Tales from the Minnesota Twins Dugout Read online

  I had my standard fare—prime rib—and we ordered a bottle of champagne. I thought I deserved a glass of champagne after the grand slam.

  I’d been to the restaurant enough that having Kent Hrbek eating dinner there was no big deal. It was exciting, but fairly subdued, although a few people came up and high-fived me. Minneapolis back then was the kind of place you could hit a World Series grand slam and still go out and have a nice meal without getting mauled. The people were polite and let us eat in relative peace. But you could sense the anticipation of Game 7.

  We got home about 10, and my phone rang. It was Wades cousin from Litchfield, which is about 50 to 60 miles west of the Twin Cities. Wades cousins were the Piepenberg brothers—Dale, Kevin and Doug—and I’d been hunting with them and their dad, Bud, a bunch of times. I could hear Wade saying, “Ah, you’re nuts. He’s not going with us tomorrow.”

  I said, “What’s going on?” Wade put his hand over the phone and said the bluebills came in last night. Well, when the bluebills come in, you’ve usually got a two- or three-day hunt, and that’s it. The ducks are in, then they’re out. So I said to Wade: “Let’s go.” And Wade turned to me and said, “We’re not going. You’ve got a fairly important ball game tomorrow,” meaning Game 7 of the World Series.

  I told Wade I wasn’t going to be able to sleep all night anyway, so I’d go to bed early, get a couple hours of sleep, be hunting by sunrise, and come home and take a nap. That’s nothing I wouldn’t have done on a normal game day. I used to get up early and go fishing a lot, contrary to what my former manager Ray Miller might have thought.

  So Wade finally relented and said “If you want to go, we’ll go.” Jeanie, like I said earlier, was always great about making sure I stayed on the right path and didn’t do too many goofy things. I don’t remember her saying, “No, you idiot, you’re not going.”

  Wade and his wife stayed overnight at our house, and we got up and left about 5 a.m. the next morning. I drove my pickup to Litchfield, and as was often the case, I was low on gas. So we pulled into a station in Hutchinson, about 35 miles west of Minneapolis, and I asked Wade to pump the gas and go inside to pay because if I walked in they were going to ask: “What the hell is Kent Hrbek doing out here at 5:30 the morning of Game 7?” I actually wasn’t all that concerned about that—getting Wade to go in was just a ploy to get him to pay for the gas.

  It worked. Wade went in, paid, and came back with this big shit-eating grin on his face. He said the morning paper was out already, and my mug was plastered all over the front page. Wade said when he walked in, there was a group of guys talking about the Twins, and a highway patrol guy turned to him and said, “You think the boys are going to do it tonight?” Wade told me he came this close to telling the trooper, “Why don’t you just go ask the guy sitting in the truck?” But he bit his tongue.

  When we reached the slew, I realized I must have been a little distracted. A flock flew over, and I’d forgotten to put bullets in my gun. I was probably thinking about the game, at least subconsciously. But in the end, we got some ducks, drove home, and I took a nice little nap and then headed to the ballpark.

  To me, it was no big deal. I’m not the kind of person who’s going to sit and dwell on something. I’m going to do it my way, and for the most part that’s worked for me. I’m pretty certain of this: I got more sleep that night, counting my nap, than our Game 7 starter, Frank Viola. Knowing Frankie, he was definitely up all night.

  Game 7

  The way I looked at it, getting a chance to play in the deciding game of the World Series was fun. Sure, as we got ready in the clubhouse you could sense there were pressure and some butterflies. You sure didn’t want to be the one who screwed up in that setting. But this was the ultimate—the reason you played the game.

  As I got ready, my mind went back to John Castino and Gary Ward the day I walked in to Yankee Stadium in 1981 as a 21-year-old rookie. This was the same game I’d been playing since I was a little kid—whether it was in my backyard, Yankee Stadium, or the Metrodome for Game 7.

  As I look back on the game, it was almost like we expected to win. We’d won our big games at home all year, and after getting past Game 6, we came back for the final game with one of our two aces, Frank Viola, on the mound. Of course, in any sport, once you start thinking you’re going to win, you’re in trouble. You’ve got to keep that sort of thinking out of your head and go out and play hard. I’m just saying as I look back, in hindsight, it seemed like we were destined to win.

  We did, but it wasn’t easy. We fell behind 2–0 in the top of the second and clawed our way back, scoring single runs in four separate innings. Our go-ahead run—and the eventual game-winner—came in the bottom of the sixth when Greg Gagne beat out an infield single with the bases loaded.

  My teammates mob me after I caught the throw from Gary Gaetti for the final out of the World Series. Courtesy of the Minnesota Twins

  Once we got the lead, Frankie and Jeff Reardon closed the door. They were superb. Frank went eight innings, gave up six hits, didn’t walk a batter, and struck out seven. Jeff slammed the door shut in the ninth, and I had the everlasting memory of catching the throw from Gary Gaetti for the final out. I’ve heard guys from that team talk about the homecoming after beating the Tigers as the emotional memory from the postseason. But for me, nothing compared to catching that throw for the final out.

