Kent Hrbek as a Rookie

In early May, 1982, Kent Hrbek was leading the American League with eight homers and 22 RBIs in his rookie season, at age 21. Twins PR director Tom Mee called him ”the best player to come into the American League since Mickey Mantle.” Hrbek had been hitting around .400 for a while in A ball in Visalia, California, in 1981, and wound up hitting .379 that year, leading all North American professional ballplayers. He’d signed with the Twins in 1979 as a 17^th round pick out of Kennedy High School in Bloomington, down the road from the Met, for a $30,000 bonus. Calvin Griffith, the Twins owner, scouted him personally, and said: ”Give him the money.”

Hrbek and the Twins opened up the Metrodome with an exhibition game against the Philadelphia Phillies in ’82, and Kent hit the Twins’ first homer in the place. He talked about going to games at the Met as a kid: ”I used to sit out in left field or right field. I think I started going to games when I was about 8 years old, which would’ve been the year Carew was a rookie.”

Twins’ manager Billy Gardner said of Hrbek: ”He’s hit everywhere he’s been. No reason he won’t keep hitting up here.” He’d had knee cartilage surgery in ’79, then went to Wisconsin Rapids and the Midwest League in 1980, batting .267, with 19 homers and 76 RBIs, then an enormous .379 at Visalia with 27 homers and 111 RBIs. I assume he led the California League in those three categories for 1981. In his major league debut, he hit a 12th-inning homer off George Frazier for a 3-2 victory at Yankee Stadium. Hrbek said: ”Whenever people ask me about my biggest thrills, I tell ‘em my first game wasn’t bad.” He added of the A.L. pitchers: ”Hopefully they won’t catch up with me within the next 20 years.”

I found the article most of the preceding information came from a couple days ago. I’d remembered Hrbek, more than anything else, as a fairly good-natured but subtly aggressive big guy, to put it gently, who specialized in homers and was one of the crew that led the Twins to the two titles in ’87 and ’91. I thought of him as a classic Minnesotan who, along with Gladden and Puckett, was at the core of those ’87 and ’91 Twins. I had no idea he once hit .379 or any memory of him being a standout rookie. Take a look at his 1982 season, game by game, here.

A Q&A With Howard Sinker

Shortly after I started this blog I wrote to Howard Sinker, former Star-Tribune reporter covering the Twins beat, with the idea of asking some questions about his take on the Twins’ past. Sinker, as most of you probably already know, is now a sports editor at the Star-Tribune and has a blog on the Twins at the Star-Tribune’s web site. Not long after contacting him, we exchanged some questions and answers that hopefully shed some light on Twins history, going back to the pre-Metrodome days. Here’s the exchange:

Q: I don’t know how far back you go as a follower of the Twins, but is there one player from the pre-Metrodome years who stands out for you?

A: I moved to Minnesota in 1974 to attend college and wasn’t much of a Twins fan during the pre-Metrodome years. Of course, back in the day and being a sarcastic college student, you couldn’t help but take note of guys like Bombo Rivera, Hosken Powell and some of the others whom the twins were trying to pass off as quality major leaguers during Calvin Griffith’s ‘Mr. Cheap’ days. I have to imagine that it was hard for anyone to be a serious Twins fans when Carew, Hisle and Bostock were allowed to leave and replaced by Bart Simpson, Beaver Cleaver and Linus von Pelt.

Q: What sorts of memories do you have of Metropolitan Stadium?

A: Beer. That was back when the drinking age was 18 and we took full advantage of that in the left field bleachers. My friend — we’ll call him “The Bueno” — used to walk into the Met with a can of beer in each sock (and therefore long pants even on 90-degree days.) The ushers just thought he walked funny. He got busted once when there was a home run ball photo in the Strib and there he was on the front of the sports section, reaching for the ball with his non-beer-holding hand. I remember seeing Mark Fidrych pitch for the Tigers, which was a fun event, and I vaguely remember some Kicks soccer games.

Q: Comparing the 1987 and 1991 Twins, which of those years is the more memorable? And which was more stunning to see the Twins emerge as champions?

A: Winning the World Series is always memorable so it’s hard to compare. My fondness for ‘91, though, is enhanced because I was writing stories from Page 1A of the Strib, kind of game stories for people who didn’t want to read the sports section. So I was on the front page for Games 6 and 7 against Atlanta, which were two of the best baseball games ever. Each of those titles had factors that made them memorable.

Q: How do you compare Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire, in terms of their coaching styles, their personalities, their qualities as manager?

