CLEVELAND 3, MINNESOTA 1 IN CLEVELAND

Date:  Saturday, August 14.

Batting stars:  Andy Kosco was 1-for-4 with a home run.  Bob Allison was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.

Pitching stars:  Jim Kaat pitched seven innings, giving up three runs (one earned) on five hits and one walk with five strikeouts.  Al Worthington pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit with one strikeout.

Opposition stars:  Sam McDowell pitched a complete game, allowing one run on three hits and two walks with eleven strikeouts.  Chuck Hinton was 2-for-4 with a home run (his fifteenth) and a double.  Larry Brown was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer, his fifth.

The game:  Kosco homered leading off the second to give the Twins a 1-0 lead.  Allison followed with a double, but was thrown out trying to stretch it to a triple.  The Twins would get only one hit the rest of the game, a two-out single by Joe Nossek in the sixth.  The lead held until the fifth, when Brown hit a two-run homer and Hinton had a solo homer later in the inning.  That was it for scoring.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 0-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch.  Rich Rollins was 0-for-4.  Tony Oliva was 0-for-1.  Earl Battey was 0-for-3.

Record:  The loss dropped the Twins to 74-42.  Baltimore lost to Washington 8-5 in eleven innings, so Cleveland moved into second place, eight games behind Minnesota.

Notes:  Oliva batted in the first inning, grounded out, and was immediately replaced by Nossek.  One wonders if that caused some panic among Twins fans, as the lineup was already missing Harmon Killebrew.  Oliva would be back in the lineup the next day...This was the first major league start for Kosco, who had made his major league debut the previous day.  He was immediately put in the fourth spot in the lineup and, as shown above, homered.  It was his only home run of the season in fifty-five at-bats.  He would hit seventy-three in his career, with a high of nineteen for the Dodgers in 1969...Battey had his average drop to .310.  Oliva was now at .309...Another largely forgotten player, Chuck Hinton was pretty good.  He made the all-star team in 1964 and was mentioned on a couple of MVP ballots in 1962.  Primarily an outfielder, he played from 1961-71, although his last year as a regular was 1967.  He hit .264 for his career, which for a career played mostly in the 1960s is not bad at all.  He hit 113 home runs, with a high of eighteen in 1965...For some reason, when great pitchers of the 1960s are mentioned, Sudden Sam McDowell is at best an "Oh, yeah, him, too."  The fact that he spent most of his career with Cleveland and never appeared in the post-season probably has something to do with that.  Like Bert Blyleven, he had high strikeout totals and low ERAs but not high win totals.  He won twenty games only once, in 1970.  Not coincidentally, that was the only time he received significant Cy Young consideration, although it was not his best season.  He was a six-time all-star and led the league in strikeouts six times (topping 300 twice).  He also led in ERA once (1965) and in innings once (305 in 1970).  He had an ERA under three six times, with his best coming in 1968 (1.81).  He also led the league in walks five times, leading one to believe he must have thrown a huge number of pitches.