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
I have followed MLB since about 1956 by buying baseball cards, by listening to baseball games on the radio, by subscribing to The Sporting News and reading whatever box scores I could find. But how things have changed over the years, including pitching. One of the biggest changes has to do with starting pitching.
Starting pitchers used to pitch and hit back in the day. They would start every fourth day but over time the starting rotation changed to four to five. Recently some teams have gone to six day rotations and it is not that uncommon nowadays for games to be pitched totally by relief pitchers. Relief pitchers back then were “injured” starters or starters that for one reason or another had become ineffective.
When I was growing up on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River about 70 miles north of the Twin Cities and just starting to follow baseball in the late 1950’s we had no TV at home so my sources of information about baseball were the radio, the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers and eventually The Sporting News. My parents were not sports fans and they pretty much felt that my interest in baseball was a waste of time that could be put to better use by doing more tasks around the dairy farm that we lived on.
For those of you that were raised on a dairy farm you know how hard the work can be. You started and finished each and every day in the barn milking the cows. You probably got up about 5 AM and went to bed between 10 PM and 11 PM before you started the process all over again the next day. There is no such thing as an eight-hour day, a sick day, a holiday or a week-end, every day is the same, work on a dairy farm is relentless.
We had a radio in the barn that was always tuned to just one station, 830 on the AM dial, the “Good Neighbor”, WCCO radio. Back then WCCO was one of the premier and most powerful radio stations in the country and in 1961 it became the flag-ship station for the Minnesota Twins. There might as well have been no dial on that old tube radio because the station was never changed, it was our source for news, weather and of course the farm reports but my favorite things on the radio were the Twins games and school closings.
The Minneapolis and St. Paul papers were not delivered out to farm country and we couldn’t afford it even if they did, fortunately our school library subscribed to the morning papers and every chance I had I would go to the library and check out the sports pages. One day I ran across a Sporting News at our local dime store magazine rack, Ben Franklin if my memory serves me correctly and I thought I had died and gone to heaven, page after page of baseball news that was published weekly. It took some time but I finally saved up enough money to get a subscription and I was hooked. Out where we lived there was no mail delivery so we had a PO box in out local community and when my parents went grocery shopping on Saturday’s they would stop off at the post office and pick up the mail and hopefully my copy of the Sporting News, my reading material for the next few days. I would read every single article on every single page, sometimes more than once and during baseball season I would spend hours studying the box scores. I continued to get the Sporting News until I graduated from high school and joined the US Navy. The Navy of the mid 1960’s didn’t share my love of baseball and we had no such thing back then as the internet so baseball and I parted ways for the couple of years that I spent on board the USS Shangri-La (CVA-38).
After my naval career came to an end I returned to Minnesota and started to follow baseball once again but I found that the Sporting News was now writing about other sports than just baseball and I didn’t like that at all and I have not subscribed to the Sporting news since 1965 but I still have some great memories of what has often been described as the Baseball Bible.
Now as the Minnesota Twins prepare for their 56th season I thought it might be interesting to look back in the archives of the Sporting News and see what they had to say about the Minnesota Twins back in 1961 as the former Washington Senators prepared for their first season of baseball as the Minnesota Twins.
When you look back on baseball history some things never change, the players want to be rewarded for their efforts with more money and the owners want to put what they can in their pockets. The process has obviously changed with “holdouts” a term long forgotten and arbitration, free agency, long-term contracts, and opt-outs are the terms we hear and read about every day. The Sporting News page I have for you talks about Jim Lemon‘s holdout, a rhubarb between the Twins and Dodgers, the expansion and new features at Met Stadium and booming Twins ticket sales. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.
A couple of days ago the Sporting News named Minnesota Twins manager Paul Molitor as their AL Manager of the Year in a vote from a panel of 27 MLB managers. The Sporting News award is not the “official” vote for AL Manager of the Year but it carries some weight in my eyes because the votes are cast by your peers. Astros skipper A.J. Hinch was the runner-up.
Fifty years ago when the Twins won the pennant and advanced to the 1965 World Series, Twins manager Sam Mele won the same award that Molitor won. I am sure that Molitor earned a few dollars more than Mele did in 1965 as his (Mele’s) pay checks totaled about $30,000. Shortly after the 1965 season ended Mele signed a two-year deal for $48,000 a season. Here is a write-up that the Sporting News did on Mele and his award.
Between August 1 and August 19 the Twins were 12-7 and and in first place with a 8.5 game lead over the Chicago White Sox. Their record for the year was 77-34 (.636). The Twins played in three doubleheaders during this period winning one and splitting the other two.
