1987: The Minnesota Twins overpowered St. Louis, 10 – 1, in the opening game of the World Series. It was the first World Series game played indoors. Dan Gladden’s grand slam capped a seven-run fourth inning. Frank Viola, whose brother got married the same day, was the winning pitcher.
Oct 06
I don’t have anything else to say about game 163 II, except wow. Was it the greatest baseball game in Metrodome history? Hard to rank it above Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, but it was certainly up there.
The AP wrap. And the mlb.com summary, just for kicks.
Fangraphs has the Twins win probability throughout tonight’s game. Wildly fluctuating.
The Twins were the 3rd straight home team to win a tie-breaker. And the second to play in two. And the only team to play in one in back to back seasons. Meanwhile, the Tigers collapse was historic. Joe Mauer was exhilarated, Twins fans are euphoric and pooped, Torii Hunter is rooting for the Twins to beat the Yankees and at least one person says Michael Cuddyer should be the MVP. Also, Miguel Cabrera is sorry.
The fond farewell to baseball at the Mall of America Field at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, will happily have to wait for at least a few more days. The place won’t die, as Joe Posnanski writes. (Posnanski’s post, along with being generally amusing, also resurrects an old Dan Quisenberry quote about the dome from back in the day. “I don’t think there are any good uses for nuclear weapons but, then, this might be one.”)
Oct 01
Well well well. An interesting final two games in Detroit. I was going to ignore the actual, you know, games here until the regular season start in 2010, but its kind of hard to ignore what’s gone on the last couple of days. First up, the afternoon tilt in Detroit:
Nate Robertson hit Denard Span in the 3rd, Scott Baker returned the favor in the 4th by hitting Marcus Thames (and went inside on him again in the 5th. Not a huge deal, though I’m sure the tempers were surging, given the import of the series and the intensity of the games. And that brings us to Jose Mijares in the bottom of the 8th. After sailing a pitch behind Adam Everett, both teams were warned. Next inning, Jeremy Bonderman hits the first batter on the first pitch and he’s tossed in a hurry. Delmon is pissed, not at Bonderman, but at Mijares. Watch the video here. The Twins win 8-3 and (barely) keep their playoff hopes alive.
A few quotes from the Twins and some other news after the jump.
Sep 30
1967: Boston beats the Twins 6 – 4 to tie Minnesota for first place. Carl Yastrzemski’s 3-run home run gives him the American League-lead with 44th, but Harmon Killebrew answers with his 44th for the losers. Meanwhile, Detroit, which had games rained out on the 28th and 29th, plays two with the Angels. Mickey Lolich wins the opener, 5 – 0, his 3rd straight shutout, and Detroit takes a seemingly safe 6 – 2 lead into the 8th inning of the nitecap. The Angels then bat around, scoring six runs, to hand Detroit a devastating 8 – 6 loss. Detroit now trails Minnesota and Boston by a half-game.
1968: Cal Ermer is dismissed as manager of the Twins.
1979: Minnesota’s Jerry Koosman defeats Milwaukee 5 – 0 on the final day of the season for his 20th win of the year. It is the only time the Brewers are shut out the entire year, as they fail to tie a record set by the Yankees in 1932. The Brew Crew scored in 213 straight games.
1981: In the last ML game at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium, Kansas City clinches at least a tie for the American League West 2nd-half title with a 5 – 2 win over the Twins. Next season, the Twins will play in the brand-new Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, MN.
2008: The White Sox complete their unlikely run to the postseason by blanking the Minnesota Twins 1-0 in a one-game playoff to determine the winner of the AL Central division. The White Sox tied the Twins in the standings by winning a make-up game one day earlier, forcing today’s contest. John Danks pitches 8 scoreless innings for the win, while Jim Thome homers off loser Nick Blackburn to lead off the 7th inning for the game’s only run.
(Much of this information comes from baseball-reference.com’s bullpen. See copyright information here.)
Sep 28
A few random Twins related tidbits.
A lot of Twins fans get on Gardy, but you can count Sparky Anderson among his fans. Anderson pulled Gardenhire aside for a little chat in Detroit and Gardy had this to say: “”I was in awe, he really likes what we do here. That was pretty cool. It was honestly one of those times when you just melt.”
And Jeff Passan checks in with a nice column about Gardy this week too.
USA Today has two articles about the Twins stadiums today. One about “fancy” new Target Field and one about the Metrodome. I’ll be the first to agree with Ozzie Guillen’s opinion of the Dome, but a lot of cool things took place there.
And speaking of Target Field, the Star Tribune has an interesting article about the impact the current lending environment is having on development around the new park. If you’re into that kind of thing.
mlb.com brings us a good little profile of Max Kepler-Rozycki, the 16 year old from Germany that the Twins gave the biggest bonus for a European free agent to this summer. It’ll be interesting to watch his development, and I’m sure we’ll have a few years to watch.
In minor league news, this is about a week old now, but the Twins have let go of Rochester Red Wings manager Stan Cliburn.
Oct 03
To back up a little on my post the other day about the Twins having home field advantage at the Metrodome, I suppose I should attempt to establish that the Twins do have some kind of demonstrable home field advantage (or at least a greater history of success at home than on the road) before I try to figure out what causes it. So here it is, home/road win differentials in the American League since 2002:
