April 18, 1969: Billy Martin makes home debut as Twins manager

Billy Martin preferred to make points with his fists, but the weapon of choice in his home opener as a major-league manager was The Blade.

Martin had prepped all his life to be a big-league manager. He’d been a major-league player and coach, a minor-league manager and a student ready to learn from an assortment of teachers.

Shortly after the end of the 1968 season, Twins owner Calvin Griffith fired manager Cal Ermer and made Martin the manager.

The waiting was over. This was 1969 and it was his year to put all that knowledge and aggression to work.

As a player, scout, coach, and manager in the Twins system, Martin had a deep knowledge of personnel.

And one of his favorites was Tom Hall, a 21-year-old left-handed pitcher whose weight was generously listed at 149 pounds. Martin had spent the 1968 season managing the Denver Bears, the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate. The team finished with a 65-50 record under Martin after he took over from Johnny Goryl in May, and Hall was quickly establishing himself as a starter who could throw multiple pitches for strikes.

Nicknamed The Blade because of his razor-like physique, Hall was at his early-season best against the Angels.

As a former infielder, Martin was well aware of the Twins’ weakness at shortstop. Incumbent Jackie Hernandez was made available to Kansas City in the expansion draft, and Martin helped engineer the trade of Jim Merritt, a left-handed starter, to Cincinnati for shortstop Leo Cardenas. In Martin’s plans, Hall was ready to supplant Merritt in the Twins’ starting rotation that included Jim Perry, Jim Kaat, Dean Chance, and Dave Boswell.

The Twins opened on the road, losing their first four games. They followed that with three victories on the West Coast, setting the stage for the home opener.

Martin looked on appreciatively from the home dugout as a crowd of 22,857 turned out for the opener. It was the third biggest home opener for the Twins since they moved to Minnesota in 1961.

Hall allowed just two hits in a 6-0 Twins victory while securing the first shutout of his 10-year major-league career. Over his first 21⅔ innings, he allowed just one earned run.

His complete game was the first for a Twins pitcher in 1969, although Kaat had pitched 11 innings in the Twins’ 17-inning loss to Kansas City in the opening series.

The only hits allowed by Hall were a first-inning triple by Jim Fregosi and a seventh-inning single by Lou Johnson.

Cardenas, the player many of the fans had come to see, singled off shortstop Fregosi’s glove in the fourth inning to score Harmon Killebrew from second with the first run of the game, and Frank Quilici singled in another run.

Four straight singles off knuckleball specialist Eddie Fisher raised the Twins’ lead to 4-0 in the sixth with Bob Allison and George Mitterwald each driving home a run.

Martin’s strategy was to use speed and surprise to spark the offense and rattle the opposing defense. No one expected that speed to come from slugger Killebrew, but no one was exempt from Martin’s speed edict. Twice Killebrew reached second on throwing errors by California infielders after beating out infield singles, and he scored easily from second on Cardenas’ single after Killebrew had walked to start the fourth and taken second on a groundout.

In the 1969 season, Killebrew recorded eight of his career 19 stolen bases, often as the caboose behind Rod Carew, Cesar Tovar, or both.

Rich Reese, as often happened during the year, replaced Killebrew as a pinch-runner at second and scored when Angels left fielder Rick Reichardt misplayed Tony Oliva’s single in the eighth inning.

The hit was Oliva’s second of the game and eighth in his last 12 at-bats. After going an uncharacteristic 0-for-10 in the second and third games of the season, Oliva went 15-for-38 to raise his batting average to .395, second only to catcher John Roseboro’s .429.

Killebrew’s two infield singles in three at-bats raised his batting average to .267. Carew was the only Twins starter held hitless in the game, but he was still.385 at the end of the game.

After the game Martin credited Carew, Cardenas, and Oliva with making hit-saving plays.

Hall’s pitch count climbed in the sixth and seventh innings and Martin sent pitching coach Early Wynn to the mound, but Martin said he was not contemplating a change.  “I know Hall from Denver last year, where I saw him pitch out of jam situations,” Martin said. “That’s what I like about him … the ability to pitch through trouble,”

Meanwhile, in the Angels’ clubhouse, manager Bill Rigney, after a closed-door session with his players, was less impressed with Hall than he was critical of his own team.

“We gave up. We went home,” Rigney told Los Angeles Times beat writer Ross Newhan. “We were awful … flat … dead. …

“I told them that they played like a bunch of old men. I told them that when they got behind they simply quit.

“Hell, that’s the time when you’ve got to be a real player. We just packed our bags and went home.”1

When asked about Hall’s limiting his team to two hits, Rigney said, “Tom who? His name must be Mandrake. He’s like a magician. My guys acted like they’ve never seen a curve before.”2

Hall was selected in the third round by the Twins in the January 1966 draft. Because of his size he attracted little interest at either Riverside High or Riverside Community College in Southern California.

“The Twins,” he said, “were the only team to talk to me. I was disappointed that the Dodgers didn’t come around. They were my favorites.”

While Hall’s college credentials didn’t attract wide interest, his curve and control impressed Twins scout Jess Flores, who pitched for the Angels when they played in the Pacific Coast League.3

Based upon urging from Flores, the Twins signed Hall and he moved quickly through the system, compiling a 31-13 record as he moved rapidly from Sarasota to Orlando, Wisconsin Rapids, Charlotte, and Denver.

Promoted to the Twins near the end of the 1968 season he won two of three decisions while compiling a 2.43 earned-run average.

“He’s going to be a fine pitcher,” Martin said.4

“Hell,” Rigney joked, “he’s a regular black Whitey Ford. He’s going right into the Hall of Fame.”5

TWINS TOPICS

Hall finished the 1969 season with an 8-7 record and a 3.33 ERA. The shutout was one of three in his 10-year major-league career in which he was 52-33.

Merritt, traded to the Reds to make room for Hall, went 17-9 in 1969 and became a 20-game winner the next year. He battled arm troubles for the final five years of his big-league career, in which his won-lost record was 7-24.

Cardenas played 160 games at short for Martin’s 1969 Twins, hitting .280 with 10 home runs and 70 runs batted in.

Rigney’s frustrations only intensified. The team’s only manager since its 1961 inception, he was gone a month after the Twins series. His team was mired in a 10-game losing streak with a record of 11-28 when he was fired.  Rigney had managed the Minneapolis Millers in 1954 and 1955 at Nicollet Park, their home before Met Stadium. When the popular Martin was fired at the end of the 1969 season, Rigney succeeded him. He won the American League West title in 1970, losing to the Baltimore Orioles for the AL pennant. He came back in 1971 and was fired in 1972 in favor of former Twins infielder Frank Quilici.

Willie Peterson, the Twins organist since they moved to Minnesota, died the day before the home opener after a long illness. For many years he was the answer to a popular trivia question: “Who was the only man to play for both the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings?”6

(Editor’s Note: Dave Mona, who wrote this story, was the Minneapolis Tribune beat reporter covering the Twins in 1969. His game account provided much of the material for this story.)

Notes

1 Ross Newhan, “‘We Quit,’ Rigney Storms After Loss,” Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1969: Part III, 2.

2 Newhan.

3 “Angels’ Fregosi ‘Dampens’ Pitching Success of Hall,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 19, 1969: 16.

4 Tom Briere, “Hall Puts Angels on Two-Hit ‘Diet’ for 6-0 Twins Win,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 19, 1969: 15.

5 Sid Hartman column, Minneapolis Tribune, April 19, 1969: 16.

6 “Willard Peterson, Twins’ Organist, Dies of Cancer,” Minneapolis Star, April 19, 1969: 3A.