MINNESOTA 4, WASHINGTON 2 IN WASHINGTON
Date: Saturday, June 6.
Batting stars: Harmon Killebrew was 2-for-4 with a home run (his fifteenth) and four RBIs. Tony Oliva was 2-for-4. Jim Perry was 2-for-4.
Pitching star: Perry pitched a complete game, giving up two runs on six hits and a walk and striking out two.
Opposition stars: Lee Maye was 2-for-4 with a home run (his fifth) and two RBIs. Ex-Twin Joe Grzenda pitched 2.1 scoreless innings, giving up three hits and a walk and striking out two. Horacio Pina pitched 2.1 scoreless innings, giving up a walk and striking out two.
The game: With two out in the first, Tony Oliva singled and Killebrew followed with a two-run homer to give the Twins a 2-0 lead. The Senators had men on second and third with two out in the bottom of the first but did not score. In the second, singles by Ed Brinkman and Jim French and a hit-by-pitch of Jim Hannan loaded the bases with one out, but all Washington could get out of it was an RBI ground out to cut the lead to 2-1. In the fourth, however, Maye hit a two-out home run to tie it 2-2.
The Twins responded in the fifth. Perry singled. Cesar Tovar was hit by pitch, and Rick Renick walked, loading the bases with one out. Oliva struck out, but Killebrew hit a two-run single to put the Twins back in front 4-2.
Perry took over from there. The Senators got only one hit after Maye's homer, a one-out single by Mike Epstein in the eighth inning.
WP: Perry (7-5).
LP: Hannan (0-2).
S: None.
Notes: Jim Holt was in left in place of Brant Alyea, who would not return until June 12. Paul Ratliff remained at catcher in place of George Mitterwald. Frank Quilici remained at second in place of Rod Carew. Renick pinch-hit for Holt in the fifth and stayed in the game in left field.
Oliva was batting .328. Killebrew was batting .321. Renick was 0-for-2 and was batting .308. Perry had an ERA of 2.90. He also was batting .300.
Quilici was 0-for-2 and was batting .184.
Killebrew drove in all of the Twins' runs. It looks like it was important for the Twins to get men on in front of Killebrew, so teams didn't feel as free to just walk him.
Three players with Twins ' connections were used by the Senators: Bernie Allen (0-for-4), Johnny Roseboro (0-for-2). and Grzenda.
It was Perry's fifth complete game in 13 starts.
Record: The Twins were 33-15, in first place in the American League West, two games ahead of California. The difference was all in the loss column--each team had won 33 games, but the Angels had 19 losses. They had played four more games than the Twins, mostly due to Twins' rainouts. Seems it never rains in Southern California.