MINNESOTA 5, WASHINGTON 0 IN WASHINGTON
Date: Saturday, September 25 (Game 1 of doubleheader).
Batting stars: Zoilo Versalles was 4-for-5 with a two-run homer (his eighteenth) and a triple, scoring twice. Tony Oliva was 1-for-3 with two walks and a double, scoring once and driving in one. Earl Battey was 1-for-2 with two walks.
Pitching star: Mudcat Grant pitched a complete game one-hitter, giving up two walks with seven strikeouts.
Opposition stars: Don Blasingame was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk. Buster Narum pitched 1.2 scoreless innings, allowing one hit with one strikeout. Marshall Bridges pitched a scoreless inning, allowing one hit.
The game: There was no score until the fifth. The Senators got their only threat in the third, as Jim French reached on an error to start the inning and Blasingame hit a two-out double, but Ken McMullen grounded out to end the threat. The Senators would get only one more baserunner, a one-out walk by French in the fifth. Versalles hit a two-run homer in the fifth to give the Twins a 2-0 lead. In the seventh, Oliva hit a run-scoring double and Sandy Valdespino delivered a two-out two-run single to make it 5-0. The last fourteen Senators were retired.
Of note: Joe Nossek was 0-for-3. Harmon Killebrew was 0-for-3 with two walks.
Record: The win made the Twins 97-58. This eliminated Chicago despite the fact that the White Sox beat the Yankees 2-0 in the first game of their doubleheader. Baltimore, which had moved into second place during a couple of days when the Twins did not play, stayed alive by defeating California 2-1 in the first game of their doubleheader. The Orioles were 7.5 games behind the Twins.
Notes: Oliva kept his average at .321...Joe Nossek played center field in place of Jimmie Hall...Buster Narum is a great name for a ballplayer, especially considering that his given name was Leslie Ferdinand Narum. While he had a great nickname, he was not a great pitcher. He basically had two seasons in the majors, 1964-65, although he also appeared in seven games for Baltimore in 1963 and appeared in five more for Washington from 1966-67. He was mostly used as a starter in 1964-65, starting fifty-six games and relieving in twenty-eight. He was much more effective as a reliever--as a starter he was 12-26, 4.68, 1.46 WHIP, as a reliever he was 1-1, 2.37, 1.28 WHIP. Even granting that it was only 49.1 relief innings, you'd think somebody might have noticed that and decided to see what he could do as a full-time reliever, especially on a team like the Senators, but apparently no one did. He continued to play in AAA through 1969, then his career ended. He became a freight salesman in the trucking industry and passed away in 2004 at the young age of sixty-three.