TORONTO 4, MINNESOTA 3 IN TORONTO
Date: Thursday, July 23.
Batting stars: Gary Gaetti was 1-for-4 with a home run, his eighteenth. Tom Brunansky was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk. Kirby Puckett was 1-for-4 with an RBI.
Pitching star: Joe Niekro pitched 7.2 innings, giving up three runs on five hits and three walks with six strikeouts.
Opposition stars: Dave Stieb pitched a complete game, giving up three runs on five hits and three walks with eight strikeouts. Lloyd Moseby was 2-for-4 with a walk and a stolen base (his twenty-first), scoring once and driving in one. Tony Fernandez was 2-for-4 with a walk and two stolen bases (his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth), scoring once.
The game: The Twins scored two in the first to take a 2-0 lead. Fred McGriff homered in the second to make it 2-1. In the third, Rance Mulliniks delivered a two-out two-run single to put the Blue Jays ahead 3-2. It stayed there until the sixth, when Gaetti homered to tie it at three. It was still 3-3 until the bottom of the ninth. George Frazier, who had come in to get the Twins out of a jam in the eighth, retired the first two batters, but then gave up a single to Garth Iorg. We again see that not using your closer in a tie game was already a thing thirty years ago, because Tom Kelly brought in Keith Atherton. He allowed back-to-back singles to Fernandez and Moseby to give Toronto the win.
Of note: Gagne once again batted second...Puckett was now batting .326...Randy Bush was the DH in this game.
Record: The Twins were 53-44, in first place by two games over Oakland.
Player profile: I know people remember Dave Stieb, but I wonder if they remember just how awesome he really was. He was drafted in the fifth round in 1978, came up to the majors in late June of 1979, immediately went into the starting rotation, and from 1980-85 he was as good as anybody. He never had great won-lost records (his best was 17-12 in 1983), which probably hurt his reputation a little. But he made the all-star team in five of those six years and probably should have made it all six. He was in the top seven of Cy Young voting three times. He had an ERA under four in all six seasons, an ERA under 3.30 in five of them, and an ERA under three in two. He led the league in ERA in 1985, in complete games (with 19) in 1982, in shutouts with five that same year, in innings pitched twice, and in ERA+ twice. He pitched over 240 innings in five of those years and almost certainly would have in 1981 if not for the players' strike. He averaged 275 innings pitched from 1982-85. He had one no-hitter and five one-hitters. The workload took its toll, as he had down years in 1986 and 1987, although he remained in the rotation and still averaged 190 innings in those years. He bounced back and had three more excellent seasons from 1988-90, and this time his won-lost records showed it: in those seasons he was 51-22, 3.11, making two more all-star teams and finishing fifth in Cy Young voting in 1990. He was off to another fine start in 1991, but was injured in mid-May, missed the rest of the season, and never was the same pitcher. He stumbled through a poor 1992, made four starts for the White Sox in 1993, and then retired. In 1998, though, at age forty, he decided to come back, pitched pretty well in AAA, and by late June was back with Toronto. Unfortunately, this isn't a movie: he went 1-2, 4.83, 1.49 WHIP. It was a pretty fine career, though: 176-137, 3.44, 1.25 WHIP, 103 complete games, 30 shutouts, 2895.1 innings. At last report, Dave Stieb was in the real estate business in Reno, Nevada.