KANSAS CITY 4, MINNESOTA 3 IN KANSAS CITY (12 INNINGS)

Date:  Tuesday, April 8.

Batting stars:  Rod Carew was 2-for-5 with a stolen base.  Tony Oliva was 2-for-5.  Johnny Roseboro was 2-for-5.  Graig Nettles was 1-for-2 with a home run.

Pitching stars:  Tom Hall pitched 5.2 innings, giving up three runs (one earned) on nine hits and no walks and striking out two.  Ron Perranoski pitched 5.1 scoreless innings of relief, giving up one hit and one walk and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Lou Piniella was 4-for-5 with a double and a walk.  Jerry Adair was 2-for-5.  Dave Wickersham pitched five shutout innings of relief, giving up four hits and no walks and striking out three.

The game:  Piniella opened the game with a double and Adair followed with a single, putting the Royals up 1-0.  Nettles homered in the second to tie it 1-1.

It stayed 1-1 until the sixth.  Carew and Oliva opened the top of the inning with singles and Killebrew had an RBI ground out to put the Twins up 2-1.  Oliva was caught stealing, but Cesar Tovar singled and Rich Reese doubled him home to make it 3-1.  The Royals got the runs back in the bottom of the sixth.  Their first two batters went out, but Ellie Rodriguez singled, Killebrew (playing third) made an error to put men on first and third, and RBI singles by Jim Campanis and Piniella tied the score 3-3.

And there it stayed until the bottom of the twelfth, with neither team even mounting a threat.  With one out in the bottom of the twelfth, Joe Foy singled and went to second on a passed ball.  Chuck Harrison was intentionally walked, but a wild pitch moved men to second and third and led to an intentional walk to Bob Oliver.  Joe Keough then singled home the winning run.

WP:  Moe Drabowsky (1-0).  LP:  Joe Grzenda (0-1).  S:  None.

Notes:  Hall seems a strange choice for opening day starter.  He had only made four major league starts before this game.  Other starting pitchers on the Twins roster included Jim Kaat, Jim Perry, Dave Boswell, and Dean Chance.  I'm sure there was a reason Billy Martin went with Hall, but I didn't have time to research what it was.

Perranoski was to be the Twins' closer, and yet he pitched 5.1 innings.  You would never, ever, ever see that today.  A team would use a position player and allow the game to be lost rather than use their closer that long.  I'm not saying this is good, bad, or indifferent.  It simply shows how the game has changed.

The Twins have always seemed to have a thing about playing young third basemen in the outfield.  They did it with Corey Koskie.  They did it with Trevor Plouffe.  They did it with Miguel Sano.  And here, we see that they did it with Graig Nettles.  Nettles started this game in left field, with Killebrew at third and Reese at first.

The Twins were 1-for-3 in stolen bases in this game.  Carew stole second in the fourth inning, but Reese was thrown out trying to steal second in the fifth and Oliva was thrown out trying to steal third in the sixth.  Both caught stealings hurt.  You can't say for sure how the inning would've played out, but the Reese CS was the first out of the inning and was followed by a walk and a single, while the Oliva CS (the second out of the inning) was followed by a single and a double.

Roseboro, who I remember as having a reputation as a good defensive catcher, was charged with two passed balls in this game.  He would have eleven on the season.

This was the first-ever game for the expansion Kansas City Royals.  Wally Bunker was their starting pitcher, which may help you win a trivia contest someday.

Record:  The Twins were 0-1, tied for fourth in the American League West, a game behind Kansas City, Oakland, and Seattle.