DETROIT TIGERS 7, MINNESOTA TWINS 6 IN DETROIT
Date: Sunday, May 29, 1983.
Batting stars: Dave Engle was 2-for-4 with a double. Randy Bush was 2-for-4. John Castino was 2-for-4.
Pitching star: Rick Lysander pitched 4.2 innings of relief, giving up two runs on four hits and striking out three.
Opposition star: Lou Whitaker was 3-for-4 with a double. Glenn Wilson was 2-for-4 with a triple. Larry Herndon was 2-for-4 with a double. Kirk Gibson hit a home run, his second.
The game: Detroit jumped on Twins starter Frank Viola in the first inning. Lou Whitaker, Enos Cabell, and Larry Herndon started the first inning with singles, producing a run. A double steal of second and home produced a second run, and a ground out brought home a third, making it 3-0 Tigers.
It stayed 3-0 until the fourth, when the Twins struck back off Jack Morris. Bobby Mitchell, John Castino, and Gary Ward all singled to load the bases. An error brought home one run and a wild pitch scored another. A pair of sacrifice flies followed, making the score 4-3 Minnesota.
The lead lasted until the bottom of the inning. Chet Lemon walked and scored on a Lynn Jones triple. Lou Whitaker hit a two-out RBI double to make it 5-4 Detroit. But the Twins came back to tie it in the fifth on consecutive doubles by Dave Engle and Lenny Faedo.
It stayed 5-5 until the seventh, when Lou Whitaker singled and scored on a two-out triple by Glenn Wilson. The Twins tied it again in the eighth on consecutive two-out singles by Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, and Randy Bush. But in the bottom of the eighth Kirk Gibson homered to make it 7-6 Tigers, and this time the Twins couldn’t come back. They went down in order in the ninth.
WP: Aurelio Lopez (3-2).
LP: Rick Lysander (1-4).
S: None.
Notes: Lenny Faedo was at short. Ron Washington played the most games there with 81, followed by Faedo with 51. Bobby Mitchell was in center. Darrell Brown played the most games there with 76, followed by Mitchell with 44. Mickey Hatcher was in right field in place of Tom Brunansky.
Dave Engle was batting .327. He would finish at .305. Lenny Faedo was batting .308. He would finish at .277. Kent Hrbek was batting .302. He would finish at .297. Mickey Hatcher was batting .300. He would finish at .317.
Rick Lysander had an ERA of 2.98. He would finish at 3.38.
As you may know, Jack Morris would pitch for the Twins in 1991.
This was one of five triples Lynn Jones would hit in an eight-year career. Glenn Wilson hit twenty-six triples in a ten-year career. 1983 would be his high, with six.
Jack Morris v. Frank Viola sounds like a great pitching matchup, but while Morris was a star in 1983, Viola was not. He was in the second year of his career, and it would be the second year in which he had an ERA over five. He would lead the league in earned runs allowed in 1983 with 128. He was a lesson to me in patience with young players. After two seasons, he was 11-25 with an ERA of 5.38, and I was ready for the Twins to give up on him. Luckily, I was not running the Twins, because in 1984 he would go 18-12, 3.21 and finish sixth in Cy Young voting.
Glenn Wilson was born on the same date that I was, December 22, 1958. He was not a star, but he had a respectable career. He played for ten seasons and had a line of .265/.306/.398. He made the all-star team in 1985 with Philadelphia, a year in which he drove in 102 runs. He got a tenth-place vote for MVP that year. Again, not a star, but a good ballplayer.
Record: Detroit was 22-22, in fifth place in the AL East, three games behind Boston and Toronto. They would finish 92-70, in second place, six games behind Baltimore.
The Twins were 21-27, in sixth place in the AL West, 7.5 games behind California. They would finish 70-92, tied for fifth with California, twenty-nine games behind Chicago.
Random Record: The Random Twins are 52-53 (.495).