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Frank Quilici must have been a milliner in a previous life because he wore so many hats with the Minnesota Twins. From player to coach to manager to broadcaster, Quilici came up from working-class roots in Chicago to become a baseball lifer with the Twins’ logo tattooed on his heart. He was also the only […]

Whenever American League President Joe Cronin was asked to rank big-league third basemen, he always gave the same answer: “Well, you start with Bluege.”1 Of course shortstop Cronin was referring to his old partner on the right side of the Washington Senators teams of the 1920s and ’30s, Ossie Bluege. At the 1970 World Series, […]

All right up there, drop down the ladder from your clubhouse. A new member is joining you. Henry, show him the secret handshake. Willie, educate him on the secret password. Babe, don’t hog all those s’mores. Junior, slide over a bit. Gentlemen, please welcome Jim Thome to the 600 Home Run Club. It may seem […]

Dick Gordon got his start by breaking a national story when he was in college, and parlayed that into a long career as a Minnesota sportswriter. His prodigious memory enabled him to recall facts long after the event happened, and his writing, while factual, contained enough embellishment to make it entertaining for the reader. Charles […]

On August 31, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower traveled approximately two miles from the White House to Griffith Stadium take in an afternoon of baseball featuring the Washington Senators and New York Yankees, whose star, Mickey Mantle, was in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home-run record. Mantle walloped his 47th round-tripper in the Yankees’ 6-4 victory, […]

The minds and memories of casual baseball fans often recall the names and exploits of pitchers who have performed brilliantly during a career peak or even a single shining season. Hall of Fame careers have been built around a few great years in succession and the awards and buzz that accompany these successes. At the […]

It’s an old story. A player comes on the scene, dazzles in his rookie year, and is gone seemingly as fast as he came. Then there’s Jimmie Hall. Hall burst on the scene with a bang with the Minnesota Twins in 1963. Actually, he had 33 of them, which broke Ted Williams’s AL record for […]

Tony Oliva stands at the forefront of an exceedingly select group – one that also includes Tany (Atanasio) Pérez, Rafael Palmeiro, and Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso. These are the few unrivaled candidates for recognition as the greatest major-league hitter ever to emigrate to the professional big time from the baseball-rich island nation of Cuba. Palmeiro (with […]

With their first-round pick in the 1978 amateur draft, the Minnesota Twins selected Lenny Faedo, a high-school shortstop from Tampa, Florida. Sixteen rounds later, the Twins selected Kent Hrbek, a first baseman from Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minnesota. Faedo and Hrbek both rose through the Twins farm system quickly. Faedo made his major-league debut […]

Camilo Pascual was one of the original Minnesota Twins. The hard-throwing Cuban right-hander with a big curveball was on the Washington Senators roster when the franchise moved to Minnesota for the 1961 season. In that first season in Minnesota, Pascual led the Twins with 15 wins, tied for the American League lead with eight shutouts, […]

A paid crowd1 of 28,922 settled in to watch a scheduled doubleheader between the Astros and Mets on a Wednesday afternoon. Less than a week before, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned safely in the spaceship Columbia, concluding the Apollo 11 mission and the historic walk on the moon. In 1969 the Mets […]

It sounds like a corny Hollywood movie. The home team has its back against the wall. It calls on its best pitcher, who bravely goes to the mound despite being sick. He not only wins the game, but hits a home run to boot. And if that’s not enough cornball for you, a friend had […]

The year 1971 was a good time to be a sports fan in Baltimore. The Baltimore Colts had won Super Bowl V earlier in the year, defeating Dallas 16-13. It was the Colts’ third NFL championship. Earlier in the spring, the Baltimore Bullets made it to the NBA finals before getting swept by Milwaukee. And […]

In late December 1959, it was widely published that Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith “had looked one million dollars in the eye and expressed no interest.” It was an offer not for his Washington franchise but for just two of his ballplayers, first baseman Harmon Killebrew and pitcher Camilo Pascual. One of those published reports […]

A good manager, like a good magician, always has a trick up his sleeve. But a true tactician has a trick up someone else’s sleeve. That’s how Cleveland skipper Birdie Tebbetts overcame the overpowering Jim Kaat and the first-place Twins on a night in June 1965 at Metropolitan Stadium, invoking an obscure rule about jersey […]

They called it the Chicago showdown. The Minnesota Twins, in first place in the American League since May 30, held a five-game lead over the Chicago White Sox, winners of 26 of 39 games leading up to a crucial two-game series between the two Midwestern contenders on September 8 and 9 at venerable Comiskey Park. […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers held a four-game lead over the San Francisco Giants with eight games left in the 1962 regular season and were cruising to a National League pennant. However, by the end of the next-to-last day of the season, Los Angeles had lost two to Houston and two to St. Louis and the […]

The Minnesota Twins rallied from a 7-1 deficit with three runs in the sixth inning and four runs in the seventh to top the Kansas City Athletics 10-8 in this Saturday afternoon game. The Twins outhit the A’s 14 to 5 and outhomered them 4 to 3. Twins pitchers struck out 12 batters but 10 […]

The Minnesota Twins returned home with their backs to the wall. They lost the first two games of the first American League Championship Series to the Baltimore Orioles. Both games had gone into extra innings. The Twins had the lead in the first game until the ninth when the Orioles tied the score. Baltimore eventually […]

It was July 14, 1970, in Cincinnati, where the 41st Major League All-Star Game was played at the brand-new Riverfront Stadium in front of 51,838 fans. It was an era of turmoil. Just 2½ months earlier, President Richard Nixon had announced that the United States had invaded Cambodia to hunt out the Viet Cong in […]

It was a “perfect” Saturday night for baseball: 19 degrees and sleeting, winds at 30 miles per hour, gusting to 45. On the eve of the 1982 season, the Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies were set for an exhibition game to open the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. “Dome” was […]

The Minnesota Twins were scheduled to open their 1962 home season on Friday, April 13. The date proved unlucky for a ballgame as six inches of snow blanketed the Twin Cities, forcing a postponement to the next day. It took a flamethrower, sprinklers, and a helicopter hovering over the outfield to melt the snow and […]

The 1970 Boston Red Sox had a trio of avid anglers—Reggie Smith, Carl Yastrzemski, and Gary Peters—who carried fishing tackle on road trips. An August swing through Minnesota gave the trio a chance to relax on a lake in Spicer, about 100 miles from Bloomington, Minnesota, where they would start a three-game series against the […]

Jim Manning’s career as a big-league pitcher lasted only 17 days from first game to last. What makes it noteworthy was Manning’s age at the time. He was 18 years and 268 days old when he first took the mound for Minnesota on April 15, 1962. Sixty years later, he remained the youngest player in […]