MINNESOTA 2, WASHINGTON 0 IN WASHINGTON
Date: Friday, August 15.
Batting stars: Rich Reese was 3-for-4. Leo Cardenas was 2-for-4.
Pitching stars: Jim Perry pitched seven shutout innings, giving up seven hits and two walks and striking out one. Ron Perranoski struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up two hits.
Opposition stars: Casey Cox pitched four shutout innings of relief, giving up one hit and one walk and striking out one. Dennis Higgins pitched two perfect innings, striking out one. Ed Brinkman was 2-for-4.
The game: Tovar and Reese each singled to start the game, putting men on first and third. The Twins only scored once, on Tony Oliva's RBI groundout, but it gave Minnesota a 1-0 lead.
Each team put men on first and second with one out in the second, but did not score. In the third, Reese led off with a single, Oliva had a one-out single, and Cardenas delivered a two-out single to put the Twins up 2-0. The Senators had a man on third with one out in the third, but did not score. The Twins had men on first and third in the fourth and did not score. Washington got a two-out double from Del Unser in the fifth and had a man on second with none out in the sixth, but still could not dent the plate. They also had two singles in the seventh, but a double play took them out of the inning. After that, the Senators got just a two-out single in the ninth.
WP: Perry (14-5). LP: Jim Shellenback (4-7). S: Perranoski (22).
Notes: With Carew out, Reese moved into the number two slot in the order. Frank Quilici played second base. Bob Allison was in left field, and Tom Tischinski was behind the plate.
Reese raised his average to .344. He was 7-for-8 in his last two games, 16-for-28 in his last seven games, and 24-for-49 in his last sixteen games.
The teams combined for sixteen hits, but just two runs. All but one of the hits were singles. The teams combined to go 2-for-17 with men in scoring position, with Washington going 0-for-8.
Shellenback pitched the first three innings, giving up two runs on six hits and a walk and striking out three. He came out of the game for a pinch-runner after singling to start the bottom of the third. Presumably he was injured, although he came back to pitch just two days later. He wasn't much of a batter, though (.135/.159/.154), so you probably wouldn't let him bat if you were planning to take him out.
Casey Cox was a pretty good reliever for the Senators from 1966-1969. In those seasons, he went 23-17, 3.03 in 365.1 innings (176 games, 13 starts). Despite how well he pitched, he was sent to AAA Buffalo for most of the 1968 season--it's hard to believe Washington had such a stellar bullpen that they couldn't have found room for him. The Senators converted him to starting in 1970, which didn't work very well--he went 8-12, 4.45. He did a little better when returned to the bullpen in 1971, but he was never again what he had been. The now-Texas Rangers traded him to the Yankees at the end of August of 1972 for ex-Twin Jim Roland. He did little for the Yankees and was released early in the 1973 season. He then played in AAA with the Cubs and his playing career was over after the 1973 season. It's hard to know what happened this many years after the fact, but it kind of looks like the Senators didn't know what they had in Cox, started messing around with him, and ultimately the messing around took its toll.
Record: The Twins were 70-47, in first place in the American League West, two games ahead of Oakland.