All posts by Jeff A

Happy Birthday–February 26

Grover Alexander (1887)
Rip Collins (1896)
Preacher Roe (1916)
Johnny Blanchard (1933)
Don Lee (1934)
Hiromitsu Kadota (1948)
Jack Brohamer (1950)
Rick Wieters (1955)
Kelly Gruber (1962)
Scott Service (1967)
J. T. Snow (1968)
Mark DeRosa (1975)

Hiromitsu Kadota is third on the Japanese professional baseball home run list with 567.

The father of Matt Wieters, Rick Wieters pitched in the minor leagues for five years, reaching AA.

Right-hander Donald Edward Lee pitched for Minnesota in 1961 and the first part of 1962.  His father, Thornton Lee, was also a major league pitcher (both Lees surrendered home runs to Ted Williams, the only time a player has hit a home run against a father and son).  Don Lee was born in Globe, Arizona, attended the University of Arizona, and signed with Detroit as a free agent in 1956.  He pitched very well in the Sally League that year, and was in Detroit in April of 1957.  He started the season in the starting rotation, but lost his spot in mid-May, was used sporadically, and then sent back to the minors.  Lee was in AAA Charleston the next two years and pitched very well, winning 14 games each year and posting an ERA of 3.20 in 420 innings.  After the 1959 season, Lee was traded to Milwaukee, but the Braves left him unprotected and he was chosen by Washington in the Rule 5 draft.  He pitched well for Washington, working mostly in relief until late July, when he entered the rotation.  In 1961, Lee came to Minnesota with the team and was used mostly as a "swing man", with ten starts scattered throughout the season.  In both years he pitched well, posting ERAs in the mid-threes.  He started 1962 in the Twins' rotation, but started poorly, and was traded to the Los Angeles Angels in mid-May for Jim Donohue.  He was an Angel until June 1 of 1965.  He was used both as a starter and a reliever, and pitched well through 1964.  He was pitching out of the bullpen in 1965, and was off to a poor start, when he was traded to Houston.  Much of Lee's time with Houston was spent in the minors; he made seven appearances in the big leagues in 1965 and nine in 1966.  He was sold to the Cubs in June of 1966, did poorly in sixteen appearances, and was sent to the minors.  He made seven minor league appearances in 1967, pitching in the Cubs and Giants organizations, and then his career was over.  At last report, Don Lee was living in Tucson, Arizona.

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Forty-two

MINNESOTA 3, CHICAGO 2 IN CHICAGO

Date:  Wednesday, September 8.

Batting stars:  Jimmie Hall was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer, his nineteenth.  Earl Battey was 2-for-4 with a run.  Rich Rollins was 1-for-2 with a walk and a run.

Pitching star:  Mudcat Grant pitched a complete game, giving up two runs (one earned) on four hits and four walks with four strikeouts.

Opposition stars:  John Buzhardt pitched seven innings, allowing three runs on six hits and one walk with three strikeouts.  Hoyt Wilhelm struck out two in two shutout innings, allowing one hit.  John Romano was 1-for-2 with a double and a walk, driving in one.

The game:  A pair of Twins errors and an RBI single by Pete Ward put the White Sox up 2-0 in the first inning.  The Twins got a run back in the third on two singles and a sacrifice fly by Zoilo Versalles.  The score stayed 2-1, with neither team getting much going on offense, until the seventh, when Battey got a one-out single and Hall followed with a two-run homer to give the Twins a 3-2 advantage.  The White Sox did not get a hit after that.

Of note:  Versalles was 0-for-3 with an RBI.  Sandy Valdespino was 1-for-4.  Tony Oliva was 0-for-4.  Don Mincher was 1-for-4.

Record:  The Twins improved to 88-54 and took a six game lead over the White Sox.

Notes:  The game was a big one in the pennant race.  The White Sox entered the two-game home series trailing by five games.  A sweep would have brought them within three with nineteen games remaining.  After this game, the best Chicago could hope for was a split, leaving them five games back...Oliva's average fell to .315...Valdespino was again in left field in place of Bob Allison.

Happy Birthday–February 25

Bob Bescher (1884)
Al Hollingsworth (1908)
Roy Weatherly (1915)
Monte Irvin (1919)
Andy Pafko (1921)
Syd Thrift (1929)
Johnny Schaive (1934)
Jerry Reinsdorf (1936)
Denny Lemaster (1939)
Danny Cater (1940)
Ron Santo (1940)
Stump Merrill (1944)
Ken Szotkeiwicz (1947)
Cesar Cedeno (1951)
Bob Brenly (1954)
Ken Dayley (1959)
Paul O'Neill (1963)
Shannon Stewart (1974)

Syd Thrift was the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1986-88 and of the Baltimore Orioles from 2000-02.  He also held a variety of other front office positions, generally having to do with overseeing minor league player development.

