MINNESOTA 13, NEW YORK 4 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Tuesday, May 2.
Batting stars: Zoilo Versalles was 2-for-4 with a triple, two runs, and two RBIs. Ron Clark was 2-for-4 with a double and three RBIs. Cesar Tovar was 2-for-4 with a double. Jerry Zimmerman was 2-for-4 with a walk and two runs. Ted Uhlaender was 2-for-5 with a triple, a double, and two runs.
Pitching star: Dean Chance pitched six innings, giving up two runs on five hits and two walks and striking out four.
Opposition star: Tom Tresh was 2-for-3 with a two-run homer (his third) and two walks.
The game: The Yankees put men on second and third with two out in the first but did not score. That was the last time the Yankees were in the game. The Twins scored six times in the first inning. Tovar and Uhlaender started the inning with back-to-back doubles. Versalles singled and Harmon Killebrew hit a sacrifice fly to make it 2-0. Bob Allison had an RBI single. With two out Clark had a run-scoring double. Zimmerman was intentionally walked, Chance was accidentally walked to load the bases, and Tovar got his second hit of the inning, a two-run single, to make it 6-0 Twins.
It stayed 6-0 until the fifth, when New York got on the board. John Kennedy led off with a walk and Tresh hit a two-out two-run homer to cut the margin to 6-2. The Twins came back with three in the sixth. Zimmerman singled and Chance reached on an error. Tovar bunted the runners up, and with two out Versalles hit a two-run triple, followed by Killebrew's RBI double, giving the Twins a 9-2 lead.
The Twins added a run in the seventh when Andy Kosco reached on a three-base error and scored on a sacrifice fly. In the eighth Uhlaender tripled, Frank Quilici walked, Killebrew hit a sacrifice fly, Allison walked, and Kosco and Clark had RBI singles, making the score 13-2. The Yankees added two in the ninth. Bill Robinson reached on an error and Dick Howser singled. A force out put men on first and third, a wild pitch scored one, and Ray Barker's single made the final 13-4.
WP: Chance (3-1). LP: Fritz Peterson (0-2). S: None.
Notes: Tovar was at second base in place of rookie Rod Carew, who missed a couple of days with a minor injury. Kosco was in right field in place of Tony Oliva, who missed a couple of weeks. Clark was at third base in place of Rich Rollins, who missed about three weeks. As we mentioned yesterday, Earl Battey missed much of the season due to injury, so Zimmerman was the regular catcher.
Quilici entered the game in the seventh and went to second base, with Tovar moving to short and Versalles leaving the game. Rich Reese replaced Killebrew at first base in the ninth.
There were a couple of interesting managerial decisions. In the first, with two out, a man on second, and the score 4-0, Zimmerman was intentionally walked to bring up Chance. Chance was a notoriously bad batter--he only had one year in which he batted over .100, and his lifetime average was .066. But Zimmerman was a pretty bad batter, too--his lifetime average was .204, and he was batting .133 at this time. So yes, you were bringing up a worse batter, but it seems like if you don't have confidence that your pitcher can get a batter like Zimmerman out, you probably shouldn't be using that pitcher in the first place.
In the bottom of the sixth, the Twins led 6-2. Zimmerman led off with a single and Chance was allowed to bat. Maybe he was supposed to bunt--the play-by-play doesn't say that, it simply says that he reached on an error. But Chance came out of the game to start the seventh, with Al Worthington coming in to pitch. Maybe if the score had stayed 6-2, Chance was going to pitch the seventh, but when it went to 9-2 Sam Mele decided to give him a break and use Worthington instead.
Peterson did not get out of the first inning. The walk to Chance was the last straw, and he was removed in favor of Jim Bouton. Bouton then pitched the next 5.1 innings of relief.
This is the first time random.org gave us back-to-back games from the same year. It has also given us the same opponent three times in a row.
Record: The Twins were 6-10, in tenth (last) place in the American League, four games behind Detroit. They would finish 91-71, tied for second, one game behind Boston.
The Yankees were 9-7, tied for second place in the American League, one game behind Detroit. They would finish 72-90, in ninth place, twenty games behind Boston.