September 21, 1969: Killebrew’s perfect day not enough for Twins to beat Pilots, clinch division

The champagne was on ice while 15,443 waited to erupt after their Minnesota Twins defeated a Seattle Pilots team they had already beaten 11 times in 14 games, including eight of eight at Metropolitan Stadium. At 91-60 with an 11-game lead over the second-place Oakland A’s, the Twins saw that the clinching of the first-ever American League West Division title was merely a formality.1

Seattle was an expansion team made up of cast-offs led by manager Joe Shultz and made famous, or infamous, by pitcher Jim Bouton’s seminal book Ball Four, which chronicled the former All-Star’s time with a woeful Pilots team that finished their only season in Seattle in last place in the AL West at 64-98 and 33 games behind the Twins.2

The Pilots offense boasted former Twins first baseman Don Mincher, who helped Minnesota win a pennant in 1965. Mincher was pacing the Pilots with 23 homers and earned a spot on the AL All-Star team as a replacement for teammate Mike Hegan, who was battling a muscle pull. Third baseman Tommy Harper had a league-best 71 steals and a clear path to a stolen-base crown.3

The Twins were well-rounded and led on offense by Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, and Rich Reese. Killebrew went into the game leading the league with 134 runs batted in and 136 walks, and his 44 homers were just behind sluggers Frank Howard and Reggie Jackson, who had 46 apiece. Carew was leading the AL in hitting at .334, Oliva’s 185 hits and 38 doubles were both league bests, and Reese was hitting .321 with a .512 slugging percentage.

Minnesota manager Billy Martin sent Dean Chance to the mound to face career minor leaguer Bob Meyer. Chance had been one of the best pitchers in baseball from his first full season in 1962 to 1968, when he won 110 games and posted a 2.72 earned-run average, both of which were seventh best in all of baseball.4 He was the AL’s best pitcher in 1964 and easily won the Cy Young Award, and though limited by a frozen shoulder that kept him out of action in June and July, he was pitching to a 2.95 ERA in 14 starts heading into the September 21 contest.5

Meyer, a 30-year-old southpaw, was making only his fifth start of the season for Seattle after spending most of the year with the Iowa Oaks of the Triple-A American Association. Meyer was 8-11 with a 4.00 ERA in 27 games with the Oaks that capped off a nine-year minor-league career in which he went 62-80 with a 3.92 ERA in 225 games.6 Despite a less than impressive résumé that included three losses in four starts since joining Seattle in late August, Meyer had a respectable 3.04 ERA.

Harper led off with a single to center, then stole second. Steve Whitaker flied to left but Danny Walton’s bunt to third went for an infield single and the Pilots had runners on first and second (Harper didn’t advance on the single) with Steve Hovley at the plate. Hovley was slugging only .379 with 3 homers and 18 RBIs in 80 games, so Harper and Walton took off on a double steal and made it safely, putting both in scoring position with only one out.7 However, Hovley lined to shortstop Leo Cardenas, who snared the liner and stepped on second base for an inning-ending double play.

Meyer began the bottom of the first by getting Cesar Tovar on a grounder to short and striking out Carew, but made a mistake when he knocked Killebrew off the plate with a high and inside fastball. Meyer followed with a strike that Killebrew belted into the left-field seats to stake the Twins to a 1-0 lead. Oliva flied to right to end the inning. 

Chance and Meyer traded goose eggs in the second and third innings. Chance fanned Mincher and got catcher Jerry McNertney to pop to short and John Donaldson to ground to third. Meyer struck out Bob Allison and got Rick Renick on a foul pop to first before George Mitterwald singled to left. McNertney picked off the Twins catcher and the game went to the third.

Chance had an easy time in the top of the third, retiring John Kennedy on a grounder to third, Meyer on a bouncer to first, and Harper on a fly to center. Meyer also retired the side in order on Cardenas’s fly to center, Chance’s strikeout, and Tovar’s fly to right. The Pilots scored twice in the top of the fourth to go up 2-1. Walton followed Whitaker’s strikeout with a walk and went to second on Hovley’s single to right. Mincher walked to load the bases and Walton scored on McNertney’s grounder to shortstop that forced Mincher at second. Donaldson singled up the middle to plate Hovley, then stole second, but Kennedy struck out looking to end the threat.

Minnesota tied the game in the bottom of the inning when Killebrew followed another Carew strikeout with his second homer of the game, a shot that cleared the left-field wall by 40 feet. Meyer kept the score at 2-2 by coaxing Oliva to ground to short and fanning Allison for the second time in as many at-bats.

Harper singled off Chance with one out in the fifth, but that was the righty’s only blemish as Meyer popped to first, and Whitaker and Walton grounded to second and third, respectively. Meyer allowed another single to Mitterwald in the bottom of the inning, but Cardenas grounded to short and the Pilots turned an inning-ending double play.

