CALIFORNIA 5, MINNESOTA 3 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, July 18 (Game 1 of doubleheader).

Batting stars:  Don Mincher was 2-for-3 with a home run (his tenth) and two RBIs.  Harmon Killebrew was 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.  Jimmie Hall was 1-for-3 with a walk and a run.

Pitching stars:  Jim Kaat pitched 5.2 innings, giving up three runs (two earned) on eight hits and one walk with two strikeouts.  Mel Nelson struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up two hits.

Opposition stars:  Jose Cardenal was 2-for-4 with a triple, a walk, and two stolen bases (his twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth), scoring once and driving in one.  Jim Fregosi was 2-for-4 with a home run, his seventh.  Bobby Knoop was 3-for-4 with a run.

The game:  Fregosi homered leading off the top of the fourth, but Mincher homered in the bottom of the fourth to tie it 1-1.  In the fifth, three singles and a sacrifice fly produced two Angels runs and gave them a 3-1 lead.  In the seventh, two walks and a two-run double by Joe Adcock made it 5-1.  Killebrew's RBI single in the eighth made it 5-2 and put men on first and third, bringing the tying run to the plate with none out.  Mincher hit a sacrifice fly to make it 5-3, but the next five batters went out with no further runs.

Of note:  Rich Rollins was 1-for-4.  Tony Oliva was 1-for-4 with a run.  Earl Battey was 0-for-4.

Record:  The Twins dropped their fourth straight and saw their record fall to 54-33.  Their lead dropped to 2.5 games over Chicago, who moved back into second place with a win over Kansas City.

Notes:  Oddly, the Twins ended their series with Kansas City on a Saturday and started a new series with California on a Sunday...The starting pitcher for California was Fred Newman, who we discussed the last time he pitched against the Twins, in game seventy-one.  He went 0-for-2 in this game to drop his batting average to .024, although for his career he hit .153...Hall raised his average to .322...Battey dropped his average to .309.