MINNESOTA 5, NEW YORK 4 IN NEW YORK
Date: Friday, June 21.
Batting stars: Chuck Knoblauch was 3-for-4 with a double, a stolen base (his seventh), and two RBIs. Dan Gladden was 3-for-5 with a home run (his fourth), a double, two runs, and two RBIs. Shane Mack was 2-for-4 with a stolen base, his fifth.
Pitching stars: Mark Guthrie pitched seven innings, giving up four runs (three earned) on nine hits and a walk and striking out five. Steve Bedrosian struck out two in a scoreless inning, giving up two hits. Rick Aguilera struck out two in a perfect inning.
Opposition stars: Carlos Rodriguez was 2-for-3. Mel Hall was 2-for-4. Don Mattingly was 2-for-5 with a two-run homer, his sixth. Greg Cadaret pitched three shutout innings, giving up two hits and a walk and striking out two.
The game: Gladden led off the game with a home run, giving the Twins a 1-0 lead. Knoblauch followed with a double, but the Twins could do no more in the first inning. The Yankees came back in the second. Hall hit a one-out single, Alvaro Espinoza reached on an error, and RBI singles by Bob Geren and Rodriguez put the Yankees up 2-1.
The Twins got the lead back in the fourth. They started the inning with consecutive singles by Chili Davis, Brian Harper, and Mack, tying the score. A pair of fly outs followed, but then came a double by Gladden and a single by Knoblauch to give the Twins a 5-2 advantage.
There was no more scoring until the seventh. With two out, Steve Sax walked and Mattingly hit a two-run homer, cutting the margin to 5-4. They threatened to take the lead in the eighth. Pat Sheridan had a one-out single and Espinoza had a two-out single, putting men on first and third, but pinch-hitter Matt Nokes struck out to end the inning. The Yankees went down in order in the ninth.
WP: Guthrie (5-3). LP: Scott Sanderson (7-3). S: Aguilera (18).
Notes: The Twins went with a pretty standard lineup. Al Newman pinch-hit for Mike Pagliarulo in the ninth and stayed in the game to play short. Gene Larkin pinch-hit for Greg Gagne in the ninth, with Scott Leius coming into the game at third base. As you were going to put Leius in the game anyway, I don't know why you wouldn't rather use him as a pinch-hitter than Newman against the left-handed Greg Cadaret, but Newman walked, so I guess you can say it worked.
Harper went 1-for-4 and was batting .342. Kirby Puckett was 1-for-4 and was batting .327. Steve Bedrosian lowered his ERA to 3.47. Aguilera's ERA fell to 2.88.
This was the only two-hit game Carlos Rodriguez had in 1991. He was twenty-three that year, and wasn't ready yet. He appeared in just 15 games and batted .189. He was in the minors for two more years, then went to the Boston organization. He was with the Red Sox for half of 1994 and batted .287/.330/.397 as a part-time player. He got a September call-up in 1995 and batted .333/.394/.400. Then, however, he had rotator cuff surgery and went into coaching. He eventually did some more playing, too, appearing in twenty-four games in 1999 and playing regularly in the Mexican League from 2002-2003. He currently owns "The Strike Zone", a youth baseball training facility in Winchester, Ohio. If not for his injuries, he might have had a decent career.
The Twins had now won three in a row, eighteen of nineteen, and twenty-one of twenty-three.
Record: The Twins were 41-26, in first place in the American League West, three games ahead of Oakland.