A: Gardy likes people, TK likes horses. I think that Kelly went from being thrilled just to get a chance to manage in the majors to being frustrated with some of the players he was having to use after the 1991 title. While he would often say,”I’ll work with the players that Mr. MacPhail gives me,” I think he felt that he deserved better than what he had on some of those rosters. Gardy still has solid personnel to work with, and I think that keeps him more fired up about the job than TK was toward the end of his tenure. He’ll also get a chance to manage in a real ballpark starting in 2010, which I think has to juice him a bit.

Q: It seems to me that Kent Hrbek is a quintessential Minnesotan. Not just with his outdoors show and his ice fishing, but with his wrestling too-the Ron Gant play in 1991. How do you rate him and Kirby Puckett as Twins icons?

A: I think the franchise icons are the guys from a generation before — Killebrew, Carew, Oliva. That may reflect a bias against people who I saw on a day-to-day basis by comparing them to players that, for me, are more mythical. The Twins of the first decade in Minnesota set a standard by which future teams came to be judged, and it was a high standard because of their success. I mean, look at what Mets and Rays fans watched for the first decade before their teams showed anything. Minnesota fans saw pretty good baseball from the start and excellent baseball as often as not in that first decade.

Q: What’s your opinion of the Metrodome, both in general terms and as a baseball stadium? More specifically, what do you like about your seats in the 220 section?

A: As a baseball stadium, the best things I can say are that it’s right across the street from my office and the game is never going to be rained out. As critical as writers have been of the Dome, the real travesty is that there are so many seats that are so clearly not made for baseball viewing. If you sit down the third base line, you’re watching center field unless you spend the whole game with your head turned. That’s just wrong. My seats in the front row of Section 220, I believe are 2 of the 18 excellent baseball seats in the Dome.

Q: How has your position as a newspaperman rather than simply a fan changed your response to the Twins? Have you become more of an analyst and critic of the team, and not so much of a rooting fan?

A: I never was a Twins fan before I started covering them in 1984. Now, I’m more of a fan, albeit a fan with benefits that many others don’t have. I appreciate the access that I have because I work at the Star Tribune and because of my background covering the team many, many years ago. I try to put that to good use in my blog because I have a pretty good sense of what’s going on, and there are people to whom I can turn to find out stuff when I have questions.

Q: Do you think the Twins would be around now if they hadn’t won one or both of their World Series?

A: Yes.

Quick Profile of Kirby Puckett in 1992

I bought the June 1992 copy of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly a few months ago. Here’s Kirby Puckett on the cover:

In the interview of Kirby that was inside, he tried to explain his popularity with Twins fans: “A lot of the older guys, I probably look fatter than them. I guess the guy in the stands figures it could be him out there.” Twins GM Andy MacPhail added: “There aren’t a whole lot of people who look like Puck. Especially in Minnesota.” MacPhail described a scene at a Twin Cities-area mall like this: “Before our first Christmas here I was walking through a mall and there was a young kid who barely seemed old enough to talk, looking through a store window with his parents. He was pointing to a Twins jersey and saying, ‘Kirby, Kirby.’ It sounded like those were the first words he said. I realized then that [Puckett] is, in a sense, the identity of the Twins.”

At the time, Puckett said: “I like to think I have, realistically, five or six good years left. I don’t want to be one of those guys who hang on just to hand on. When I’m gone, man, I’m gone. I won’t hang around, and I won’t be a guy who’s at autograph shows. I’ll just be out being a normal guy, running Kirby’s Car Wash and doing what normal guys do.”

Here’s a third picture of Kirby, from his 1984 Fleer Update card issued after that season ended. Supposedly he hadn’t played a big league game yet when he posed for the picture:

An Interview With Mike Pagliarulo About 1991

I recently talked with Mike Pagliarulo about his experiences coming over from the Padres to the Twins as a free agent before the 1991 season to win a World Series, as it turned out. I started by asking how he came to sign with the Twins in January of 1991.

Q: How did you wind up with the Twins?
A: In San Diego, I was fortunate enough to play with such great talent (Tony Gwynn, Roberto Alomar, etc.), but it wasn’t the environment I was best at. In Minnesota I put myself in a better environment, where I could get the most out of myself. In the winter meetings, 1990, it was the first time I’d been to them, I didn’t know quite what was going on at them. So I went there, to Florida, hanged out, tried to figure out what to do the next year. I talked to managers, coaches, asked them, “What do you want, what’s your approach?” I ran into Tom Kelly, we had really good conversations about his philosophy. I said, “So he’s got a good plan here.”

A couple weeks later, when Gary Gaetti went to the Angels, Andy MacPhail called me up and said, “What do you want to play for?” and I said sure, I signed the contract, I knew the guy (Kelly). The Twins played games hard, played very hard-nosed, very competitive, we had so much in common, our vision, our goals.

