MINNESOTA 6, NEW YORK 3 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Wednesday, June 12.

Batting stars:  Chuck Knoblauch was 3-for-5.  Pedro Munoz was 1-for-4 with a grand slam, his second home run.

Pitching stars:  Carl Willis pitched 1.1 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and striking out one.  Steve Bedrosian retired all four men he faced, striking out two.

Opposition star:  Jesse Barfield was 2-for-4 with two home runs (his twelfth and thirteenth) and three RBIs.

The game:  The Twins jumped out to a big lead early.  In the first inning, Knoblauch led off with a single-plus-error and went to third on a wild pitch.  With one out, Kirby Puckett walked and Chili Davis singled for the first Twins run.  With two out, Kent Hrbek walked and Munoz followed with a grand slam, giving the Twins a 5-0 lead.

Barfield homered in the second to cut the lead to 5-1.  The Twins put two on with one out in the bottom of the second but did not score.  In the fourth the Yankees got back into the game.  Don Mattingly singled and Barfield hit his second home run, making the score 5-3.

The Twins got an insurance run in the fifth when Puckett singled, went to second on a fly ball, and scored on a Brian Harper single.  That was it for the scoring.  New York threatened a few times.  Steve Sax hit a two-out double in the fifth.  They got a pair of one-out singles in the seventh.  They put men on first and third with two out in the eighth.  But they did not score, and the final tally was 6-3 Twins.

WP:  Allan Anderson (4-4).  LP:  Jeff Johnson (0-2).  S:  Bedrosian (3).

Notes:  Shane Mack was in left field, replacing Dan Gladden.  Munoz was in right.  Mack batted second, with Knoblauch moving to the leadoff spot.

Harper was 1-for-4 and was batting .331.  Puckett was 1-for-3 with a walk, a stolen base (his second), and two runs.  He was batting .317.  Munoz was batting .313.  Willis lowered his ERA to 3.04.

Anderson started and pitched 6.1 innings, giving up three runs on eight hits and no walks and striking out four.  Jeff Johnson was the starter for New York, pitching five innings and allowing six runs on six hits and two walks and striking out two.

Rick Aguilera had pitched in four of the last five Twins games, and so presumably was unavailable for this game.  Bedrosian certainly came through in his stead.

This was Jeff Johnson's second major league start.  He was in the Yankee rotation for the rest of the season and went 6-11, 5.95, 1.49 WHIP.  He started 1992 in the rotation as well, but when he was no better he was sent to AAA.  He made two more major league starts in 1993, was in AAA for Cleveland in 1994, then was done.  His major league stats 8-16, 6.52, 1.63 WHIP.  He has, however, been a minor league pitching coach for several seasons.

The Twins had won eleven in a row and fourteen of fifteen.  How long could they keep it going?

Record:  The Twins were 34-25, in second place in the American League West, two games behind Oakland.  They led third-place California by a half game.