MINNESOTA 8, KANSAS CITY 6 IN KANSAS CITY
Date: Monday, September 6 (Game 1 of doubleheader).
Batting stars: Tony Oliva was 1-for-2 with three walks and a stolen base (his seventeenth), scoring twice and driving in one. Don Mincher was 3-for-4 with a walk, scoring once and driving in one. Jerry Kindall was 2-for-4, scoring twice and driving in one.
Pitching stars: Dave Boswell pitched 1.1 scoreless innings, giving up one hit and three walks with one strikeout. Dick Stigman struck out three in 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit and four walks. Johnny Klippstein struck out three in 1.2 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and two walks.
Opposition stars: Mike Hershberger was 2-for-3 with a double and two walks, scoring twice and driving in one. Jose Tartabull was 2-for-6 with a double, scoring once and driving in three. Wayne Causey was 0-for-1 with five walks.
The game: With two out and a man on first in the second inning, the Athletics went double, single, single, double, walk, single to score five times. The Twins got a couple of two-out hits of their own in the third, an RBI single by Oliva and a run-scoring double by Bob Allison, to cut the lead to 5-2. They opened the fourth with a single, a walk, and two more singles, ultimately scoring three runs to tie it at five. Rich Rollins had an RBI single in the sixth to give the Twins their first lead of the game at 6-5 and a pair of leadoff walks in the ninth led to two insurance runs. Kansas City scored once in the ninth and put the tying run on base with one out, but Causey hit into a double play to end the game.
Of note: Zoilo Versalles was 0-for-5. Cesar Tovar, making his first start in the outfield, was 0-for-3. Allison was 1-for-5 with a double and an RBI. Camilo Pascual, making his first start since late July, did not get much accomplished, pitching 1.2 innings and giving up five runs on four hits and two walks with no strikeouts.
Record: The Twins improved their record to 87-53. The White Sox won the first game of a doubleheader against California 2-1 in ten innings, so the Twins lead remained 5.5 games.
Notes: Oliva raised his average to .318. Kindall raised his average over .200 for the first time since the end of June, at .201...Tovar played center in place of Jimmie Hall, who entered the game in the fourth inning and went 1-for-3 with an RBI...I'd forgotten that Tony Oliva actually stole a fair number of bases every year. 1965 was his high, at nineteen, but he had double-digit steals every year from 1964-69. He was not a great percentage base-stealer, however. His best year was 1967, when he was 11-for-14; his worst was 1969, when he was 10-for-23. Overall in that period, he was 75-122, which is 61.5 percent. 1965 was his highest number of attempts, at 28. One suspects he may have had more attempts that year because he was not batting directly in front of Harmon Killebrew for much of the season.