Frank Quilici
There is a nice piece in the August 7 issue of the Sporting News about the Twins new second baseman Frank Quilici. “Quilici never shuts up,” said manager Sam Mele. WOW! that is a real shocker to those people that know Frank at all. On that same page you can read about the Pirates planning to leave their spring training facility in Ft. Myers in their rear view mirror.
The August 14 has a lengthy piece on Jim Perry who came out of the bullpen to become a starter when Twins starters starting rotation suffered through a rash of injuries and illness. Al Worthington the Twins 36 year old closer who had never tasted post season play and the rest of the relief staff had to work over-time with some many injuries to the starting staff. “Housemaid knees” might not be politically correct today but according to Jim Grant that is what was troubling him even though he had a league leading 12-3 won/lost record.
I ran across this short article about Zoilo Versalles on the D.C. Baseball History web site that was written by an individual that had a personal encounter with Versalles back in 1959 when he was first called up by the Washington Senators.
The D.C. Baseball History web site is a great site if you are interested in learning more about the 1901-1960 Washington Senators who become our Minnesota Twins in 1961. The site also obviously covers the Washington Nationals.
It is mid February, TwinsFest is behind us and spring training is just around the corner. Target Field is still snow covered and the temperatures still don’t allow shorts to be worn outside but baseball fans are getting that itch, the itch to see some baseball. Since Minnesota fans won’t be able to see their home town nine play ball at Target Field until April some fans have already made their plans to travel to the Twins spring training home in Ft. Myers, Florida. Make no mistake, spring training is not far away, every day the numbers of players at the CenturyLink Sports Complex increases and Twins fans are attracted to Hammond Stadium like moths are to a flame. Some would argue with the same results.
Current Minnesota Twins players and future Twins players have it pretty good in spring training now days, but that has not always been the case. Back in 1961 at Tinker Field in Orlando, Florida when the former Washington Senators players put on their Minnesota Twins uniforms for the first time life was a lot different. Most of the teams that held spring training in Florida had segregated living and eating facilities and many of them even traveled in separate vehicles when their teams played an away game.
The Washington Senators had moved out of the Langford Hotel in Winter Park, Florida and into the Cherry Plaza Hotel (part 1) prior to spring training in 1959 under pressure from the Orlando Chamber of Commerce because the team was training in Orlando but staying in a Orlando suburb. When the Twins reported to their first spring training in 1961 the team was headquartered at the Cherry Plaza Hotel. However; the Cherry Plaza was segregated so the African-American players were housed at the Sadler Hotel on West Church Street which was an African-American business owned by Henry Sadler. It is ironic that Twins owner Calvin Griffith had helped to provide Sadler with the financing for his hotel.
In their first year of spring training as the Twins, there was little controversy over the segregated facilities in Orlando and the Cherry Plaza. Most baseball teams training in Florida were still segregating their players that year, although this would quickly change. According to various sources, by 1962 only five teams in Florida still had segregated spring training facilities, with the Twins being one of those teams.
In January of 1962, Twins players Earl Battey and Lenny Green were sitting at the head table of the “Hot Stove League” baseball banquet back in Minnesota while a derogatory and highly inappropriate story was told by “Rosy” Ryan, the former general manager of the Minneapolis Millers minor league club. Upon hearing the story, which referred to black players as “blackbirds,” Battey and Green promptly stormed out of the banquet. It is unknown if this was the straw that broke the camels back or just a coincidence but Earl Battey got in touch with than Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen and updated him on the spring training segregation policies in Orlando.
Then the fur started to fly as then Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen, Attorney General Walter Mondale and others started meeting with Twins owner Calvin Griffith, Road Secretary Howard Fox, and PR Director Herb Hoeft. Later, Minnesota Governor Karl Rolvaag got involved. The state also started communicating with Frank Flynn the General Manager of the Cherry Plaza Hotel (part 2).
Downtowner Motel – Aren’t the color panels on this motel similar to colored panels on Met Stadium?
Heading into 1964 the Minnesota Twins were the only team in baseball that had not yet integrated its spring training facilities and the pressure was building as constant pressure on Griffith and Fox from civil rights organizations, the Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office and, unceasingly, from the State Commission Against Discrimination (SCAD), caused the Twins to finally wake up. For the spring of 1964 they signed a contract with the Downtowner Motel in Orlando and abandoned the Cherry Plaza Hotel although Twins owner Calvin Griffith and his executives continued to stay at the Cherry Plaza Hotel. Segregated housing was finally over! The Twins even started paying the players meal money and allowing them to eat where ever they wished versus having the players always eat at the hotel and sign for the meal. According to Howard Fox, other teams have been providing meal money for years but the Twins approach has been to have the players sign for the meals so that the team could monitor if they were eating balanced meals.
