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 1967 Detroit rebellion, also known as the 1967 Detroit riot or as the 12th Street riot, was a violent public disorder that turned into a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan. It began in the early morning hours of Sunday July 23, 1967.
There was a recent article “Black Tigers: Detroit and the 1967 Rebellion” written by Andrew Linden Louis Moore and posted on the Sports in American History site that is worth reading. Check it out, it might make you wonder how much progress we have really made in the last 50 years.
Lenny Green who played for the Senators/Twins from 1959-1964 is one of the players in the article.
The Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers are used to playing long 9 inning games. The Twins have played 11 nine inning games of 239 minutes or longer and the Tigers have been the opponent on five occasions and to make matters worse the Twins have won just one of those games and they had to score 20 runs to win that one.
Paul Molitor spent more time on the pitchers mound than any of his seven pitchers did in the Twins 9-6 loss at Target Field that lasted a Twins record four hours and 19 minutes.
Sunday afternoon’s 9-6 loss to the Tigers now stands as the Twins longest 9 inning game, fortunately the weather was great at Target Field. Paul Molitor and the Twins burned through seven pitchers, certainly not the kind of game anyone wants on getaway day when you are heading out to face the best team in the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Tigers received great production from the bottom of their batting order, with James McCann, Alex Presley and Jose Iglesias each producing three hits and scoring twice in the team’s 9-5 victory over the Twins on Sunday. It marked the first time in nearly six years that a team’s starters in the bottom three slots in the batting order each registered at least three hits and two runs scored in the same game, since Texas did it against Minnesota on July 25, 2011. The Rangers’ 7-8-9 hitters in that game were Mike Napoli, Mitch Moreland and Endy Chavez.
The Tigers had not had their bottom three hitters produce in that fashion in over 30 years, since Pat Sheridan (three hits, two runs), Chet Lemon (three hits, three runs) and Tom Brookens (three hits, two runs) each had three or more hits and multiple runs scored in a win over the Indians on June 3, 1987.
It just goes to show that Twins pitchers can make any opposing hitter better.
Only the one player made his major league debut as a Minnesota Twin on July the 9th. This debut is extra special however; because Ron Keller was the first player to be drafted and signed by the Minnesota Twins and make his big league debut wearing the colors of the Minnesota Twins.
Ron Keller
Ron Keller (P) – July 9, 1966 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 8th round of the 1965 amateur draft. The Twins were already down 5-0 when Ron Keller was called upon by Sam Mele to relieve Jim Merritt. Keller had a clean first inning on the Met Stadium mound but then allowed 3 runs in the next inning including a home run by future Hall of Famer Al Kaline and kept the Tigers off the board in his third inning of relief.
The Twins had a 5-2 lead after five innings of play at Tiger Stadium but the Tigers scored one in sixth and two in the seventh to tie the game at 5 apiece. The game was finally called a draw in the top of the ninth with Harmon Killebrew at the plate with two strikes and one out after Rod Carew led off the top of the ninth with a single but was caught stealing. The game had four rain delays and was called around midnight CDT. Box Score.
The Star Tribune pages below will tell you more about the Twins/Tigers game, a brawl in New York between the Yanks and Red Sox and more about the disagreement on the Twins bus between Tony Oliva and Ted Uhlaender that was supposedly instigated by Dave Boswell. At the end of the day the Twins were 32-31 and 6.5 games behind the high-flying Chicago White Sox.
Between June 1 and June 15 the Twins fired (Sam Mele) and hired a manager (Cal Ermer) and went 10-6 playing all but one of the games at the friendly confines of Met Stadium. The team managed to pick-up 2.5 games in the standings but they still find themselves trailing the Chicago White Sox by four games.
June 13 wasn’t a great day in spite of the fact that the Twins scored in double-figures for the third day in a row and found themselves on the losing end of a 15-10 game. The Twins and Dean Chance were up 5-1 going into the sixth inning against the Detroit Tigers at the Met when the “S%#@” hit the fan, Chance gave up four singles and walked two before skipper Cal Ermer had seen enough and brought in reliever Jim Ollom who promptly gave up a single and a walk and he too found himself headed for the shower as Mudcat Grant came in to stop the bleeding. Three singles later Grant was gone and Jim Roland took the mound and promptly threw a wild pitch to allow another run, a passed ball followed which led to a sac fly, another Twins error kept the nightmare inning alive before Roland finally got the third out of the inning. When the smoke cleared the Tigers had put a 10 spot on the Twins and led the game 11 to 5. That would be 10 runs on 8 singles, three walks, two Twins errors, a wild pitch and a passed ball and a partridge in a pear tree. OMG! What we had here was the first time in Twins history that an opponent had scored 10 or more runs against the Twins in a single inning. The Twins bounced back with 5 runs of their own in the bottom of the inning to make it an 11-10 game but the Tigers scored 3 in the seventh and another in the eighth inning and the final score was 15-10 for the Tigers.
Here a couple of clippings out of the June 14, 1967 Minneapolis Tribune Sports section describing the action.
The June 10, 1967 Sporting News has a nice piece about Rod Carew and his base running problems and this time pitching coach Early Wynn puts Dave Boswell through his “wringer” method of fixing a pitchers problems.
