A couple of old Twins stories from Sports Illustrated’s Vault that are worth a read:
First, a profile of the Florida Instructional League written a week after an 18 year old Bert Blyleven pitched a complete game shut-out against the Cleveland Indians affiliate that won the Twins team the league championship. Blyleven would debut with the Twins the following year (1970), and pitch for a team that won it’s second AL West title in the first two years of the division’s existence. They were swept in the ALCS both years.From the article:
Now for eight innings he had allowed only one Indian to reach second, and that one he had promptly picked off base. Facing the top of the Cleveland order in the ninth, Blylevan did what pitchers only dream of doing in championship games. He struck out the side.
Fast? Another of those kids who, as the scouts say, can throw a Ping-Pong ball through an armored truck or a cocktail onion through a locomotive? Nope. Bert Blylevan throws a masterful curve ball. It brought him eight straight wins in a league that since 1965 has seen all four of its champions end up competing in the subsequent season’s World Series. Three of those teams—the Baltimore Orioles of 1966, the Detroit Tigers of 1968 and the New York Mets of 1969—won the Series, while the long-shot Boston Red Sox of 1967 came within the St. Louis Cards’ Bob Gibson of doing the very same thing. If past performances mean a thing, Twin fans in Bigfork, Fergus Falls, Elbow Lake and Minnehaha can sit back and wait for a pennant in 1970.
The Blyleven part of the story is only a few paragraphs, but the profile of the league as a whole is quite interesting.
I also came across a spring preview of the 1966 Twins team coming off of a 102 win season (still the only 100 win team in franchise history) and a World Series loss to the Dodgers and Sandy Koufax. A quote from manager Sam Mele on his plans for 1966:
“That is just the beginning,” said Mele. “We’re going to be even more aggressive in our thinking than we were last year, because the other clubs are going to bunt and steal and hit-and-run on us. We proved you can’t sit around and wait for a home run to win a ball game and a pennant.”
I can’t imagine Ron Gardenhire saying anything like that.