Prior to the 1965 season the Cherry Plaza Hotel (part 3) became integrated and the Twins wasted no time moving back in and calling the Cherry Plaza Hotel as Twins headquarters once again.
There is a lot more detailed material to read about the Minnesota Twins and their early 1960’s segregation issues and you can check it out in some of these documents.
The 1964 Minnesota Twins were a disappointing 79-83 under manager Sam Mele after winning 91 games the previous season and they finished tied for sixth with the Cleveland Indians in the 10 team American league. Twins owner and GM Calvin Griffith felt that his team had suffered some bad luck in 1964 and he expected his team to be much improved in 1965.
The 1965 Twins would go on to win 102 games (most in franchise history) and lose only 60 in 1965 and walked away with the AL pennant seven games ahead of the Chicago White Sox. The 1965 Twins were the first Minnesota Twins team to taste post season action as they went on to play the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series that Fall but ended up losing the series in game seven to Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax. Previous to 1965 the last team in franchise history to appear in the World Series were the 1933 Washington Senators who lost that series four games to one to the New York Giants.
It will be 50 years this season since that 1965 Minnesota Twins team won 102 games and went to the World Series so this year we at twinstrivia.com are going to try to bring back memories of what transpired that year and relive 1965 as the season progresses. So follow us this season as we bring back some fun and interesting facts about that 1965 Twins team who some say was the best Twins team to ever step on a baseball diamond.
The beginning of this series starts with a page out of the January 23, 1965 Sporting News which was truly thee baseball Bible back in those days. Check out the Twins roster, I believe it has 42 players and some of the names there would never play for the Minnesota Twins and of course team owner Calvin Griffith wasn’t about to over pay his players even though team star Harmon Killebrew would become the first player in Twins history to make over $50,000 in a single season.
If you remember the 1965 Twins season and have special memories that you would like to share with today’s Twins fans please feel free to share them in the comments section. I only witnessed that season through early August of 1965 and missed the Twins post season play because I had chosen to join the US Navy and by early August I was on a train from Minneapolis to the Great Lakes Naval Training center to start boot camp. Back in 1965 Navy boot camp had no TV, radio, newspapers and certainly no computers and internet, it was all business so following the Twins run to the pennant was not in the cards for me. I hope we can bring back some great memories for you Twins fans that were lucky enough to witness that great year in Twins history.
As a side note, after boot camp was over for me in late 1965 I was assigned to Radar “A” school, again at Great Lakes and the following spring on April 16, 1966 when I did get a few hours of liberty where did I go? I went to Comiskey Park to see the Chicago White Sox play the Kansas City A’s. I remember it was kind of cool that day and of course the game went into extra innings, the White Sox won the game 2-1 in the bottom of the 11th inning on a walk-off walk of all things. Back then the White Sox let active military personnel attend the games for free I believe. Here are a few pictures I took that day of old Comiskey Park in 1966.
Comiskey Park April 16, 1966
Comiskey Park scoreboard April 16, 1966
April 16, 1966 White Sox host the Kansas City A’s – note the green and gold A’s in the field.
The new Minnesota Twins and the American Association finally agree on a $500,000 indemnity payment to the minor league for the Minneapolis/St. Paul territory, ending 2 months of negotiations.
The 1960 American Association was made up of eight AAA teams which included the Minneapolis Millers (Boston Red Sox), St. Paul Saints (LA Dodgers), Denver Bears (Detroit Tigers), Louisville Colonels (Milwaukee Braves), Houston Buffs (Chicago Cubs), Charleston Senators (Washington Senators), Indianapolis Indians (Philadelphia Phillies), and the Dallas-Ft.Worth Rangers (Kansas City Athletics). In 1961 the American Association was down to six teams with Charleston being replaced by Omaha and Minneapolis and St. Paul obviously gone.
Here is the article that Halsey Hall wrote for the January 18, 1961 Sporting News. The same Sporting News page has a nice article about the Twins first ever barnstorming trip by Twins publicist Herb Heft that had him traveling 1,312 miles over a four days to sell the upper Midwest on Minnesota Twins professional baseball. I guess you could call this beginning of the Twins Winter caravans that are still taking place 54 years later.
