MINNESOTA 10, BOSTON 4 IN BOSTON
Date: Saturday, May 31.
Batting stars: Tony Oliva was 3-for-5. Johnny Roseboro was 3-for-5. Charlie Manuel was 2-for-3 with a walk and two runs.
Pitching stars: Dick Woodson pitched eight innings, giving up four runs on eight hits and four walks and striking out five. Ron Perranoski struck out two in a perfect inning.
Opposition stars: Ex-Twin Garry Roggenburk struck out three in three shutout innings, giving up two hits. Tony Conigliaro was 1-for-4 with a three-run homer, his ninth. Carl Yastrzemski was 1-for-4 with a home run (his eleventh) and a walk.
The game: The Red Sox threatened in the bottom of the first. Dick Schofield led off the game with a single, and with two out Rico Petrocelli singled and Dalton Jones walked, loading the bases. Conigliaro struck out to end the threat.
The Twins then broke through for seven runs in the second, taking control of the game right there. Harmon Killebrew walked, Manuel singled, and Graig Nettles singled home the first run. An error made it 2-0 and Roseboro singled to make it 3-0. Following a force out, Ted Uhlaender singled home the fourth run of the inning. An error loaded the bases, a ground out brought home the fifth run, and Killebrew delivered a two-run double for a 7-0 lead.
Yastrzemski homered in the third to get Boston on the board, but they stranded two runners in the inning. The Twins got the run back plus another in the fifth, as Manuel walked, Leo Cardenas doubled, and a wild pitch-plus-error brought them both home and made the score 9-1. In the bottom of the fifth, two walks preceded Conigliaro's three-run homer, cutting the margin to 9-4.
The Twins remained in control, though. In the sixth, singles by Carew and Oliva and a walk to Killebrew loaded the bases with none out. Manuel then singled to increase the lead to 10-4. A strikeout and a double play ended the inning, but it didn't matter, as the Red Sox did not threaten the rest of the game.
WP: Woodson (3-1). LP: Sonny Siebert (4-5). S: Perranoski (10).
Notes: Graig Nettles was at third base in this game, with Manuel in left field. The standard defensive change of Frank Quilici at third and Cesar Tovar in left was made in the seventh inning.
Woodson was shuttled between the rotation and the bullpen frequently in the first half of 1969. He made on appearance as a reliever, one as a starter, relieved five times, started twice, made a bullpen appearance, a start, two relief appearances, two starts, a relief appearance, a start, two relief appearances, and three starts. Finally, on the first of July, he went to the bullpen for the rest of the season. He did much better as a reliever, going 4-3, 4.61, 1.48 WHIP as a starter and 3-2, 2.75, 1.20 WHIP as a reliever. From our persepctive It seems like a tough thing to do to a rookie, keep moving him back and forth like that, but it wasn't considered all that important for a pitcher to have a defined role back then.
Carew went 1-for-4 and was batting .403. Oliva was batting .312. Manuel was at .311. Roseboro was batting .303.
The Red Sox used two ex-Twins in relief, Roggenburk and Lee Stange.
Sonny Siebert (given name: Wilfred Charles Siebert) pitched in the majors for twelve years, almost entirely as a starter. He came up with Cleveland in 1964 and stayed there until early 1969, when he was traded to Boston. He had an ERA of under three and a WHIP of under 1.14 each season from 1965-1968. Even granting that it was "the year of the pitcher", the Indians had a pretty awesome rotation in 1968: Luis Tiant (21-9, 1.60), Sam McDowell, 15-14, 1.81, Stan Williams, (13-11, 2.50) and Siebert (12-10, 2.97). Siebert had the highest WHIP of the group at 1.13. He was not quite as good with the Red Sox, but was still an effective pitcher for them through 1972. He was traded to Texas early in 1973 and continued to be a solid starter. He was with St. Louis in 1974 and while his ERA was still decent at 3.84, he had a WHIP of 1.50. He struggled through a 1975 season with San Diego and Oakland, then was finished. He made two all-star teams and his final numbers are 140-114, 3.21, 1.21 WHIP. He also is the last American League pitcher to hit two home runs in a game--he hit twelve in his career, six of them in 1971. He was a minor league pitching coach for several years. I'm not nominating him for the Hall of Fame, but he had a pretty solid major league career. It's kind of sad that hardly anybody remembers him now.
Record: Minnesota was 25-19, in first place in the American League West, leading Oakland by two games.