Tales from the Minnesota Twins Dugout by Kent Hrbek

Author:Kent Hrbek
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781683582854
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2019-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

Prelude to a Grand Slam

I can condense the first five games of the World Series against St. Louis pretty quickly: We won the first two at home, then went to St. Louis and got swept in three games. It was the typical pattern for us: Win at home, lose on the road.

Games 6 and 7 of the Series were so memorable that the first five games were pretty much overshadowed. That was certainly the case for me. I didn’t do much at the plate, but then I didn’t do much against the Tigers in the American League playoffs, either. I was 3-for-20 against Detroit and 4-for-17 in the first five games against the Cardinals, which left me on the wrong side of .200 for the postseason.

I can’t say we felt a real sense of urgency coming back to the Dome for Games 6 and 7. That might sound a little dumb because we knew if we lost one more game, we were done. But we were coming home to the building where we’d played so well all year, and we just had a confidence that things were going to be OK.

Having said that, I think most people still figured we were the underdog. We had Les Straker starting in Game 6. Les was a 28-year-old rookie who had never pitched in a setting like this. Not only that, but the day before his start he told reporters that he had never started on three days’ rest as a professional, and that his right elbow was hurting. That angered Tom Kelly, who had a pregame shouting match with the local reporter who wrote the Straker story. It didn’t help when the reporter told Kelly that the same story had appeared in every major daily in America. TK wasn’t overly fond of a lot of local media, and a lot of the local media felt the same way about him. It was a tenuous relationship at best, and this time, TK felt he’d been made to look bad. Turned out the reports on Straker were pretty accurate. Les lasted three innings, and we were down 5–2 entering the bottom of the fifth.

But all year it seemed like if we needed a two-run homer, someone would step up and hit a two-run homer. This time it was Don Baylor, who we picked up in late August to give us a right-handed power hitter off the bench. Don hadn’t hit a home run as a Twin until he hit a two-run shot in the fifth to tie the game. A couple hitters later Steve Lombardozzi singled in the go-ahead run for a 6–5 lead.

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