The 1996 season looked pretty bleak for the Minnesota Twins.
No Kevin Tapani, no Scott Erickson and most of all, no Kirby Puckett, who took a fastball to the face toward the end of the 1995 season and then found himself on the injured list as the new season began on April 1, 1996, at the Metrodome before only 30,000 fans against the Detroit Tigers.
The fans certainly knew they didn’t expect much from the Twins because that opening day crowd was far short of the 55,000 fans or so that could fill the Homerdome.
And then something happened: the Twins actually won the game, 8-6, with second-year man Brad Radke allowing just a run over six innings with two walks and eight strikeouts.
Despite the quality start, Twins pitching, outside of Radke — he pitched to a 4.46 ERA across 232 innings — was terrible. The team ERA of 5.28 was one of the worst in all of baseball.
And yet the Twins could hit and score runs. Three players had monster seasons: Marty Cordova, fresh off his Rookie of the Year campaign in ’95, hit .309 and drove in 111 runs, Chuck Knoblauch slashed .341/.448/.517 with 197 hits, 45 stolen bases and 14 triples and Paul Molitor slashed .341/.390/.468 with an American League-leading 225 hits. Even Roberto Kelly, best known as a Yankee, contributed more than 100 hits across 98 games.
The result? The Twins overachieved. They produced winning records in April, June and August, and when it was all over they finished six games under .500 at 78-84.
Puckett watched that April 1 win from the dugout.
“I just saw a 17-year old girl in Fort Myers who was dying of cancer,” Puckett said to a Star Tribune columnist after the game. “I’m 35 years old with blurred vision in one eye. Think of what happened to [umpire] John McSherry today. How can I complain about anything?”
Extra innings…
–Umpire McSherry suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the field while calling balls strikes of an Expos-Reds game on April 1 and later died, the newspaper reported. McSherry was 51.
–I found and watched the April 1 Twins-Tigers game on YouTube. In the broadcast booth were Dick Bremer and pitchers Bert Blyleven and Tommy John. Twins player Matt Lawton had two hits in the game. After the second hit, either Blyleven or John, I couldn’t quite tell, quipped, “Kirby who?”
Bremer delivered the appropriate response.
“Bite your tongue,” he said.
–The Twins have traded a minor league pitcher to get Miami Marlins first baseman Eric Wagaman, according to MLB Trade Rumors.
The underwhelming details:
“Over 140 games, he slashed .250/.296/.378 for a .674 OPS and an 85 wRC+. He hit nine home runs, stole four bases on five attempts, and grounded into 11 double plays,” Rumors reports.
Source: Newspapers.com