MINNESOTA 1, CHICAGO 0 IN CHICAGO
Date: Saturday, August 27.
Batting stars: Rich Rollins was 3-for-4. Ted Uhlaender was 2-for-3.
Pitching star: Jim Kaat pitched a complete game shutout, giving up three hits and two walks and striking out seven.
Opposition star: Gary Peters pitched eight innings, giving up one run on eight hits and three walks and striking out five.
The game: Rollins hit a one-out single in the second. With two down, Bob Allison and Uhlaender hit back-to-back singles to bring home a run and put the Twins up 1-0.
And that was the only run there was. The only real White Sox threat came in the second, when Jerry Adair and John Romano hit consecutive one-out singles. Jim Hicks struck out and Lee Elia popped up, and Chicago did not get another hit the rest of the game. They did get a pair of two-out walks in the seventh, but Hicks grounded out to end the inning. The Twins got two on in the seventh and again in the eighth, but they did not score and Kaat made sure they didn't need to.
WP: Kaat (20-9). LP: Peters (11-10). S: None.
Notes: Cesar Tovar was at second base. Bernie Allen is listed as the starting second baseman, but he only played eighty-nine games there compared to Tovar's seventy-four, so it looks like the two basically shared the position. Of course, Tovar could play pretty much anywhere on the field.
Rollins was at third base with Harmon Killebrew at first. The normal lineup was for Don Mincher to be at first and Killebrew at third. It looks like the Twins essentially used a platoon, with Rollins at third and Killebrew at first against left-handers and Mincher at first and Killebrew at third against right-handers.
Tony Oliva was leading the team in batting at .314. He would end the season at .307.
Kaat would finish the season 25-13, 2.75, 1.07 WHIP. He led the league in wins, starts (41), complete games (19), and innings (304.2). Had there been separate AL and NL Cy Young Awards back then, he surely would've been in the running. As it was, though, there was only one Cy Young Award, and it went to Sandy Koufax, who was 27-9, 1.73, 0.99 WHIP and had 27 complete games.
Remarkably, Kaat had only three no-decisions all year.
I wonder when the last time was someone had twenty wins before September. Bob Welch in 1990 comes to mind, but there certainly may have been someone since then.
The Twins stranded ten men and went 1-for-9 with men in scoring position.
The Twins had nine hits and Chicago had three. All the hits were singles.
Record: The Twins were 69-61, in third place in the American League, fourteen games behind Baltimore. They would finish 89-73, in second place, nine games behind Baltimore.
The White Sox were 66-64, in sixth place in the American League, seventeen games behind Baltimore. They would finish 83-79, in fourth place, fifteen games behind Baltimore.