MINNESOTA 4, SEATTLE 0 IN SEATTLE
Date: Sunday, July 20.
Batting stars: George Mitterwald was 2-for-4 with a home run (his fourth) and scored twice. Cesar Tovar was 1-for-4 with a home run, his third.
Pitching star: Jim Perry pitched a complete game shutout, giving up nine hits and no walks and striking out three.
Opposition stars: Ex-Twin Ron Clark was 3-for-4. Gus Gil was 2-for-4 with a double. Steve Hovley was 2-for-4. John Gelnar pitched seven innings, giving up three runs on five hits and no walks and striking out four.
The game: The Pilots had men on first and second with two out in the second but did not score. The Twins started the scoring in the third when Mitterwald led off the inning with a home run. Seattle again put men on first and second in the third and fourth, but again could not score.
The Twins had only three hits through the first seven innings, but broke the game open in the eighth. Tovar led off with a home run and Mitterwald singled. That chased Gelnar from the game and brought in Jim Bouton. A wild pitch and a ground out sent Mitterwald to third. Perry singled him home, making the score 3-0. A balk, a ground out, and an error increased the lead to 4-0. The Pilots got a man to second in the eighth on Gil's one out double but did not otherwise threaten.
WP; Perry (11-4). LP: Gelnar (2-7). S: None.
Notes: Rod Carew was 1-for-4, making his average .364. Frank Quilici pinch-ran for him in the eighth. I don't know if this was health-related, if Billy Martin wanted to give him a break, or if Carew needed to get to the airport for the all-star game, which would be played in two days. The normal move would have been to use Quilici to replace Harmon Killebrew at third, but Killebrew remained in the game. Killebrew, of course, was also on the all-star team in 1969.
Cesar Tovar was again in right field, replacing Tony Oliva. Mitterwald was behind the plate, replacing Johnny Roseboro.
Rich Reese was 0-for-4 and was batting .328.
Perry had pitched two innings in the completion of the suspended game, so he pitched eleven innings on the day. He did not walk anyone and only had three strikeouts in this game, so his pitch count may not have been too bad even for pitching eleven innings. Perry was the winning pitcher in both games, and Gelnar was the losing pitcher in both games.
Gus Gil is on that "all-time short names" list with Joe Foy, Joe Lis, and I assume a lot of others. Ed Ott still has them all beat, and there's probably someone else whose name is that short or shorter. Gil was a futility infielder for parts of four major league seasons: 1967 and 1969-1971. He never had any power, but in his good minor league seasons he hit a fair number of doubles. His best minor league season was 1964 in AAA San Diego, when he batted .305/.390/.388. He was actually the starting second baseman coming out of spring training with Cleveland in 1967, but lost the job in early May when he was batting .154. Even in the 1960s, that wasn't good enough. He stayed in the majors as a reserve and was frequently used as a defensive replacement, so he must have been considered an excellent defender. Still, when he was batting .109 at the all-star break he was sent back to AAA, getting a September call-up. He was traded to Seattle in May of 1968, when they had a AAA team but not yet a major league team, and was at various times the Pilots starting second baseman in 1969. This was the end of the last of those times: he was batting .224 with an OPS of .528, and he lost the starting job to John Donaldson. 1969 was his only full season in the majors. He moved to Milwaukee with the team and was with the Brewers for parts of 1970 and 1971. He continued to play in the minors through 1976 and actually had a pretty good year for AAA Denver in 1973, batting .303/.381/.406, but by then he was thirty-four. His career major league numbers are .186/.272/.226 in 468 at-bats. He managed in the low minors for four seasons: 1979, 1982, and 1990-1991. Gus Gil passed away in Phoenix on December 8, 2015.
Record: The Twins were 59-37, in first place in the American League West, four games ahead of Oakland.