CHICAGO 4, MINNESOTA 0 IN CHICAGO

Date:  Thursday, September 11.

Batting stars:  None.

Pitching star:  Bob Miller pitched three shutout innings of relief, giving up one hit and two walks and striking out two.

Opposition stars:  Joel Horlen pitched a complete game shutout, giving up three hits and one walk and striking out four.  Tom McCraw was 2-for-4 and scored twice.  Ed Herrmann was 1-for-2 with two walks.

The game:  The White Sox opened the scoring in the second.  With one out, McCraw and Herrmann singled.  Bob Christian struck out, but Bobby Knoop singled to left to give Chicago a 1-0 lead.  The took a substantially bigger lead in the third.  With one out, Luis Aparicio walked and Walt Williams singled.  Bill Melton struck out, but McCraw singled home a run to make it 2-0.  Herrmann reached on an error to load the bases, and Christian delivered a two-run single to put the White Sox up 4-0.

The Twins never did mount a threat.  They had so few baserunners that we can list them all.  Tony Oliva had a two-out single-plus-error in the first.  Cesar Tovar had a one-out single in the second.  Johnny Roseboro had a one-out single in the fifth.  Ted Uhlaender drew a one-out walk in the ninth.

WP:  Horlen (11-15).  LP:  Dave Boswell (16-11).  S:  None.

Notes:  The Twins used their regular lineup.  Rod Carew was 0-for-4 to drop his average to .343.  Rich Reese was 0-for-3 and was batting .326.  Oliva was 1-for-4 and was batting .316.

Boswell started and pitched five innings, giving up four runs (two earned) on six hits and a walk and striking out four.

By game scores, this was Horlen's best game of the season.  He had one other shutout, in Baltimore on May 6.

There were no extra-base hits in the game.  The Twins had three singles and Chicago had seven.  I don't think that's rare, exactly, but it is unusual.

Tom McCraw played a long time for a guy who really wasn't all that good.  He was primarily a first baseman, although he also played some outfield.  He had a really good year in AAA Indianapolis in 1962, batting .326/.408/.463 at age twenty-one.  He only hit seven home runs, but still, that's a solid season.  He started 1963 in AAA but came up to the White Sox in early June and stayed for eight years.  He did that despite never posting an OPS as high as .700.  His career numbers for Chicago are .240/.300/.354.  Even granted that it was 1960s baseball, that's not very good, especially for a first baseman.  Still, the Sox kept him in the lineup through 1969.  He moved to more of a reserve role in 1970, then was traded to Washington for Ed Stroud.  He moved to Cleveland for 1972, was traded to California for Leo Cardenas in 1973, then went back to the Indians in mid-1974.  He batted better as a reserve--he hit .294/.343/.442 in 1974 and .275/.362/.451 in 1975.  The 1975 totals, however, were in just 59 plate appearances, and he was released at the end of June.  One assumes he was considered a good defender and also was a nice guy, because he couldn't have played so long if he wasn't.  When the Indians released him they kept him around as a batting coach, and he was a batting coach for one major league team or another through 2005, when he retired.  He apparently was a good friend of Frank Robinson, as he was Robinson's batting coach with four different teams.

Record:  The Twins were 86-56, in first place in the American League West, 8.5 games ahead of Oakland.