Q: You were a newcomer to the Twins in ‘91. Was it a hard adjustment? I’m thinking in terms of moving to the area, playing in a dome, indoors for the first time in your career, adjusting to Puckett and Gagne and those guys.
A: Well, the thing about playing indoors-my first game was there, at the Metrodome, I enjoyed playing there. It was a good thing, you could stick to a routine, it helped you maintain consistence. Baseball is all about preparation for what might happen, and you knew the weather, the surface, the wind, it was all the same from day to day. That helped. I could depend on those things being the same, didn’t have to worry about the conditions changing. I was a little more mature then, I knew more about what was going to happen (in a game), and that was a good match for me.

Q: But your legs, weren’t they affected by playing on that turf?
A: No, at the point in my career I knew more about how to take care of myself, I was on a better workout regime, went to the gym every other day. So that wasn’t really a problem.

Q: Your top of the 10th homer to win game 3 of the ALCS put the Twins up 2 games to 1 on the way to the 4-1 series win. Could you talk about your approach to that pinch-hit at bat and the experience of hitting that homer?
A: I was not a good pinch-hitter. But I’d go to the back of the dugout, hitting off a batting tee, get a good sweat going, stay warm, because with T.K. we always knew when something was going to happen, we were never surprised. I was ready, because Jimmy Key, he never threw a complete game, I knew he’d be taken out. So every inning I’d take those swings, because I knew I was going to pinch hit, against Mike Timlin, as it turned out.

On that pitch (the homer in the 10th), I wasn’t trying to do too much, but it was great, my best game, and my shortest game too.

Q: And then there was the memorable World Series with Atlanta.
A: That was a very good series. I did well against Smoltz. It’s funny, I still stay in good touch with those guys (from the Twins), Randy Bush, Dan Gladden, the clubhouse manager, I called him both of the last couple days. Such great camaraderie on that team.

Q: Your 3 for 3 showing in game 4 of the World Series included hitting a seventh inning homer to put the Twins ahead, but the Braves tied it in the bottom of the inning and then the Twins lost in the bottom of the ninth. Were you a little upset to get pinch-hit for in the top of the ninth, even though you would have faced a lefty, Mike Stanton?
A: Nobody wants to be taken out, but the manager’s doing his best to win, the same as you are. You can complain, say something about it, but that doesn’t help anything. I was stubborn and wanted to stay in there and hit, of course, but the manager’s trying to win the game, you have to trust his judgment. I was upset-absolutely, it’s a normal temporary emotion-but you don’t make a stink about it, that’s not productive at all. It’s never personal, being taken out. There was an understanding there, with Kelly, knowing what the intent was behind his decision.

Q: What was it like to be playing in game 7 of a World Series?
A: You don’t even think about the importance of the game, a game 7, the World Series. You’re concentrating, so many things can happen, preparing-that’s what goes on in your mind, and defensively, knowing where everybody is (on the field). Nobody thinks that way, in terms of historical relevance. You’re pulling for him (your teammate), hoping for him, emotionally with him, everybody into all these pitches. You know, the team concept.

Q: I noticed that in game 7 vs. the Braves, you came up in the ninth with Chili Davis on third and a chance to win the Series. It was every boy’s dream of getting a hit to win game 7, and then you got intentionally walked, never had that chance.
A: [laughs] I told the catcher, “Don’t even tell me you’re walking me. If you do, I’m hitting you with this bat.” But it worked out, we won in the 10th.

Q: Aside from his on-field skills, what did Kirby bring to the Twins?
A: Kirby was a great teammate, everybody was really good on that team, and we weren’t so loud. Those guys were very unselfish. Kirby was just fantastic, a gamer. Someone who can change the game in a minute, a very dangerous hitter. Kirby’d say “It’s my responsibility to get this team going, get some hits and help us score runs,” and try to take the pressure off everybody. It was a psychic thing, relieve the pressure. He did things like that all the time. But it can hurt the guy who says it, because you don’t normally play like that, and then all of a sudden you feel that pressure on your shoulders.

In ‘91 we had 25 guys together. Toronto had more talent, we had a better team. It’s the difference between having talented players and having the best team. That’s what I sensed.

Background, religion, color, that never made a difference, we never thought about it. Playing the game, it’s all about, from first to last, a common vision, and everybody shared that. It’s not easy to get that with other teams. Everyone wants to win: some players are focused on their contract and stats, but that’s rare. And nobody was really like that with the Twins.

We were unselfish, everybody played a role, we had really good communication. T.K. would tell us, “We need to know what’s coming at us: get ready, be prepared.” It was a great learning experience. Maybe I wasn’t as prepared earlier in my career, but I took that (education) away from the Twins.