CALIFORNIA 5,  MINNESOTA 2 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Thursday, September 18.

Batting star:  Cesar Tovar was 2-for-4 with a home run, his eleventh.

Pitching stars:  Bob Miller pitched two shutout innings, giving up two hits and striking out one.  Al Worthington pitched two innings, giving up two hits and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Andy Messersmith pitched 6.1 innings, giving up one run on five hits and two walks and striking out five.  Jim Fregosi was 3-for-5.  Billy Cowan was 2-for-2.  Jay Johnstone was 2-for-5.  Rick Reichardt was 1-for-3 with two walks and two runs.

The game:  Ted Uhlaender singled and stole second with none out in the first but stayed there.  Reichardt and Cowan opened the second with singles but did not score.  Reichardt opened the fourth with a walk and Cowan and Jarvis Tatum singled, loading the bases with none out.  This time, the Angels did score, as Joe Azcue had a run-scoring ground out and Aurelio Rodriguez hit a two-run single, making the score 3-0.

In the fifth Tovar singled, was balked to second, and went to third on an error, but could not advance the last ninety feet.  California got three walks in the sixth but could do nothing with them.  That was not true of the seventh, however.  With two out and none on, Fregosi singled and Reichardt and Roger Repoz walked, loading the bases.  Bill Voss then delivered a two-run single, making the score 5-0.

The Twins got on the board in the bottom of the seventh.  Harmon Killebrew singled and Rich Reese walked.  With one out, Johnny Roseboro hit an RBI single to make the score 5-1.  Leo Cardenas walked, loading the bases and bringing the tying run to the plate, but Graig Nettles hit into a line drive double play.  The Twins would not bring the tying run to the plate again.  They scored once more when Tovar homered with two out in the ninth, but that was it.

WP:  Messersmith (16-9).  LP:  Tom Hall (8-6).  S:  Vern Geishert (1).

Notes:  Rod Carew was 0-for-4 and was batting .330.  Rich Reese was 0-for-3 with a walk and was batting .322.  Tony Oliva was 1-for-4 and was batting .310.

Miller lowered his ERA to 2.99.  Ron Perranoski pitched a third of an inning and gave up no runs on one hit, making his ERA 2.27.

Hall started and pitched three innings, allowing three runs on five hits and two walks and striking out two.

This was the only save of Vern Geishert's career.  He pitched in just eleven major league games, two of them against the Twins.

Jarvis Tatum was a September call-up for the Angels in both 1968 and 1969.  He did much better in 1969, batting .318 in 22 plate appearances.  He had no walks and no extra-base hits, so his line was .318/.318/.318.  He was in the majors for almost all of 1970 as a reserve outfielder.  He did not do well, batting .238/.302/.276 in 201 plate appearances.  He was only twenty-three, though, so one would've thought the Angels would give him another chance.  They didn't.  Instead, they traded him to Boston as part of the Tony Conigliaro trade.  Boston released him in early April of 1971.  He played in Japan in 1971, in AAA for the Padres in 1972, and in Mexico in 1973 before ending his playing career.  Jarvis Tatum passed away on January 6, 2003 at the young age of fifty-six.  He is one of two major league players to have the first name "Jarvis", with ex-Twin Jarvis Brown being the other.

Record:  The Twins were 89-60, in first place in the American League West, nine games ahead of Oakland.  The Athletics lost to Kansas City 6-1, so the Twins' magic number was down to five.