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As the 1957 season was in its final week, there was still time for Ted Williams to squeeze in one final home run and for that home run to win one more game for the Boston Red Sox. Of the 38 homers he hit in 1957, eight were game-deciding home runs.1   This one came […]

Game One of the 1965 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins was as noteworthy for who didn’t play as it was for who did. New York Yankee pinstripes were nowhere to be found in the fall classic for the first time in six years. The Bombers finished sixth in 1965 […]

The conclusion of a three-game series in Minnesota the first weekend in 1967 featured two teams fighting for the top spot in the American League and two of the top pitchers in baseball. The Minnesota Twins, second-place finishers in 1966, had to go through a managerial change in June to climb into the race. The […]

The Minnesota Twins had grabbed first place in their division by the end of April 1969. They stayed atop the standings until May 15, when they lost to the Baltimore Orioles to fall behind the Oakland A’s. The team returned to Metropolitan Stadium in hopes of reclaiming the top spot in the AL West. The […]

“There is no prettier sight in baseball than watching Oliva, when he is right, swinging the bat.”1   Coming into a June 29 doubleheader against the Kansas City Royals in 1969, Minnesota Twins outfielder Tony Oliva was on an eight-game hitting streak, having gone 17 for his last 36. “When I swing the bat like […]

Although the 1961 Twins had finished their inaugural season in Minnesota with a won-lost record of 70-90, seventh in the American League, Twins owner Calvin Griffith was optimistic heading into the 1962 season. “We’re bound to show youthful improvement. Established American League performers Pascual, Ramos, Kralick, Battey, Killebrew and Allison haven’t reached their peaks yet. They’ll get better […]

Vida Blue set the baseball world ablaze during the first half of the 1971 season. The 21-year-old Oakland Athletics left-hander from Louisiana was playing in his third big-league season. Blue debuted in 1969 but pitched less than 50 innings in the 1969 and 1970 campaigns. After a 1971 Opening Day loss to the Washington Senators, […]

Only two of Murray Wall’s 91 major-league games were played with a team other than the Boston Red Sox. The first came on the Fourth of July, 1950, when the former All-American pitcher at the University of Texas1 made his big-league debut in a late-inning mop-up role with the crosstown Boston Braves. The second came […]

The 1969 expansion of the major leagues and the splitting of leagues into two divisions worked well for the Minnesota Twins, even though the front office was concerned about the impact on attendance by getting fewer games against popular teams like Detroit, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. However, the Twins were being placed in a […]

The opening game of the 1970 American League playoffs1 featured a pair of 24-game winners: Baltimore’s Mike Cuellar, who had tied with Denny McLain for the Cy Young Award the year before, and Minnesota’s Jim Perry, who would be the American League recipient in 1970.2 A 23-mile-per-hour wind blew out of the northwest at Minnesota’s Metropolitan […]

A paltry crowd of 2,570 fans showed up at Metropolitan Stadium as the two franchises formerly known as the Washington Senators squared off in their 1974 season finale. Neither team was playoff bound, though the Texas Rangers had challenged the Oakland A’s in the American League West for much of the season, and the pitching […]

“The Little Man makes a big difference. He can do a lot of things.” – Bob Lemon, Kansas City Royals manager, July 9, 19711   The Minnesota Twins hosted the Kansas City Royals for a three-game series the weekend before the All-Star Game in July 1971. Things were going badly for Minnesota; after two American […]

Camilo Pascual had good reason to be anxious about his start for the Minnesota Twins against the Baltimore Orioles on the final day of the 1962 season. In his ninth major-league season, it was the closest he had come to winning 20 games in a season. With 19 wins under his belt for the first […]

Opening Day is always a celebration, especially when it’s your first one. Day two is usually just another day. For fans of the new team in town, though, excitement levels were still high, especially after they won their first game. The dignitaries had moved on, but there were still 161 games to be played, and […]

After winning the American League Most Valuable Player Award with the Chicago White Sox in 1972, Dick Allen needed some rest. “Toward the end of the season, I was completely exhausted, a nervous wreck,” he admitted. “I’d been carrying the team for months. … I didn’t think I could play anymore.”1 The newly adopted designated-hitter […]

The Minnesota Twins surprised almost everyone by jumping from 70 wins in 1961 – the team’s first season after relocating from Washington, DC – to 91 wins in 1962; advancing from seventh place to second in the 10-team American League.1 The 1962 Twins had brief stays in first place in May and June, then chased […]

The magic number was one. A Minnesota win or Baltimore loss would assure the 1965 Twins of the American League pennant. Baltimore was in no mood to cooperate. They had swept a doubleheader on Saturday night and they were looking for their seventh consecutive win as they took the field on Sunday, September 26, against […]

Pete Mackanin has spanned the Western Hemisphere as a player, coach, and manager from Canada to Venezuela. He may be best remembered as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies from 2015 to 2017, although Bob Fowler of the Minneapolis Star once referred to him as a “non-fiction Casey at the Bat” for a feat Mackanin performed […]

“Career Performance” is a term that is quite often used, and for pitcher Casey Cox, his career performance came on July 7, 1969. Casey was pitching for Washington against the Cleveland Indians. The perennial second-division Senators were having a pretty good year and their victory that night put them within 3½ games of second place […]

Earl Jesse Battey, Jr. was one of the top defensive catchers in the American League in the early 1960s. His Twins teams were in contention for the pennant in 1962 and 1967, and won the pennant in 1965, losing the World Series to Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. Battey was […]

Mel Nelson entered professional baseball as a right-handed-hitting outfielder, spent parts of six seasons in the major leagues as a left-handed pitcher, and when his playing days were over served as a scout for several teams. He spent more than half a century in professional baseball, including 17 years as a player. Although he didn’t […]

Two words: Señor Smoke. Hernandez/Lopez. Things Change. Take your pick of the trio of descriptions that defined Aurelio Lopez’s baseball career. Things change. That’s a truism that, in its pithy wisdom, fails to reveal that perceptions of the past — even the recent past — can vary so widely from those of contemporary observers. Ask […]

Three-time All-Star and 1959 Rookie of the Year Bob Allison was a feared slugger, an aggressive, daring baserunner, a versatile outfielder and first baseman with a powerful arm, and, above all, a competitive team player. He played his entire 13-year career (1958-1970) with the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins, helping transform a moribund franchise into a consistent […]

SABR Bibliography Committee Research Guide No. 1: Baseball Figures in Current Biography Editor’s note: This guide was first published by the SABR Bibliography Committee in 1986. To download the original in PDF form, click here. By Joseph Lawler June 1986 Current Biography is a reference service of the H. W. Wilson Company of New York, publishers […]