CHICAGO 2, MINNESOTA 0 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, September 5.

Batting star:  Rich Rollins was 2-for-3.

Pitching stars:  Jim Perry pitched 7.2 innings, giving up two runs (one earned) on five hits and four walks with six strikeouts.  Al Worthington pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one walk with one strikeout.

Opposition stars:  Joel Horlen pitched a complete game, allowing only three hits and one walk with five strikeouts.  John Romano was 1-for-3 with a home run (his seventeenth) and a walk.  Don Buford was 2-for-4 with a run.

The game:  Buford led off the game with a single, went to third on a pickoff error, and scored on a ground out.  The score remained 1-0 until the eighth, when Romano hit a two-out homer.  The Twins threatened in the bottom of the first when Sandy Valdespino reached on a two-base error and took third on a wild pitch with one out.  They did not get a man past first base the rest of the game.  Only one of the three Twins' hits left the infield, a single to left by Rollins in the fifth.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 0-for-4.  Sandy Valdespino was 0-for-4.  Tony Oliva was 0-for-4.  Don Mincher was 0-for-3 with a walk.  The top six slots in the Twins batting order went a combined 0-for-21 with one walk.

Record:  The Twins record went to 86-53.  Chicago, by winning two out of three in the series, dropped the Twins' lead to 5.5 games.

Notes:  Oliva's average fell to .317...Valdespino again replaced Bob Allison in left field.  Allison was used as a pinch-hitter...Joel Horlen is an overlooked excellent pitcher of the 1960s.  He had ERAs under four for seven consecutive seasons (1963-69) and under three four five consecutive seasons (1964-68), winning the ERA title in 1967 at 2.06.  In those same five consecutive seasons, he had a WHIP of less than 1.2, posting WHIPs of less than one in 1964 and 1967.  He was never a big strikeout guy, and because he played for the weak-hitting White Sox he never had big win totals (his high was nineteen, 1967, when he finished second in Cy Young Award voting.  It was the only time he received any Cy Young votes.  His next highest win total was thirteen, which he had three times), so he never received much acclaim when he was playing and has pretty much been forgotten now.  He developed arm problems after the 1969 season and was not nearly as good after that, although he had a fine season as a reliever for Oakland in 1972, his last year in the majors.  He wasn't flashy, but if you just wanted someone who could consistently get batters out, Joel Horlen was about as good as anyone.