Seattle took a 3-2 lead in the top of the sixth with help from the Twins. Hovley led off with a single to left and went to third on Mincher’s single to right. McNertney grounded to third. Hovley took off for home and Renick fired to the plate. Hovley reversed course and Mitterwald tagged him out as he ran him back toward third, then tagged out Mincher, who was trying to advance on the play. Suddenly the Pilots had a runner on first with two outs and the light-hitting Donaldson at the plate.8

Donaldson bunted to third for a hit and McNertney scored when Renick threw past Killebrew at first for an error. Kennedy grounded to third to end the inning and the Twins wasted little time tying the game at 3-3 in their half.

Career pinch-hitter Frank Kostro led off the bottom of the sixth in place of Chance and struck out looking.9 Meyer hit Tovar with a pitch and the Twins’ center fielder took the game into his own hands by stealing second and third with Carew at the plate. Carew singled to right to drive Tovar home with the tying run and Killebrew recorded his third hit of the game, a single to left that sent Carew to second. Oliva struck out and McNertney gunned down Carew attempting to steal third on the third strike, and the game went to the seventh knotted at 3-3.

Lefty starter Jim Kaat took the mound for Minnesota for his seventh relief appearance of the season and retired the side in order, getting Greg Goossen, hitting for Meyer, on a fly to left, Harper on a lineout to first, and Whitaker on a grounder to second.10 Bob Locker, acquired from the Chicago White Sox for pitcher Gary Bell on June 8, entered the game for the Pilots boasting a 2.19 ERA in 46 games since joining the team.

Locker retired pinch-hitter Ted Uhlaender, batting for Allison, on a grounder to second and Reese, hitting for Renick, on a grounder to first before surrendering Mitterwald’s third single of the game with two outs. Cardenas fanned to end the bottom of the seventh.

In the top of the eighth, Reese went to first base, Killebrew moved to third, and Uhlaender took over in left. Kaat made quick work of Seattle, wrapping strikeouts of Walton and Mincher around a Hovley grounder to short.

The Twins had a chance to take the lead in the bottom of the eighth when Kaat led off with a single and went to third when Mincher made an error on Tovar’s bunt. With runners at first and third and no outs, Schultz called on lanky southpaw John O’Donoghue. Carew grounded to second and was thrown out at first, but Tovar advanced to give Minnesota two runners in scoring position with one out. O’Donoghue walked Killebrew intentionally to load the bases and the move paid off when Oliva tapped back to the mound for an inning-ending double play, pitcher-to catcher-to first.

In the top of the ninth, Kaat quickly dispatched McNertney on a popup to first and Donaldson on a grounder to first that Reese fielded and threw to Kaat for the out. “But Seattle shortstop John Kennedy refused to follow the script and set upon a new personal frontier as a power hitter,” wrote Dave Mona in the Minneapolis Tribune.11

Kennedy hit a fly ball that just cleared the left-field wall to give Seattle a 4-3 lead. It was his fourth and last homer of the season. Kaat fanned O’Donghue to end the inning, but the Missouri native evened his record at 2-2 when Uhlaender grounded back to him, Reese grounded to first, and Mitterwald flied to right to end the game. 

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

Notes 

1 Prior to 1969, the American and National Leagues had no divisions and the teams that finished in first place in each league won the pennant and faced off in the World Series.

2 The Pilots moved to Milwaukee in 1970 and became the Brewers, but Bouton didn’t go with them because he’d been traded to the Houston Astros on August 24, 1969, for pitchers Roric Harrison and Dooley Womack.

3 Harper easily led the American League in stolen bases with 73. Oakland’s Bert Campaneris finished second with 62.

4 I used a minimum of 1,150 innings, which is slightly higher than the minimum of 1,134 for qualifiers (7 seasons x 162 games per season).

5 The Cy Young Award was still being given to only one pitcher in 1964 regardless of league, and Chance earned 17 votes, finishing ahead of Chicago Cubs pitcher Larry Jackson (2 votes), and Los Angeles Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax (1). Frozen shoulder, also known as adhesive capsulitis, is a “painful condition in which the shoulder becomes stiff and inflamed, and movement becomes limited.” my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15359-frozen-shoulder.

6 Meyer had a brief stint with the Brewers after the Pilots moved to Milwaukee in 1970, but lasted only 10 games before calling it a career.

7 Seattle’s success rate through Game 152 on September 20, 1969, was 74.7 percent on 160 steals in 214 attempts. They ended the season with 167 steals in 226 attempts and a 73.9 percent success rate.

8 Going into the game, Donaldson was hitting .237 and slugging .290, and the run he drove in in the fourth inning was only his 19th RBI in 317 at-bats.

9 Kostro’s strikeout came in his last major-league at-bat. He played parts of seven seasons in the majors, appeared in 266 games, and 153 of those appearances came as a pinch-hitter. He had 192 plate appearances in 53 games as a third baseman.

10 Kaat had started 286 of his first 316 career appearances (90.5 percent) from 1959 to 1968, and 316 of 352 (89.8 percent) from 1959 to September 17, 1969, his last appearance before the September 21 game.

11 Dave Mona, “Seattle Rally Stalls Twins 4-3,” Minneapolis Tribune, September 22, 1969: 37.