Post Last Updated: September 28, 2016
I shall stab at thee from hell, Jamie Quirk.
1978 Issue - a K.C. Royals farm team
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Al Williams thought bubble:
"So you think pitching to
Senor Pat Tabler with the
bases loaded is scary, amigo?
I was a Freedom Fighter.
And you disgust me."
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The Twins learned the hard way what every farmer & Confucius knows:
"Don't count your chickens until they're hatched." I suspect it would have been
one hell of an accomplishment to get past the Detroit Tigers in the League
Championship Series. Detroilet flushed everyone that season.
New story/Photo above Santa Ana Orange County Register
The Tribe chased Viola with 4 runs before Rick Lysander spelled him, setting up the Julio Franco at-bat. It was a grounder to Gaetti - and with success smiling him in the face, The Rat flinched. He threw the ball in the dirt to Hrbek at first, allowing Jerry Willard to score the 5th run of the inning. Then two more plated before Pete Filson put the tourniquet on matters, inducing a pop fly to Hrbek. 7 runs, 6 hits, 1 error, and 1 seething Twin. Gary Gaetti famously remarked later: "It's hard to throw with both hands around your throat." The hyper-passionate third baseman would get his day of redemption - but this was not it. Davis would come on to give up the tying run on a homer by Joe Carter in the 8th(number two for the day), and he stayed in long enough to walk what would turn out to be the eventual winning run in the 9th, pushed across by a Brett Butler single off Ed Hodge. The Twins were thus eliminated with two games left to play. They then lost on Saturday and Sunday, by scores of 6-4 and 7-4. Season over.
Gardner's bringing in Davis again?
You can't be serious!"
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Truthfully, lots of Twins choked, bombed, folded and fizzled in that loss, maybe the ugliest in the team's history! That 11-10 blown loss was a seminal date in the history of this future-world champion team; the next one on the calendar would be the first game Tom Kelly ever skippered for the Twins (9/12/86); another to follow would be the trading away of the albatross that was Davis (8/13/86) to the Cubs; still another would be the addition of Jeff Reardon and Dan Gladden before the beginning of the 1987 season. The Twins organization in 1984 could take pride in Harmon Killebrew, newly elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The ownership turnover that summer of Calvin Griffith to Carl Pohlad offered a new beginning. And then there was that oddly-shaped rookie center fielder who had begun to capture the imagination of Twins fans...
Lest one forgets, the 1984 Cleveland roster was stocked with some pretty fine, young talent. Any team that had Joe Carter, Mel Hall, Andre Thornton, Twin-Killer Pat Tabler, Rick Sutcliffe, Julio Franco and Brett Butler as emerging players, along with vets Bert Blyleven and Mike Hargrove was, indeed, NOT the Little Sisters of the Poor. The much maligned Davis' blown saves 13 (game logs) dwarfed the next closest candidate of Twins Pitching Goats, Matt Capps (game logs) and his mere 9 in 2011. Just to dredge up some long suppressed memories for you long-time Twins fans...
Brett Butler and Joe Carter, ca. 1984 |
As Herb Carneal would say: "...And the count rides along." - TT
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