CALIFORNIA 8, MINNESOTA 1 IN CALIFORNIA
Date: Wednesday, August 7.
Batting star: Chili Davis was 1-for-3 with a walk.
Pitching stars: None.
Opposition stars: Jim Abbott pitched 8.1 innings, giving up one run on three hits and four walks and striking out five. He threw 124 pitches. Wally Joyner was 2-for-2 with two home runs (his fifteenth and sixteenth) a walk, and five RBIs. Dave Parker was 2-for-4 with a two-run homer, his tenth. Luis Polonia was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, and two runs.
The game: Nobody did much for the first two innings, but the Angels got it going in the third. Dick Schofield was hit by a pitch and Polonia singled. Donnie Hill's RBI single started the scoring, a sacrifice fly brought home a second run, and Dave Parker hit a two-run homer to make the score 4-0. Joyner homered in the fifth to increase the lead to 5-0. In the seventh, walks to Polonia and Hill preceded Joyner's three run homer and made the score 8-0.
Meanwhile the Twins did very little on offense. They had only one hit through eight innings, a two-out single by Dan Gladden in the third. The only time they had two on was in the seventh, when Davis and Shane Mack drew one-out walks. The Twins managed to avoid a shutout in the ninth. Chuck Knoblauch led off with a double and scored on Davis' one-out single. But that was that.
WP: Abbott (10-8). LP: Jack Morris (13-9). S: None.
Notes: Junior Ortiz was behind the plate in place of Brian Harper. Al Newman was at shortstop in place of Greg Gagne.
Kirby Puckett was 0-for-4 and was batting .326. Terry Leach gave up a run in 1.2 innings to make his ERA 2.91.
Morris pitched five innings and allowed five runs on six hits and one walk and struck out two. It was his third poor outing in his last four starts. In those four starts he had allowed 18 runs in 17.1 innings. His ERA jumped from 3.39 to 4.02.
There have been nine major league players with the last name "Abbott". Two of them played in this game, Jim for the Angels and Paul for the Twins. In case you're wondering, there have been two major league players named "Costello". None of them was on first much--Fred Abbott played fifteen games there, Kurt Abbott eight, and Dan Costello one.
1991 was Jim Abbott's best year on the mound. He went 18-11, 2.89, 1.21 WHIP and finished third in Cy Young voting behind Roger Clemens and Scott Erickson. You can make a good argument that he should have finished ahead of Erickson.
The White Sox beat the Yankees 10-2 and so gained a game on the Twins.
Record: The Twins were 65-44, in first place in the American League West, 2.5 games ahead of Chicago.