MINNESOTA 8, CHICAGO 5 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Thursday, July 17.
Batting stars: Rich Reese was 3-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Harmon Killebrew was 1-for-4 with a home run, his twenty-eighth.
Pitching star: Jerry Crider pitched 3.1 scoreless innings, giving up one hit and one walk and striking out three.
Opposition stars: Walt Williams was 2-for-5. Luis Aparicio was 2-for-5. Don Pavletich was 1-for-5 with a home run, his third. Dan Osinski pitched two shutout innings, giving up a hit and striking out one.
The game: With two out and none on in the first, Carlos May walked and Ron Hansen hit an RBI double. That was as good as it got for the White Sox, as the Twins came back with six in the bottom of the first. Cesar Tovar led off with a single and stole second. Rod Carew walked. Reese drove in a run with a single, tying the score. Killebrew struck out, but Charlie Manuel walked, loading the bases. Ted Uhlaender put the Twins in the lead with an RBI single, Leo Cardenas brought home one with a walk, and George Mitterwald delivered a two-run double. That took Chicago starter Joel Horlen out of the game, replaced by Jerry Nyman. He walked Jim Kaat to load the bases and then walked Tovar to force in the sixth run of the inning. The next two batters went out, but the Twins led 6-1 after one inning.
The White Sox didn't give up. Pavletich started the second with a home run, followed by singles from Bobby Knoop and Ken Berry. With one out, Williams laid down a bunt single-plus-error to bring home a run and make the score 6-3. The Twins got one of them back in the bottom of the second, when Killebrew led off the inning with a home run to put the Twins up 7-3. They got the other one back in the fourth, when Carew got an infield single and scored on Reese's double.
Chicago rallied in the sixth. Knoop reached on an error and Berry was hit by a pitch. The next two batters went out, but Luis Aparicio got an infield single and May got a two-run single to cut the Twins' lead to 8-5.
That was as good as it got for the White Sox. Crider came in right after May's single and slammed the door. He gave up only one hit the rest of the way, a one-out single to Gail Hopkins in the ninth.
WP: Kaat (10-6). LP: Horlen (6-11). S: Crider (1).
Notes: Carew was 1-for-3 with a walk and was batting .361. Reese raised his average to .335.
Tovar was again in right in the absence of Tony Oliva. Mitterwald was again behind the plate in the absence of Johnny Roseboro. Charlie Manuel was in left.
Kaat pitched 5.2 innings, giving up five runs (two earned) on nine hits and a walk and striking out four. His ERA was 2.87, Horlen lasted just two-thirds of an inning, allowing six runs on four hits and three walks and striking out one.
This was the only save of the season for Crider. He would get four more with the White Sox in 1970. It was his first appearance with the Twins since July 3.
Don Pavletich spent most of his career as the second catcher for the Cincinnati Reds, first backing up Johnny Edwards and then backing up Johnny Bench. He was traded to the White Sox before the 1969 season, but found himself the second catcher again, behind Ed Herrmann. He was then traded to Boston, where he spent 1970-1971 as a rarely-used reserve. Before going to Boston he played quite a bit for a second catcher, as he was often used as a pinch-hitter. His best season was 1965, when he batted .319/.394/.513 in 191 at-bats. He also had a good year in 1966, when he batted .249/.344/.519 in 235 at-bats. He hit a combined total of twenty homers in those years. For his career, Pavletich batted .254/.328/.420.
Record: The Twins were 57-35, in first place in the American League West, five games ahead of Oakland. They had won nine in a row, fourteen of fifteen, and eighteen of twenty.