MINNESOTA 5, KANSAS CITY 2 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Tuesday, June 9.
Batting stars: Kirby Puckett was 2-for-4 with a double, scoring once and driving in one. Tim Laudner was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer, his fifth. Mark Davidson was 1-for-2 with a triple, two walks, and a stolen base (his sixth), scoring once.
Pitching stars: Joe Niekro struck out six in 6.1 innings, giving up two runs (one earned) on nine hits and three walks. Keith Atherton struck out four in 2.2 perfect innings.
Opposition stars: Willie Wilson was 2-for-5 with a double and a stolen base (his fifteenth), driving in one. Jaime Quirk was 2-for-4 with a double and a run. Kevin Seitzer was 1-for-4 with a walk and a stolen base (his third), scoring once.
The game: The Twins opened the third inning with a double, two singles, and a sacrifice fly to take a 2-1 lead. Laudner hit a two-run homer in the fifth to make it 4-1. Quirk and Wilson led off the seventh with back-to-back doubles, making the score 4-2, and a one-out single by Danny Tartabull put runners on the corners. Atherton then came in and completely shut the Royals down, not allowing a baserunner the rest of the way. The Twins added a run on Puckett's sacrifice fly in the ninth.
Of note: Dan Gladden was 3-for-5 with two stolen bases, his tenth and eleventh...Kansas City starter Danny Jackson pitched five innings, allowing four runs on nine hits and four walks with one strikeout.
Record: The Twins were 31-26, tied for first with Kansas City (though one percentage point behind). The win was the fourth straight for Minnesota.
Notes: Al Newman started at shortstop in place of Greg Gagne and led off, with Gladden batting second. Gene Larkin played first base in place of Kent Hrbek...Davidson was in right field, with Tom Brunansky at DH and Roy Smalley out of the lineup...This was Niekro's first start as a Twin...Puckett raised his average to .319...Larkin was 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI, making his average .362.
Player profile: Buddy Biancalana was a good field-no hit shortstop who gained some fame during the 1985 World Series, thanks partly to having a good Series (by his standards) and thanks partly to David Letterman, who enjoyed saying his name. He was actually a first round draft choice in 1978. He never really did hit, even in the minors, although he had a good half-season with AAA Omaha in 1984. He was not the primary shortstop for Kansas City in 1985--Onix Concepcion was--but as Concepcion batted only .204 that year he lost the job to Biancalana. He batted .278 in the World Series with five walks, giving him an OBP of .435. He was not the primary shortstop for Kansas City, either--Angel Salazar was--but he got the most playing time of his career (190 at-bats) and had his "best" season, batting .242/.298/.337. He played less in 1987, did not do much, and was traded to Houston in late July for Mel Stottlemyre, Jr. He went 1-for-24 for Houston, was released after the season, and went back to the Royals, playing in Omaha in 1988. That was it for his playing career. He managed in the minors from 2001-03 and 2006-07. He is the co-author of a book, "The 7 Secrets of World Class Athletes", and is the co-founder of PMPM Sports,
Was Niekro the Twins' first knuckleballer? Dutch Leonard was easily the best flutterballer in franchise history, and the '44 Senators had an all-knuckleballer rotation (!), but what I'm wondering is if Niekro's addition was something of a novelty for fans in Minnesota.
Looks like it.
I was at the Emory Board Game in Anaheim...
I had looked through that list, but didn't trust my memory.
wasn't Dave Goltz known for his knuckle curve?
Not quite the fully monty, to be sure.
That's all of them? That seems like a horrible shame.
To my eyes the front designs of this era's Fleer cards were either boring ('87) or hideous ('89, like the one above), but I loved the heat maps and the Before/After the Break pieces on the back. Fleer had the most advanced-looking backs until Score came along with the longform (for a baseball card) commentary on the back (a couple paragraphs for rookies, a sentence for a long-tenured star like Mike Schmidt due to limited space after the stat line was included).
I have a hard time getting excited about any BB cards from 1981-1995; that's the Junk Wax era, and cards were SO overproduced as to be worth nothing. Not that I collect cards for their monetary value, but it's not much of a challenge to complete a collection during those years when every card was so plentiful.
I did like Fleer in that teams' cards were consecutively numbered and not randomly scattered throughout the checklist.
The "Junk Wax" era squarely overlaps the era during which I fell in love with baseball. I have zero interest in baseball cards from a typical collector's standpoint – the completionist pursuit of rare cards doesn't interest me and I don't care about the "value" of any particular card. What value the cards have for me is evocative – jogging my memory of a dimly-remembered journeyman, enjoying a photo from the Dark Ages that I can't find on the Web, and especially, reliving the '86-'93 Twins teams.
Absolutely.
The major problem with the 80's cards (and leading up to that time) was Topps' dominance in the industry; they were getting quite sloppy, with errors, quality control, poor photography, blah designs. When Donruss and Fleer entered the mix, the one-upsmanship began to introduce improvements (although one could argue about the designs), and Upper Deck's flagship set created an even higher bar, coinciding with Griffey Jr's rookie card, which prompted companies to pursue higher end sets. While this was a good thing, it pretty much began taking the hobby out of the hands of kids and into those of speculators. No longer do you find cards in the spokes of bicycles, but instead they are immediately placed into binders and protector sleeves. Not only is there a plethora of cards printed, but there is no scarcity. Today's cards are certainly a nice product, but they don't have the nostalgia that they used to.
I really got into sports cards starting with the 87 Topps woodgrain series and collected baseball and/or basketball through the early 90s.
Upper Deck changed the game and I remember Topps responding with the Stadium Club line, eventually it was too expensive for kids to keep up. But I have some very fond memories of getting together with friends to trade cards all afternoon before getting to that point.
This game happens to be on the Tube of You
enjoy