TORONTO BLUE JAYS 3, MINNESOTA TWINS 1 IN TORONTO

Date:  Monday, August 1, 1988.

Batting star:  Kent Hrbek was 2-for-4.

Pitching star:  Frank Viola pitched 7.2 innings, giving up two runs on seven hits and a walk and striking out three.

Opposition stars:  Jesse Barfield was 2-for-2 with two doubles and a walk.  Manny Lee was 2-for-4.  George Bell hit a three-run homer, his fifteenth.  Dave Stieb pitched eight innings, giving up one run on three hits and one walk and striking out six.

The game: Only one man reached second base in the first four innings, a two-out double in the second by Jesse Barfield.  The Twins got on the board in the fifth, though.  Kent Hrbek led off with a single and Gary Gaetti walked.  With two out, Steve Lombardozzi delivered an RBI single to put the Twins up 1-0.

Toronto threatened in the fifth when Barfield led off with a double and Sil Campusano got an infield single with one out, but the runners were stranded.  The Twins did not have the same luck in the eighth, however.  With two out, Tony Fernandez and Manny Lee singled.  Frank Viola was replaced by Jeff Reardon, who gave up a three-run homer to George Bell.

That was pretty much the ball game.  Kent Hrbek hit a two-out single in the ninth, but that was it, and it stayed 3-1 Toronto.

WP:  Dave Stieb (11-7).

LP:  Frank Viola (16-4).

S:  Tom Henke (19).

Notes:  Kirby Puckett was batting .355.  He would finish at .356.  Gary Gaetti was batting .305.  He would finish at .301.  

Frank Viola had an ERA of 2.32.  He would finish at 2.64 and win the Cy Young Award.  Jeff Reardon had an ERA of 2.68.  He would finish at 2.47.

Sal Butera caught for Toronto and went 1-for-3.  He had played for the Twins from 1980-1982 and also in 1987.

The Twins had only four hits, all singles.

It seems like George Bell has pretty much been forgotten, but he was a really good ballplayer.  He won the MVP in 1987, when he led the league in RBIs.  He got MVP votes five other times, finishing in the top ten three times and in the top five twice.  He also won three Silver Slugger awards.  He drove in more than a hundred runs four times and hit over twenty homers eight times.  His career numbers are .278/.316/.478 with 265 home runs in 12 major league seasons.  He’s not a Hall of Famer or anything, but he was a force in the middle of the lineup for quite a while.

Tom Henke was also really good.  He had an ERA of under three in ten of his fourteen major league seasons.  He also had a WHIP of under 1.2 in ten of his fourteen major league seasons.  He had 311 saves, leading the league in 1987 with 34.  Even in his last year, at age thirty-seven, he had an ERA of 1.82 and a WHIP of 1.10 with 36 saves.  He didn’t retire because he couldn’t do it anymore–he retired because he was tired of the baseball life and truly did want to spend more time with his family.  It’s rare in baseball that someone is able to retire on his own terms like that.

Record:  Toronto was 52-54, tied for fifth with Milwaukee in the AL East, 10.5 games behind Detroit.  They would finish at 87-75, tied for third with Milwaukee, two games behind Boston.

The Twins were 57-46, in second place in the AL West, 6.5 games behind Oakland.  They would finish 91-71, in second place, thirteen games behind Oakland.

Random Record:  The Random Twins are 26-32 (.448).