Monthly Archives: January 2016

Keeping Track

1965 Rewind: Game Ninety-one

MINNESOTA 8, BOSTON 6 IN BOSTON

Date:  Wednesday, July 21 (Game 1 of doubleheader)

Batting stars:  Tony Oliva was 5-for-6 with a double, scoring twice and driving in one.  Harmon Killebrew was 3-for-4 with a walk, scoring three times and driving in two.  Bob Allison was 1-for-3 with a double and two walks, driving in one.

Pitching star:  Johnny Klippstein pitched 3.1 innings of relief, giving up two runs (one earned) on four hits and no walks with no strikeouts.

Opposition stars:  Tony Conigliaro was 3-for-4 with a double and a run.  Bob Tillman was 2-for-3 with a walk, scoring once and driving in one.  Pitcher Earl Wilson was 1-for-1 with a two-run homer, his third.

The game:  Jim Kaat singled in a run in the second and the Twins added two in the third to take a 3-0 lead.  Wilson's two-run homer in the the bottom of the third cut the lead to 3-2, but RBI singles by Killebrew and Earl Battey made it 5-2 in the fifth and Oliva doubled home a run in the sixth to increase the lead to 6-2.  The Red Sox wouldn't go away, as Tillman knocked in two on a single-plus-error in the sixth to narrow the margin to 6-4.  Run-scoring singles by Killebrew and Jimmie Hall made it 8-4 in the eighth, but the Red Sox again tried to come back, scoring two in the ninth and bringing the tying run up to bat with one out.  Carl Yastrzemski grounded out and Tony Horton fanned to end the game.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 0-for-5 with a walk and a run.  Rich Rollins was 2-for-6 with a double and a run.  Hall was 1-for-4 with a walk, scoring once and driving in one.  Battey was 1-for-2 with two walks and two RBIs.  Kaat pitched five innings, giving up four runs (three earned) on nine hits and two walks with three strikeouts.

Record:  The win made the Twins 57-34 and kept them in first place.  Their closest pursuers, Cleveland and Baltimore, each also played a doubleheader.  The Orioles beat Kansas City 1-0 and the Indians lost to Detroit 2-1, so Baltimore took over second place, 3.5 games behind the Twins.

Notes:  Versalles moved back up to the leadoff spot, with Frank Quilici dropping to eighth.  Neither contributed much to the offense in this game...Kaat was going through a bit of a rough stretch, as this was the fifth time in six starts he failed to go as many as six innings.  On the other hand, due to doubleheaders, it was the second time in a row he pitched on only two days' rest...Earl Wilson slugged thirty-five home runs in his career.  His season high was seven, which he hit in 1966 and again in 1968.  He wasn't a bad pitcher either, winning eighteen games in 1966 and twenty-two in 1967, most of them for Detroit.  He finished in the top fifteen in MVP voting in both of those seasons.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–January 5

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Ban Johnson (1864)
Bob Carruthers (1864)
Bill Dahlen (1870)
Jack Norworth (1879)
Art Fletcher (1885)
Rube Foster (1888)
Riggs Stephenson (1898)
Luke Sewell (1901)
Jack Kramer (1918)
Earl Battey (1935)
Bud Bloomfield (1936)
Charlie Hough (1948)
Jim Gantner (1953)
Bob Dernier (1957)
Ron Kittle (1958)
Milt Thompson (1959)
John Russell (1961)
Henry Cotto (1961)
Danny Jackson (1962)
Jeff Fassero (1963)
Brian Runge (1970)
Fred Rath (1973)
Mark Redman (1974)
Eduardo Escobar (1989)

Ban Johnson was one of the founders of and the first president of the American League.

Jack Norworth wrote the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".

Rube Foster was a player, manager, and owner in the Negro Leagues, eventually becoming president of the Negro National League.

Brian Runge was a major league umpire from 1999-2012.  He is the son of major league umpire Paul Runge and the grandson of major league umpire Ed Runge.

Oddly, there are three players born on this day who go by their initials:  J. P. Arencibia, C. J. Cron, and A. J. Cole.

We would also like to wish a very happy birthday to freealonzo.

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First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Two Books

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Two books of note that I read last month.  Both I loved, but only one that I would recommend.

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimar McBride - (goodreads link)

The story of this book is a good one, McBride searched for a publisher for 7 years without success, before a tiny Irish press published it and saw it take off and eventually win a whole bunch of awards.  I had heard a bunch about it due to all of this and it was always listed as very experimental, so I finally got around to it this December.  I loved it, but I'm not sure there's any way I would recommend it to someone.

