games by scores of 5-3 and 4-3 and found themselves in the basement of the Western Division. But Martin got his team on the straight and narrow and the team ripped off 7 wins in a row and took over 1st place. They finished the month of April 13-7 and were sitting on top of the division. From April 26th through July 3rd the team was either first or second in the standings. Oakland came to town on the 4th of July week-end and the Twins whipped Charlie Finley’s boys 3 straight and outscored the A’s 30 to 11 and took over first place, a spot they would keep for the rest of the season. The Twins finished the season with a 97-65 record, 9 games ahead of the second place Oakland A’s. Although Martin had the team running (4th in stolen bases), the team finished first in the league in hits, runs, doubles, total bases, and batting average. The Twins pitching wasn’t too shabby either as Jim Perry and Dave Boswell each finished with 20 wins and threw 250+ innings and Ron Perranoski was great out of the bullpen pitching 119+ innings in 75 games finishing 52 of them and getting credit for 31 saves.

The Twins would go on to lose their first league championship series to the Baltimore Orioles in a 3 game sweep but that is a whole different story that we will talk about in the future. Just a week after losing the final game of the championship series, Billy Martin is fired by owner Calvin Griffith and Bill Rigney was named the Twins new manager. Roy Blount Jr. of Sports Illustrated did a nice story on Billy Martin and the Twins in the July 21, 1969 issue and you can read that story by clicking on the SI magazine cover.