This was five years after Metropolitan Stadium opened. The Met was built for the express purpose of getting big league ball. Legend has it we almost got the San Francisco Giants. Or the Cleveland Indians. Those scenarios would have been quite fine. I guess it wasn't a slam dunk to come to Minnesota. But when it finally happened, the Met was a plum for the owner. Remember the vast parking lot around it?
Not only did we get the bigs in '61, we gave the Yankees a run for their money in '62, then after two yawning summers, we garnered it all in the American League in '65. I was ten years old, in the prime of my boyhood affinity with baseball. A boy that age could never be bored by baseball. Our Twins entranced us and the players were bigger than life in our eyes.
As so often happens in sports, we got our hearts broken, first by losing Game 7 of the World Series, and then by failing to win another flag with that generation of players. The ghosts of the old Twins seemed to hover when we won the world championship in '87. Well, they did in my mind anyway.
So what happened in 1966? The season is buried in Twins history as undistinguished. We failed to repeat with the pennant. Our cast from '65 was intact and still mostly productive. The carryover of enthusiasm from '65 was not small, as we had the second highest attendance in the American League. Competitively we were no slouch. Quite to the contrary as we placed second in the A.L. with a record of 89-73.
Let's look at the magical June 9 game in which our trademarked power was never more on display. Our opponent was the Kansas City Athletics. We set a major league record with five home runs in the seventh inning. The blasts were nearly consecutive but there was a Sandy Valdespino ground out in there. First Rich Rollins homered, a two-run job. On came Zoilo Versalles, Tony Oliva, Don Mincher and Harmon Killebrew and all sent the ball over the fence. It was Hammerin' Harmon's second blast of the day. He hit two home runs in the first game my parents took me to at the Met, I think in '65 (against Baltimore).
Let's progress to July 21 of '66: Jim Merritt struck out seven straight batters in the middle innings: an A.L. record. On August 18 our heroes spun a triple play. Frank Malzone hit a grounder and the play went from Rollins to Cesar Tovar to Killebrew.
Jim Kaat, "Kitty," had a tremendous season with 25 pitching wins. Kaat was the Sporting News A.L. Pitcher of the Year. In a sport full of might-have-beens, let's ponder how Kaat could have carried the team for several seasons had he not been overworked at the end of the hard-fought 1967 pennant race. Our failure at the end of '67 stuck in my craw as a profound tragedy, not surprising for a boy in his early teens.
I now regret some of the emotional attachment I felt. It was unreasonable and it set me up for sadness. I'm sure I wasn't alone. Many of us in '87 bathed in redemption I'm sure, silly of course because sports success seems so out of proportion in our existence. We let it affect us as a way of dealing with the ennui in our lives, I would suggest.
Oliva led the league in hits in 1966. Killebrew had a homer total of 39. We had four players on the All-Star team.
The public learned many years later that the Twins of the late '60s had some morale issues. Owner Calvin Griffith, while having been a hero for bringing the team here from Washington D.C., was Neanderthal in his approach to running an organization. He felt players should be motivated by simply being in the big leagues. Times were changing and players were more able to consider other options in life.
The late '60s Twins had problems with cliques and conflicts, we eventually learned. Still, it's easy to think our '66 team had the potential to repeat '65. So, let's look for another factor besides the organization one for postulating. And actually that's easy. It's the acquisition via trade of Frank Robinson by the Baltimore Orioles. Twins fans ought to rue the day that happened.
Robinson left the National League for the A.L. when Baltimore pulled off the historic trade in December of '65. On the other end were Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun and Dick Simpson. The latter two names ended up as footnotes.
Pappas got a bad rap because he seemed not really able to deliver for Cincinnati. However, he seemed not much different than the pitcher he was before.
Robinson said he became fired up to prove that the Cincinnati top guy was wrong. Such was the stuff that could motivate players in those days, before money really came on strong to straighten things out "the American way." Jim Bouton of "Ball Four" book fame said his book might have been responsible for Carl Yastrzemski of Boston coming forward with a super season in 1970 after a pedestrian '69. Bouton had reported a perception of Yaz as having "a little dog" in him. Some Boston fans later told Bouton they felt the book did the trick - strange.
So, what did Robinson do for the Orioles in 1966? Well, he won the triple crown and led the Orioles to the pennant and world championship, the latter accomplished in the minimum four games over the Dodgers (the Twins' nemesis in '65). Remember the photo of Brooks Robinson celebrating at the end by appearing to fly right off the ground?
The Orioles would excel for years led by Mr. Frank Robinson, who sadly has passed on. Meanwhile our Twins were top tier but just couldn't replicate 1965. Perhaps us boys at the time developed a defeatist disposition. It was a dark decade with what our nation was doing in Vietnam. Baseball was wondrous escapism.
Congrats to the Orioles for all they accomplished back then. And, Frank Robinson RIP.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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