The style is very fragmented in a stream-of-consciousness way. I got swept up in the broken consciousness of the narrator. The first chapters were beautiful, and things get brutal from there. The narrator and her brother (continually fighting the effects of a brain tumor) are the only bright spot, and the final scenes between the two of them are remarkable and powerful.

Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel - (goodreads link)

A collection of short stories that are all just a little bit weird and alienated.  So, basically catnip for me.  Here's the first story (Our Education) and you should read it. I read the whole collection in one day, and it was and enjoyable quick read.

Final Stats from 2015:

112 books read (34,096 pages)
90 fiction (74 novels - 8 story collections - 8 graphic novels)
62 published in 2014 or 2015
38 by women
33 by independent publishers (loosely defined and probably inaccurate)

(Header image is Reading Two Books by William Wegman)

Keeping Track

1965 Rewind: Game Ninety

CALIFORNIA 9, MINNESOTA 1 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Tuesday, July 20.

Batting stars:  Harmon Killebrew was 1-for-3 with a walk.  Tony Oliva was 1-for-4 with an RBI.  Frank Quilici was 0-for-3 with a walk and a run.

Pitching stars:  Mel Nelson pitched 2.2 innings, giving up one run on four hits and one walk with one strikeout.  Bill Pleis pitched two shutout innings, giving up one walk with one strikeout.

Opposition stars:  Marcelino Lopez pitched a complete game, allowing one run on four hits and three walks with four strikeouts.  Bobby Knoop was 4-for-5 with a double and three RBIs.  Willie Smith was 3-for-5 with a home run (his eleventh) and three runs.

The game:  An RBI groundout by Oliva gave the Twins a 1-0 lead in the first, but Knoop's run-scoring single tied it in the second.  The Angles took control of the game with four runs in the third.  A single, a lineout, and five consecutive singles gave them a 5-1 lead.  The Twins never threatened to get back into the game--they never had more than one runner on base at a time after the first and did not even get one on after Oliva's single leading off the sixth.

Of note:  Rich Rollins was 1-for-4.  Jimmie Hall was 0-for-4.  Camilo Pascual pitched 2.1 innings, giving up five runs on seven hits and no walks with no strikeouts.

Record:  The loss dropped the Twins to 56-34, still in first place by 3.5 games, but Baltimore defeated Cleveland to tie the Indians for second place.

Notes:  This was Pascual's first start since July 4.  He was obviously still hurting.  He would struggle through two more starts, then miss the entire month of August...Hall's average dropped to .316...Earl Battey did not start but was used as a pinch-hitter.  He went 0-for-1 and dropped his average to .304.  Jerry Zimmerman started in his place...Marcelino Lopez had a fine year, going 14-13, 2.93 and finishing second in the rookie of the year voting at age 21.  It was the only good year he had as a starter.  His ERA was a full run higher, 3.93, in 1966, which doesn't sound so bad now but was not very good in 1966.  He was traded to Baltimore in June of 1967 and struggled through a couple of injury-plagued years before resurfacing as a reliever.  He had a solid season for the Orioles in 1970, but it was the last good year he would have.  He made four appearances for Cleveland in 1972, his last major league appearances.  He had started having elbow problems as early as 1962, when he was eighteen, and one assumes that throwing 215.1 innings in 1965 at age twenty-one was probably not the best thing for him.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–January 4

Tommy Corcoran (1869)
Ernest Lanigan (1873)
Al Bridwell (1884)
Ossie Vitt (1890)
George Selkirk (1908)
Gabe Paul (1910)
Herman Franks (1914)
Don McMahon (1930)
Tito Fuentes (1944)
Charlie Manuel (1944)
Ken Reynolds (1947)
Paul Gibson (1960)
Daryl Boston (1963)
Trey Hillman (1963)
Ted Lilly (1976)
Willie Martinez (1978)

Ernest Lanigan was the nephew of the Spink brothers who founded The Sporting News and worked for the publication from the time he was 15.  Among other things, he compiled baseball's first encyclopedia, published in 1922, and served as curator, historian, and director of the Hall of Fame from 1946 until his death in 1962.

Gabe Paul was the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, the Cleveland Indians (twice), and the New York Yankees.

Trey Hillman was the manager of the Kansas City Royals from 2008-2010.

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