Infielder Johnny Schaive was in the Washington organization from 1955-1960, reaching the majors for parts of the 1958-1960 seasons.  He was selected by the new Washington franchise as the 36th pick in the 1960 expansion draft.

Jerry Reinsdorf became part-owner of the Chicago White Sox in 1981.

Stump Merrill was the manager of the New York Yankees from 1990-91.  A catcher, he was drafted by Minnesota in the twenty-third round in 1965, but did not sign.

Shortstop Ken Szotkiewicz was chosen by Minnesota with the third pick of the 1967 June Secondary draft, but did not sign.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–February 25

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Forty-one

KANSAS CITY 4, MINNESOTA 3 IN KANSAS CITY

Date:  Monday, September 6 (Game 2 of doubleheader).

Batting stars:  Jim Merritt was 2-for-3 with two RBIs.  Jimmie Hall was 1-for-4 with a stolen base (his ninth) and a run.  Jerry Zimmerman was 1-for-3 with an RBI.

Pitching star:  Merritt pitched 7.2 innings, giving up three runs on five hits and four walks with four strikeouts.

Opposition stars:  Rollie Sheldon pitched eight innings, allowing three runs on seven hits and two walks with five strikeouts.  Jim Landis was 0-for-1 with three walks and a run.  Rene Lachemann was 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

The game:  In the second, Merritt had an RBI single as part of a two-run inning that put the Twins ahead 2-0.  Lachemann singled in a run in the third to cut the lead to 2-1, but Merritt delivered another run-scoring single in the fourth to make it 3-1.  It looked like that would be enough, but in the eighth the Athletics turned three doubles into two runs and tied the score 3-3.  In the ninth, a walk, an error, and a walk loaded the bases with none out for Kansas City.  Al Worthington struck out MIke Hershberger, but pinch-hitter Santiago Rosario hit a sacrifice fly to right field to end the game.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 1-for-4 with a double.  Sandy Valdespino was 1-for-4.  Tony Oliva was 1-for-4 with a double.  Don Mincher was 0-for-4.

Record:  The Twins were now 87-54.  Chicago swept a doubleheader from California, so the Twins lead dropped to 4.5 games.

Notes:  Oliva was now hitting .318...Valdespino again played left in place of Bob Allison.  Zimmerman was catching in place of Earl Battey...Coming in to pitch the ninth and get the win for Kansas City was Catfish Hunter.  He was in his rookie season and was mostly used as a starter.  In fact, he had pitched 6.1 innings just two days earlier...This would be the only major league season for Santiago Rosario.  A first baseman from Puerto Rico, he had been in the low minors for St. Louis from 1960-63, then came to the Athletics.  The Royals brought him up in late June of 1965 but used him mostly as a pinch-hitter, which one would think was not the best thing for the twenty-five-year-old's development.  He played in eighty-one games but started only nine of them.  He had eighty-five at-bats and hit .235/.287/.341.  He stayed in the Kansas City organization through 1967, was with Altanta from 1968-71, then played in the Mexican League through 1976.  Even granting that he played mostly in the 1960s, there's nothing that impressive about his minor league numbers:  .268/.357/.391 in AA, .239/.298/.304 in AAA.  He got a little over half a season in the majors and got to play ball for a living for sixteen years.  A fella could do a lot worse.  Santiago Rosario passed away in 2013 in his native Puerto Rico.

Happy Birthday–February 24

Honus Wagner (1874)
Wilbur Cooper (1892)
Del Wilber (1919)
Bubba Phillips (1928)
Jim Rantz (1938)
Dave Edwards (1954)
Eddie Murray (1956)
Nick Esasky (1960)
Mike Lowell (1974)
Randy Keisler (1976)
Bronson Arroyo (1977)
Dewayne Wise (1978)
Rob Bowen (1981)
Nick Blackburn (1982)
J. D. Durbin (1982)
Chris Parmelee (1988)

Jim Rantz was in the Twins' organization in some capacity from the birth of the team until his retirement in 2012, serving as farm director from 1986-2012.  He was also the winning pitcher in the deciding game of the 1960 College World Series.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–February 24

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Forty

MINNESOTA 8, KANSAS CITY 6 IN KANSAS CITY

Date:  Monday, September 6 (Game 1 of doubleheader).

