MINNESOTA 5, BOSTON 2 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Thursday, August 27.
Batting stars: Tony Oliva was 2-for-3 with a double and a walk. Jim Perry was 2-for-4 with two doubles. Jim Holt was 2-for-4 with a stolen base, his third. George Mitterwald was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer, his thirteenth.
Pitching star: Perry pitched a complete game, giving up two runs on seven hits and two walks and striking out two.
Opposition stars: Billy Conigliaro was 2-for-4 with a stolen base. Rico Petrocelli was 1-for-4 with a home run, his twenty-first. Chuck Hartenstein struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up one hit. Mike Nagy pitched two shutout innings, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out one.
The game: In the first inning Rich Reese hit a one-out single and scored on an Oliva double, with Oliva taking third on the throw home. Harmon Killebrew then hit a sacrifice fly, giving the Twins a 2-0 lead. The Red Sox came right back to tie it in the second. Petrocelli led off with a home run. Conigliaro then got an infield single, stole second, and scored on Mike Andrews' two-out single.
Boston loaded the bases in the fourth but did not score. In the bottom of the fourth, Holt led off with a single and Mitterwald hit a two-out two-run homer. Perry then doubled, went to third on a wild pitch, and scored on a Cesar Tovar single, giving the Twins a 5-2 lead.
The Red Sox did not threaten again. Carl Yastrzemski led off the fifth with a single but was erased on a double play. That was the last baserunner Boston had. Perry was in total control, and the Twins cruised to a 5-2 victory.
WP: Perry (19-11).
LP: Sonny Siebert (13-7).
S: None.
Notes: Holt was in center with Tovar in left and Brant Alyea on the bench. Danny Thompson remained at second in place of Rod Carew. Frank Quilici went to second in the eighth inning, with Thompson going to third and Killebrew going to the bench.
Oliva was batting .323.
Perry hit four doubles in 1970, half of them in this game. He hit twenty-two doubles in his career. Four was his career high in a season--he also hit four in 1966.
Perry had thirteen complete games in 1970, which was his career high. He had 109 complete games in his career.
Billy Conigliaro had a really good year in 1970. At age 22 he batted .271/.339/.462. The Red Sox must have thought he would become as big a star as his brother Tony. But he went backward in 1971, was traded to Milwaukee, and was out of baseball after the 1973 season.
Record: The Twins were 75-51, in first place in the American League West, four games ahead of California.