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
Max Kepler homered twice in a seven-RBI performance, while Miguel Sano contributed a home run and three RBIs to the Twins’ rout of the Rangers. Kepler and Sano are the first pair of teammates–each age 23 or younger–to combine for 10 RBIs in a game in which they each homered since Chipper Jones and Ryan Klesko did that for the Braves in 1995. Before the Atlanta duo, you have to go back to Andre Dawson and Ellis Valentine of the 1977 Expos, and then Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri with the 1927 Yankees to find pairs of that kind.
Max Kepler’s seven RBI yesterday afternoon set a Twins single-game rookie record for RBI. The previous three to have a share of the record of six were Tony Oliva May 7, 1964 against Los Angeles-AL; Oswaldo Arcia September 22, 2013 against Oakland; and Miguel Sano August 12, 2015 against Texas.
4/17/2009 – Jason Kubel hit for the cycle at the Metrodome against the Angels. Kubel became the ninth Twins player to hit for the cycle when he doubled in the first, singled in the third, and tripled n the sixth before clobbering a grand slam homerun in the 8th inning as the Twins rallied for an 11-9 win. It was only the third time in MLB history a player had completed hitting for the cycle with a grand slam home run. It was done previously by two shortstops, Tony Lazzeri in 1932 and Miguel Tejada in 2001. Box Score
4/17/2014 – What a day! Yesterday’s Twins/Blue Jays game was snowed out so the Twins scheduled a doubleheader for today in spite of 4″ of snow that fell at the ballpark last night. The weird snow storm dumped 20″ in North Branch but only .03″ at the airport. When Kyle Gibson throw the first pitch in the first game at Target Field it was just 31degrees, an all-time record cold temperature for a Twins home game. The Twins won game 1 by a score of 7-0 in front of 20,507 shivering fans. The second game of the DH which was the make-up game started about 6PM and the Twins won 9-5 but it was how they won that game that was unusual as 20,698 fans looked on but there were far less when the eighth inning hubbub started. The Twins scored six runs on only one hit in the bottom of the eighth inning as they came from behind to beat the Blue Jays, 9-5, in the second half of their split doubleheader at Target Field. Minnesota’s six-run “rally” benefited from the almost total inability of Toronto pitchers to throw strikes in that inning, as Steve Delabar, Sergio Santos and J.A. Happ combined to walk eight Twins batters. (Santos also threw three run-scoring wild pitches in that inning.). According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Minnesota was the first big-league team to draw eight walks in one inning since April 19, 1996. The eight walks in one inning set a Twins club record, their previous record was six, done twice – April 16, 1961 at Baltimore (first inning) and July 15, 1965 vs. Kansas City (fourth inning). Both of the attendance totals were “paid attendance” and not a real count of fans in the stands and the estimate for fans in attendance was less than 12,000 for game one and even less for game two. Box Score Game 1, Box Score Game 2