Batting stars:  Tony Oliva was 1-for-2 with three walks and a stolen base (his seventeenth), scoring twice and driving in one.  Don Mincher was 3-for-4 with a walk, scoring once and driving in one.  Jerry Kindall was 2-for-4, scoring twice and driving in one.

Pitching stars:  Dave Boswell pitched 1.1 scoreless innings, giving up one hit and three walks with one strikeout.  Dick Stigman struck out three in 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit and four walks.  Johnny Klippstein struck out three in 1.2 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and two walks.

Opposition stars:  Mike Hershberger was 2-for-3 with a double and two walks, scoring twice and driving in one.  Jose Tartabull was 2-for-6 with a double, scoring once and driving in three.  Wayne Causey was 0-for-1 with five walks.

The game:  With two out and a man on first in the second inning, the Athletics went double, single, single, double, walk, single to score five times.  The Twins got a couple of two-out hits of their own in the third, an RBI single by Oliva and a run-scoring double by Bob Allison, to cut the lead to 5-2.  They opened the fourth with a single, a walk, and two more singles, ultimately scoring three runs to tie it at five.  Rich Rollins had an RBI single in the sixth to give the Twins their first lead of the game at 6-5 and a pair of leadoff walks in the ninth led to two insurance runs.  Kansas City scored once in the ninth and put the tying run on base with one out, but Causey hit into a double play to end the game.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 0-for-5.  Cesar Tovar, making his first start in the outfield, was 0-for-3.  Allison was 1-for-5 with a double and an RBI.  Camilo Pascual, making his first start since late July, did not get much accomplished, pitching 1.2 innings and giving up five runs on four hits and two walks with no strikeouts.

Record:  The Twins improved their record to 87-53.  The White Sox won the first game of a doubleheader against California 2-1 in ten innings, so the Twins lead remained 5.5 games.

Notes:  Oliva raised his average to .318.  Kindall raised his average over .200 for the first time since the end of June, at .201...Tovar played center in place of Jimmie Hall, who entered the game in the fourth inning and went 1-for-3 with an RBI...I'd forgotten that Tony Oliva actually stole a fair number of bases every year.  1965 was his high, at nineteen, but he had double-digit steals every year from 1964-69.  He was not a great percentage base-stealer, however.  His best year was 1967, when he was 11-for-14; his worst was 1969, when he was 10-for-23.  Overall in that period, he was 75-122, which is 61.5 percent.  1965 was his highest number of attempts, at 28.  One suspects he may have had more attempts that year because he was not batting directly in front of Harmon Killebrew for much of the season.

Happy Birthday–February 23

Barney Dreyfuss (1865)
Paul Cobb (1888)
Roy Johnson (1903)
Ray Brown (1908)
Mike Tresh (1914)
Elston Howard (1929)
Ron Hunt (1941)
Ken Boswell (1946)
John Shelby (1958)
Juan Agosto (1958)
Bobby Bonilla (1963)
Rondell White (1972)
Scott Elarton (1976)
Edgar Gonzalez (1983)

Barney Dreyfuss was the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900-1932.

The brother of Ty Cobb, John Paul Cobb (known by his middle name), played in over a thousand minor league games over ten years, batting .283.

Ray Brown was a star pitcher in the Negro Leagues from 1931-1945.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–February 23

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Thirty-nine

CHICAGO 2, MINNESOTA 0 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, September 5.

Batting star:  Rich Rollins was 2-for-3.

Pitching stars:  Jim Perry pitched 7.2 innings, giving up two runs (one earned) on five hits and four walks with six strikeouts.  Al Worthington pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one walk with one strikeout.

Opposition stars:  Joel Horlen pitched a complete game, allowing only three hits and one walk with five strikeouts.  John Romano was 1-for-3 with a home run (his seventeenth) and a walk.  Don Buford was 2-for-4 with a run.

The game:  Buford led off the game with a single, went to third on a pickoff error, and scored on a ground out.  The score remained 1-0 until the eighth, when Romano hit a two-out homer.  The Twins threatened in the bottom of the first when Sandy Valdespino reached on a two-base error and took third on a wild pitch with one out.  They did not get a man past first base the rest of the game.  Only one of the three Twins' hits left the infield, a single to left by Rollins in the fifth.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 0-for-4.  Sandy Valdespino was 0-for-4.  Tony Oliva was 0-for-4.  Don Mincher was 0-for-3 with a walk.  The top six slots in the Twins batting order went a combined 0-for-21 with one walk.

