MINNESOTA 9, DETROIT 5 IN DETROIT

Date:  Monday, October 12.

Batting stars:  Dan Gladden was 3-for-6 with two doubles, scoring three times and driving in two.  Tom Brunansky was 3-for-5 with a home run and a double, driving in three.  Greg Gagne was 2-for-4 with two doubles, a walk, and a hit-by-pitch, driving in one.

Pitching stars:  Bert Blyleven pitched six innings, giving up three runs on five hits and two walks with three strikeouts.  Dan Schatzeder pitched a perfect inning.

Opposition stars:  Kirk Gibson was 3-for-5 with a double, a walk, and a stolen base (his third of the series), scoring once and driving in one.  Eric King pitched five innings of relief, giving up one run on three hits and two walks with four strikeouts.  Matt Nokes was 1-for-5 with a two-run homer.

The game:  The Twins chased the supposedly unbeatable Doyle Alexander from the game in the second inning.  Gary Gaetti opened the inning with a single and Randy Bush walked.  Brunansky doubled them both home but was thrown out trying to stretch it to a triple.  Steve Lombardozzi got the rally going again with a single, took second on a ground out, and scored on a Gladden single.  After Gagne was hit by a pitch, Kirby Puckett delivered an RBI single.  Alexander was gone and the Twins led 4-0.

It stayed 4-0 until the fourth, when the Tigers got back into the game.  Gibson led off with a double and scored on an Alan Trammell single.  Blyleven then left a pitch up to Matt Nokes and the lead was down to 4-3.

Bush came through with a sacrifice fly in the seventh, making it 5-3.  In the eighth, Gladden doubled and, following on a walk to Gagne, scored on a force out-plus-error, putting the Twins up 6-3.  Chet Lemon homered in the eighth to trim the margin to 6-4, but Brunansky homered in the ninth, followed by a Lombardozzi single and RBI doubles by Gladden and Gagne, giving the Twins a comfortable 9-4 lead.  Gibson got an RBI single with one out in the bottom of the ninth, but Trammell lined out and Nokes grounded back to pitcher Jeff Reardon to win the game.  The team that couldn't win on the road took two of three in Tiger Stadium and was headed for the World Series.

Notes:  Bush got his third stolen base of the series in the third inning...Brunansky batted .412/.524/1.000 for the series...Gagne had the second-highest OPS, batting .278/.409/.778...On the other end of the scale, Kent Hrbek batted .150/.261/.300 and Puckett batted .208/.208/.375...Dan Schatzeder pitched 4.1 scoreless innings of relief in the series, giving up just two hits and no walks with five strikeouts...Juan Berenguer gave up just one run on one hit and three walks with six strikeouts in six innings...Tiger starter Alexander pitched just 1.2 innings, allowing four runs on six hits and a walk with no strikeouts.  He had been 9-0, 1.53, 1.01 WHIP since joining the Tigers, but in this series he was 0-2, 10..00, 1.67 WHIP...I had forgotten what a prolific base stealer Gibson was.  He stole 284 bases in his career, swiping more than twenty in a season five times and more than thirty three times.  He was 26-for-33 in 1987.  For his career, he had more stolen bases than home runs (255).

Record:  The Twins won the best-of seven series 4-1.  As of this date, it had not yet been decided whether they would face San Francisco or St. Louis in the World Series.