Game 6 Twins Bats Stay Hot

 The homerdome is living up to it's name as the Twins "really destroy the White Sox 16 to 5." The Twins are a game and a half ahead of the Brewers in the AL Central Division. Remember this was the 1994 season, the first with the Wild Card and the 3 division format and the Brewers were still three years removed from moving to the NL Central. 

Pedro Munoz had a promising talent, the dreaded "potential" tag that he never quite lived up to. In 517 Major League Games he hit a respectable .273 with 67 HR and 252 RBI. One of those HR, and 4 of those RBI will be discussed a little bit later in this post. Munoz played in over half the games in 94, thanks to the strike, and his average hit a high point of .320 in late July. I said in my initial post that if I had any interactions with the players or attended games that they played it that I would mention them in the blog to make it more interesting. Well Pedro was one of those players. I have kept a running log of games that I attended in person and to date have seen 1200 plus different players in almost 100 MLB games attended. Let me take you back to June 12, 1991.

The 90 91 school year was my Senior Year in High School. I played baseball in the Winona School District since 7th grade, mostly rode the pine, but still was out there because of the love of the game. Our coach, who had been a scout for the Reds in the midwest, had decided to hang up his spikes after the 91 season. We made it to the state tournament, as a resilient group as the year before we were probably a more talented team, but pulled together to give Coach Raddatz a memorable send off. When we got the agenda for the Tourney part of the plan was if we won our first round game, we would attend the Twins v Yankees game at the Metrodome on the 12th, I will talk more about that at a later time. We got bounced by a Saint Cloud team in the first round and talked Coach into letting us stay to attend the game. The Twins were in the midst of their 15 game winning streak that year and a hot young pitcher named Erickson was pitching on the 13th. Some of the guys were talking about coming back up the next day as well to watch Scotty, but not sure if that happened. Regardless, 4 of us got tickets behind home plate, and in the first inning the Twins had mounted a rally Knoblauch singled to right, he advanced to 3rd on a wild pitch. Mack grounded out, and Knobby stayed at 3rd. Puckett walked, Chili Davis knocked in Knobby. Davis was forced out on Harper's ground ball and Puckett advanced to 3rd. Hrbek walked. Bases loaded 2 out. I turned to our team scorekeeper and said "Watch this home run."

A couple pitches later the Twins are up 5 to 0 and Pedro Munoz has his first career grand slam. It was then featured on the back of his 1992 topps card and it was the first time I was able to say "I was at that game!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Image
 Back in 1994 I started my obsession with baseball video games, when in late spring of that year I picked up my copy of Sega's World Series Baseball off of layaway at the Kmart store that I worked at. A few years earlier some of my dorm mates at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT, had wasted countless hours playing Sports Talk Baseball and Football, but this was the start of what continues to this day.  Living in and growing up in MN of course my brother and I were Twins fans, and so setting up the season of course we picked the Twins. (Once we figured out that we could only play one season at a time, we decided to each play every other game.) By 1994 I had pretty much stopped collecting cards, until... we started getting boxes, at work, from a company in Texas called "Vintage Sports Cards" And what they were was basically full boxes of Junk wax era cards that ranged anywhere from 10 bucks up to 30 bucks depending on brand. Some of the boxes I picked up included 1988
Read more

Brewers Baseball 1970 Season Hitting

Image
  The first year of Brewers baseball in 1970 was interesting to say the least. Leaving Spring Training and not knowing whether or not they would be playing a sophomore season in Seattle or head east to Milwaukee or they would all become free agents. On April 1, the moving trucks spent the night in Las Vegas and awaited word on which way they would be going. Later in the week the trucks spent two days in Provo Utah, still waiting word. Finally Milwaukee car salesman Bud Selig and a team of investors came through to bring the Pilots east. They spent the season in the AL west, and finished 65-97 and 1. The Brewers finished 33 games behind the first place Twins. But 5 years after the Braves left for Atlanta, MLB had come back to Milwaukee. Selig was a major factor in that move. Bud had been a minority owner in the Braves, and had, unsuccessfully, lobbied to keep the team in brew town. Selig was like many young men and had fallen in love with the game early on. Heartbroken and devastated at
Read more

1971 Brewers Hitters

Image
 The second year of Brewers baseball wasn't much better that the first. In 1971 the Crew ran 28 position players out trying to find the right combo again to try and be more competitive in the American League West. They would move to their familiar home in  AL East in 1972. Among those making their crew debut in 1971 were Darrell Porter, Jose Cardenal, and Dick Schofield, who ended up retiring at the end of the season. The star, though, turned out to be Dave May. May became a consistent performer for the Brewers after coming over in a trade with the Baltimore Orioles. He led the team in RBI, Reached on Error 12, grounded into 18 double plays, and hit a team leading .277. He later became the player that brought Hank Aaron back to Milwaukee. He would return to the Crew as they pushed for a division title in 1978.  May spent a total of 12 years in the majors and after retiring in 1978 spent a couple years in the Braves system as a roving hitting instructor in 81 and 82.  He passed away
Read more