Record:  The Twins record went to 86-53.  Chicago, by winning two out of three in the series, dropped the Twins' lead to 5.5 games.

Notes:  Oliva's average fell to .317...Valdespino again replaced Bob Allison in left field.  Allison was used as a pinch-hitter...Joel Horlen is an overlooked excellent pitcher of the 1960s.  He had ERAs under four for seven consecutive seasons (1963-69) and under three four five consecutive seasons (1964-68), winning the ERA title in 1967 at 2.06.  In those same five consecutive seasons, he had a WHIP of less than 1.2, posting WHIPs of less than one in 1964 and 1967.  He was never a big strikeout guy, and because he played for the weak-hitting White Sox he never had big win totals (his high was nineteen, 1967, when he finished second in Cy Young Award voting.  It was the only time he received any Cy Young votes.  His next highest win total was thirteen, which he had three times), so he never received much acclaim when he was playing and has pretty much been forgotten now.  He developed arm problems after the 1969 season and was not nearly as good after that, although he had a fine season as a reliever for Oakland in 1972, his last year in the majors.  He wasn't flashy, but if you just wanted someone who could consistently get batters out, Joel Horlen was about as good as anyone.

Happy Birthday–February 22

Bill Klem (1874)
Clarence Mitchell (1891)
Roy Spencer (1900)
Charles O. Finley (1918)
Stubby Greer (1920)
Ryne Duren (1929)
Sparky Anderson (1934)
Steve Barber (1938)
Tom Griffin (1948)
Gerry Davis (1953)
John Halama (1972)
J. J. Putz (1977)
Kelly Johnson (1982)
Casey Kotchman (1983)
Brian Duensing (1983)

Bill Klem was a National League umpire from 1905-1941.  He was the first umpire to indicate his calls with arm signals, and was also the first umpire to wear an inside chest protector.  He umpired in eighteen World Series and also umpired the first all-star game.

Charles O. Finley was the owner of the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics from 1960-81.

Stubby Greer played in the minors from 1940-1958 with a career batting average of .330.  He never played in the major leagues.

Sparky Anderson was born in Bridgewater, South Dakota.

Gerry Davis has been a major league umpire since 1982.

J. J. Putz was drafted by Minnesota in the seventeenth round in 1998, but did not sign.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–February 22

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Thirty-eight

CHICAGO 5,  MINNESOTA 4 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Saturday, September 4.

Batting stars:  Zoilo Versalles was 2-for-4 with a stolen base (his twentieth), scoring once and driving in one.  Tony Oliva was 1-for-3 with a walk, scoring once and driving in one.  Earl Battey was 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

Pitching stars:  "Stars" isn't really the right term today, but Mudcat Grant pitched seven innings, giving up four runs on four hits and three walks with three strikeouts.  Bill Pleis pitched two innings, giving up an unearned run on two hits and a walk with two strikeouts.

Opposition stars:  Ken Berry was 1-for-3 with a home run (his tenth) and a walk, driving in two.  Don Buford was 2-for-4 with a double and a stolen base (his fourteenth), scoring once and driving in one.  Ron Hansen was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk, scoring once.

The game:  Pete Ward doubled in a run in the first to give the White Sox a 1-0 lead.  The Twins came back in the bottom of the first with two runs on no hits, as Hansen opened the game with two errors, a double steal put men on second and third, and a pair of RBI groundouts (Twins Baseball!) made it 2-1 Minnesota.  Battey had an RBI double in the fourth to make it 3-1, but doubles by Tom McCraw and Buford keyed a two-run fifth to tie it 3-3.  Berry homered in the fourth to make it 4-3 and in the eight Buford singled, went to second on a ground out, took third on a passed ball, and stole home to give the White Sox a 5-3 advantage.  The Twins put men on second and third with one out in the ninth, but could only manage a sacrifice fly.

Record:  The Twins went to 86-52 and their lead over Chicago dropped back to 6.5 games.

Notes:  Oliva's average remained .320...Sandy Valdespino again replaced Bob Allison in left field...Ted Uhlaender made his major league debut in this game, pinch-hitting for Jerry Kindall in the seventh inning.  He struck out...Hoyt Wilhelm pitched the last two innings of this game.  He was forty-two in 1965 and would pitch seven more seasons.  He made the all-star team in 1970 at age forty-seven... I always think of Don Buford as a Baltimore Oriole, but he actually played just as many seasons for the White Sox (five each).