You’d think the Tigers were in safe territory with Justin Verlander taking a 3–0 lead to the bottom of the sixth at Minnesota. But the Minnesota Twins rallied for six runs, four were charged to Verlander and held on for a 6–3 victory last night at Target Field. Coming into the game, Verlander had a 129–5 record when staked to a lead of three or more runs (11 no-decisions).
The Minnesota Twins finished their 1967 Grapefruit League season with a 12-17 record and only the Kansas City Athletics had a worse record. The Twins started the season on the road in Baltimore where they lost two games before coming home to face the Detroit Tigers for their home opener at Met Stadium.
With 21, 347 fans in the stands Twins starter Dave Boswell faced off against Tiger starter Earl Wilson. Boswell kept the Tigers off the board in the first inning and when the Twins came to bat in the bottom of the first they were ready, Cesar Tovar singled to left and advanced on a passed ball and Rich Rollins then doubled to left scoring Tovar. Wilson walked Tony Oliva but Wilson induced Harmon Killebrew to hit into a double play with Oliva reaching second. Wilson wild pitched Oliva to third and up stepped rookie Rod Carew who quickly singled and had his first big league RBI when Oliva scored. Bob Allison stepped up to the plate but the rookie Carew got picked off first by Wilson and the Twins had their first lead of the season.
The Tigers scored three runs off Dave Boswell in the third inning and kept their 3-2 lead until the bottom of the sixth inning when Bob Allison hit his first home run of the season to tie the game at three. The Twins took the lead for good when Zoilo Versalles scored on a Jerry Lumpe error on a Tovar ground ball to second off reliever Larry Sherry. Versalles led off the bottom of the eighth inning with a home run off Johnny Podres to end the scoring. Jim Merritt who pitched the final four inning of scoreless relief was credited with the win and Tiger starter Earl Wilson took the loss. Box score
The Twins then lost their next two games by identical 4-3 scores to the Tigers and the Indians and on April 18 their record stood at 1-4. Their 1-4 start matched their 1963 start which was the worst start they have had since they started play in Minnesota.
Justin Haley recorded six of his 10 outs via strikeouts, earning his first major-league save in the Twins’ 11–5 win at Detroit. The last pitcher to collect at least six strikeouts in any save was the Royals’ Danny Duffy, also at Detroit on Sep. 20, 2015 (6 SO in 4 IP.) That also happened to be Duffy’s first (and to date, only) save in the majors. Haley is the 21st reliever to strike out six-or-more batters in his first big-league save since the statistic became official in 1969. Only one of the previous 20 went on to save as many as 90 games. That was Tom “Flash” Gordon, who fanned six in two-and-one-third innings for Kansas City at Texas in 1989. Gordon finished his career with 158 saves, although he wouldn’t earn more than one in a season until 1997.
Bill Campbell is the Twins all-time leader in this category getting 15 saves between 1973-1976 by pitching 3 or more innings in a game for the save.
Like most baseball fans I can’t wait for the 2017 MLB season to begin. I have been excited for every baseball season to start for over 60 years now so that tells you that I am no rookie fan, you might compare me to the old veteran player that is looking to hang on for another season.
Spring brings hope as the weather warms, spring rains fall, the grass turns green, the leaves start to form on the trees and somewhere off in the distance you hear that yell that your ears have yearned for during the cold winter months, PLAY BALL!!
The home town Minnesota Twins ended spring training on Friday and flew to Minnesota after their final exhibition game which ended in a 3-3 tie against their AAA Rochester team. Spring training wins mean very little, in 2016 the Cubs finished their exhibition schedule with a 11-19 record and won the World Series. The 2016 Twins finished with a 19-11 record and when they looked at the standings when the season ended they saw a “59” in their W column. The 2017 Twins were 16-13 in this springs meaningless games.
This is the first season for the new Derek Falvey and Thad Levine regime and the third season as the Twins manager for Paul Molitor. Much has been said and written about Falvey and his approach to running a team and how appreciated he was in Cleveland. The consensus is that Falvey has taken over a tired old organization that time has passed by and a complete house-cleaning was in order. But Falvey and Levine have not done that, they have actually made very few moves both on the field and in the front office. I think that tells us something.
To me it sends a very clear message, the Minnesota Twins organization coming off a disastrous season in which they lost 103 games is not the pile of s*%# that everyone says it was and that the team has a bright future and all they need to do is fine tune it a bit and stay out of way to make sure they don’t screw it up. Falvey didn’t leave the Indians and Levine the Rangers to end up in some dead-end team with no hope, they came to Minnesota because they see what this team can and will be in the next few years. Believe me, the Twins organization is far from perfect and there will not be any playoff games played in Target Field in 2017 but this years team will not be the sad sack Twins of 2016.
The major weakness the Twins have is their relief pitching and Falvey and Levine did nothing to speak of to address that problem, that will come back to haunt the team this season. Can the starters be worse this year than last? I think not so I am expecting much more from that group in 2017. The young position players are just getting to the stage of realizing that they can play and compete at the big league level and they will be both fun and at times frustrating to watch. The Twins motto for this season should be “Grin and bear it cause good things are a-comin”.
My 2017 American League Central Division prediction
Here is how it is going to look after the 2017 season ends.
The 2017 American League pennant winners will be the Cleveland Indians and the National League pennant winning Washington Nationals will play in the 2017 World Series with the Indians winning in 6 exciting games. Enjoy the season.
