CLEVELAND 3, MINNESOTA 1 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Sunday, August 29.
Batting stars: Sandy Valdespino was 2-for-5 with a double. Rich Rollins was 1-for-2 with two walks. Zoilo Versalles was 1-for-4 with a walk and a run.
Pitching stars: Jim Merritt pitched 7.2 innings, giving up three runs on seven hits and four walks with five strikeouts. Johnny Klippstein pitched a perfect inning with one strikeout.
Opposition stars: Steve Hargan pitched eight innings, allowing one run on seven hits and six walks with five strikeouts. Chuck Hinton was 2-for-4 with a walk and a run. Fred Whitfield was 1-for-3 with two RBIs.
The game: It was a game of missed opportunities for the Twins, as they stranded twelve and went 0-for-9 with men in scoring position. They scored first, as Earl Battey's sacrifice fly put them up 1-0 in the third. But they stranded two in the first, two in the fourth, and two in the fifth, and it cost them as in the sixth, Rocky Colavito hit an RBI double and Whitfield had a sacrifice fly to put the Indians up 2-1. The Twins stranded two more runners in the sixth and Whifield singled in a run in the eighth to make it 3-1. The Twins did not threaten after that.
Of note: Jimmie Hall was 0-for-2 with two walks. Battey was 0-for-4 with a sacrifice fly.
Record: The Twins went to 83-49. Chicago swept a doubleheader from Boston, so the Twins lead dropped to 6.5 games.
Notes: Battey watched his average fall to an even .300...We wrote about Sam McDowell once already, but it should be noted that he got the save in this game, coming in after Hargan issued a leadoff walk in the ninth and retiring the last three batters. He had just pitched 6.1 innings two days earlier and would pitch a one-hitter two-days later. It was the third of four saves he would get on the season. For his career, McDowell had fourteen saves...Steve Hargan was a twenty-two-year-old rookie in 1965. He had come up in early August and was making his seventh start. This was easily his best start of the season; he would make one more before going to the bullpen for the rest of the year. He posted an ERA under three three times (1966-67 and 1970), which is impressive even for that era. He had poor years in 1971 and 1972, spent all of 1973 in the minors, and then was traded to Texas, for whom he had three fairly good seasons. 1977 was his last year in the majors, but he played in 1978 at AAA before ending his playing career. One of the teams he played for in 1978 was the Twins' AAA team, the Toledo Mud Hens. We don't have a bio of him in our birthday list, an oversight we plan to correct next year.