This Day in Twins History – August 3

1969 – Pinch-hitter Rich Reese hit a grand slam to power the Minnesota Twins to a 5-2 victory over the visiting Baltimore Orioles and ends Dave McNally’s 15 game winning streak. His two victories at the end of 1968 had given him 17 straight wins.

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1987 – One of my favorite moments in Twins history occurs when Twins pitcher Joe Niekro is caught with a fingernail file on the mound at Anaheim Stadium and is ejected by umpire Tim Tschida during the 4th inning of Minnesota’s 11-3 win over California. He was suspended for 10 games by AL president Bobby Brown, who doesn’t buy Niekro’s story “that he had been filing his nails on the bench and stuck the file in his back pocket when the inning started”. On August 14th, Niekro appears on the “Late Night” show with David Letterman wearing a workman’s belt that contains a power sander, nail file, clothes brush, toenail and fingernail clippers, sandpaper, tweezers, scissors, Vaseline, emery boards, and two bottles of Kiwi Scuff Magic.

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1999 – The Astros and Twins swap catchers, Houston gets George Williams and Minnesota gets Josh Dimmick.