MINNESOTA TWINS 7, NEW YORK YANKEES 6 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Tuesday, July 4, 1967.

Batting stars:  Ted Uhlaender was 3-for-4 with a home run (his second) and two runs.  Tony Oliva was 3-for-4 with a triple and two RBIs.  

Pitching stars:  Jim Perry pitched 5.2 innings, giving up four runs (one earned) on seven hits and four walks and striking out three.  Al Worthington pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and two walks and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Jake Gibbs was 4-for-4 with three RBIs.  Tom Tresh was 2-for-4 with a double and a walk.  Thad Tillotson pitched three innings, giving up one run on two hits and striking out one.

The game: The Twins got on the board in the first inning, as Cesar Tovar walked and scored on a Harmon Killebrew double.  The Yankees responded with four in the second.  Tresh doubled and went to third on Joe Pepitone’s single.  A one-out walk to John Kennedy loaded the bases.  Pitcher Mel Stottlemyre then brought home to runs on a single-plus-error.  Dick Howser walked to re-load the bases, and two more runs scored on Gibbs’ sacrifice fly-plus-error.  It was 4-1 Yankees.

The Twins got two back in the second, as a pitcher once again brought home a couple of runs.  Russ Nixon walked, Uhlaender reached on a two-base error, and Perry singled them both home, cutting the lead to 4-3.  The Twins put men on first and second in both the third and the fourth, but did not score again until the fifth.  Killebrew walked and scored on an Oliva triple.  Bob Allison then delivered a sacrifice fly to give the Twins a 5-4 lead.  Uhlaender homered in the eighth to make it 6-4.

It was looking good for the Twins, but the Yankees wouldn’t go away.  In the ninth, Charley Smith singled, Howser doubled, and Gibbs hit a two-run single to tie it 6-6.  With two out, Gibbs stole second and went to third on a throwing error.  Walks to Tresh and Pepitone loaded the bases, but a force out ended the inning.

In the bottom of the ninth, however, Tovar led off with a single and Rod Carew bunted him to second.  Pinch-hitter Frank Kostro walked, and Oliva ended things with an RBI single.  Justice prevailed, the good guys won, and on this most American of holidays the evil empire was defeated.  Of course, in 1967, that was a little easier to do.

WP:  Al Worthington (3-4).

LP:  Steve Hamilton (2-2).

S:  None.

Notes:  Nixon was behind the plate in place of Jerry Zimmerman, who was the regular catcher due to an injury to Earl Battey.  Tovar was at third base in place of Rich Rollins.  

Carew was batting .313.  He would finish at .292.  Perry was batting .308.  He would finish at .190, still not bad for a pitcher.

Jerry Zimmerman was the epitome of the defense-first, light-hitting backup catcher.  In an eight-season career, the last seven with the Twins, he batted .204/.269/.239.  This was the only season in which he played a hundred games, again due to an injury to Earl Battey.  He was not up to it, batting .167/.243/.192.  His OPS of .436 was worse than three pitchers on the roster in 1967:  Perry, Jim Kaat, and Dave Boswell.  The Twins, of course, would miss out on the American League pennant by one game.  I have to think that even an average-hitting catcher would have made up that one game difference.

Tony Oliva hit 48 triples in his career.  He has already hit three for the Random Twins.

This was Thad Tillotson’s only full season in the majors.  Pitching mostly in relief, he went 3-9, 4.03, 1.40 WHIP, numbers which are worse than they may sound given the low-offense context of 1967.  He appeared in seven more games in 1968, then his major league career was over.  I couldn’t find out what happened to him after baseball, but I did find this tidbit from thisdayinbaseball.com:  “On June 21, 1967 In retaliation for Joe Foy getting struck in the helmet in the top of the frame, Red Sox starter Jim Lonborg promptly plunks opposing pitcher Thad Tillotson in the back, igniting a bench-clearing brawl in the second inning of the Yankees’ 8-1 loss to Boston at Yankee Stadium. The five-minute melee results in no ejections but doesn’t quite settle the matter when Reggie Smith is brushed back in the third, and Dick Howser leaves the game in the fifth after being hit the head with a pitch.”

Record:  The Yankees were 34-42, in eighth place in the AL, 11 games behind the White Sox.  They would finish 72-90, in ninth place, 20 games behind Boston.

The Twins were 42-34, in second place in the AL, 3 games behind the White Sox.  They would finish 91-71, tied for second with Detroit, one game behind Boston.

Random Record:  The Random Twins are 14-10 (.583).