MINNESOTA 3, CHICAGO 0 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, June 30.

Batting stars:  Kent Hrbek was 2-for-4 with a double and a stolen base, his fourth.  Kirby Puckett was 2-for-4.

Pitching star:  Jack Morris pitched a complete game shutout, giving up six hits and a walk and striking out three.  He threw 107 pitches.

Opposition stars:  Jack McDowell pitched 7.1 innings, giving up three runs on nine hits and a walk and striking out five.  Robin Ventura was 2-for-4.

The game:  The White Sox got a pair of one-out singles in the second, but nothing came of it.  Meanwhile, the Twins did not get a baserunner until the fourth.  They got two-out singles that inning from  Puckett and Hrbek, followed by a Chili Davis walk to load the bases, but Brian Harper flied out to end the threat.

The Twins broke through in the fifth.  Gene Larkin led off with a single and scored on a Mike Pagliarulo double.  Scott Leius followed with a bunt single and Shane Mack hit a sacrifice fly, giving the Twins a 2-0 lead.  There was no more scoring until the eighth.  Puckett hit a one-out single and scored on Hrbek's double to make the score 3-0.

The second inning was the only time Chicago had more than one baserunner in an inning.

WP:  Morris (11-5).  LP:  McDowell (9-4).  S:  None.

Notes:  Shane Mack continued to replace Dan Gladden in left field, and in this game he batted first.  Al Newman and his .496 OPS played second in place of Chuck Knoblauch and batted second.  Larkin was in right field.  Leius was at shortstop in place of Greg Gagne.

Harper was 0-for-4 and was batting .325.  Puckett raised his average to .324.

Newman was batting .198.

Morris' ERA dropped to 3.60, the lowest it had been all season.  Over his last ten starts he had dropped more than two runs from his ERA, which had been 5.89 on May 8.  This was one of two complete game shutouts he had in the regular season.  The other would come on September 28 in Toronto.  In the month of June, he was 6-0, 2.25, 1.06 ERA.

This was one of only six starts Leius made at shortstop in 1991.

This game was played in just two hours and twelve minutes.  It snapped a four-game losing streak by the Twins.

Record:  The Twins were 45-31, in first place in the American League West, three games ahead of Texas.