  Time for a Laugh

  We played our final game in typical fashion, meaning we looked for any chance we could to play a practical joke. We were trailing 2–1 after the top of the fifth inning. Bob Casey, the public address announcer, used the break between innings to use the bathroom, requiring him to run from his little area under the stands directly behind the backstop to a tiny bathroom just off our dugout. Casey is a legendary figure in Twins history—the public address voice for every Twins game from the time the team moved to Minnesota in 1961 until his death in 2005. Casey was a true character, which made him a target for pranks.

  So, in the seventh game of the Series, we did what we usually did, which was hold the door and make him think he was locked in. I think it was Tom Brunansky who held the door, and while he was doing that, someone ran into Casey’s PA area and put shaving cream in his telephone earpiece and soaked a towel in shaving cream, so that when he wiped off his ear he’d end up with even more shaving cream on his face.

  The plan worked to perfection. We’d always release Casey from the bathroom so he could make it back in time for the first pitch. Bruno waited long enough that Casey was hopping mad, screaming at us as he raced to get to his microphone. We waited a couple minutes, then placed an emergency call to the PA phone. Casey grabbed the phone, and his ear ended up soaked in shaving cream. He grabbed the towel and ended up getting shaving cream all over his suit as he tried to wipe his ear off. We were howling in the dugout as we watched all this go on.

  That was one of the best shaving cream stunts of the whole season. A few years later Casey remembered it like this: “All I heard was laughter. Those dummies didn’t know they were in the seventh game of the World Series.” He might have been right.

  Bruno also had the other memorable joke of the World Series. He saw a fake nail-through-the-hand gadget at some joke store, and during an off-day workout, he took it out to the outfield with some ketchup and a white towel. Near the end of the workout he came running off the field, his hand wrapped in a ketchup-soaked towel with a nail appearing to have pierced his hand.

  I gave owner Carl Pohlad a huge hug right after we won the world championship. Courtesy of the Minnesota Twins

  He was screaming about the damn outfield fence, that he had jammed his hand into a loose nail. The media started running around, thinking there was a breaking news story about the Twins losing their starting right fielder to a fluke accident. Bruno let it go on for a few minutes, then pulled the fake nail out of his hand and everyone had a good laugh, except for a few media members who might have filed an emergency news flash.


  That was our team in ’87—loose and fun. We had a 10-year reunion in 1997, and our general manager, Andy MacPhail, said that fifth-inning intermission of Game 7 was his defining memory of the season. “I’m so nervous I can hardly watch the game, much less participate in it, and they’re thinking about locking Casey in the bathroom,” he told a reporter during the reunion. “To me, that’s the memory that will forever highlight that group.”

  I think that’s the way all of us will remember that team. We took a lot of pride in being called “throwbacks.” We had something real unique. I’m not sure there has been a World Series winner since that had more fun, or more characters, than we did in ’87. Baseball started becoming more and more of a business after that, and I think the business part started to become bigger than the game part.

  The guys who left the Twins in the years that followed found out just how unique we were that year. Brunansky said he just naturally assumed all teams had fun and enjoyed the game and each other the way he did. But when he was traded, he found out otherwise.

  The Aftermath

  After the game, we had another beer and champagne celebration in the clubhouse. By now we were getting used to that. What I remember most from the clubhouse after the game was sitting on the floor when my buddy Wade walked in. He said, “Man, are you drunk already?” I might have looked that way, because I was sitting on the floor smoking a cigar.

  But I wasn’t drunk at all. I was totally exhausted. I don’t think any of us had any idea how tired we were—how pumped up we were on adrenaline—until after the game, when you can finally take a breath and say that it’s over. I don’t think any of us had been sleeping a whole lot, and we were much more consumed by the entire experience than we even thought.

  It’s funny, but having grown up a Twins fan, I wanted to be outside the Dome, celebrating in the streets with the fans. At one point, while we still had our uniforms on, I asked Danny Gladden if he wanted to go outside and celebrate with the fans. Danny displayed unusual common sense for him, and said, “What are you, crazy? They’ll tear our uniforms off and kill us.”

  So we stayed in the clubhouse and celebrated a while with our wives, families, and friends. You’ll never guess where I ended up that night: the Perkins Restaurant off France and Interstate 494 in Bloomington with my family. My plan was to end the night by taking a bottle of champagne and sit on the pitching mound at Bloomington Kennedy High School. That seemed kind of fitting because that was where it had all started for me. But I never made it. I was so pooped I just went home after Perkins.

  The Parade

  The biggest celebration came a couple days later when the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul threw us a ticker-tape parade. I still can’t believe it when I look at the photos from the parade. We all rode in convertibles, and all along the route there were thousands of fans jammed so close to the cars that we had trouble even moving. There was so much ticker tape thrown into the cars that the one Sal Butera was riding in had a small fire on the floor.

  Jeanie and I shared a car with our equipment manager, Jimmy Wiesner, and his wife, Marge. That was a fantasy fulfilled for both of us. Wiesey grew up in Minnesota like me and had always dreamed of winning a World Series with the Twins.

  During the ticker-tape parade the Twin Cities held for us, I was honored to ride in the same car as equipment manager Jimmy Wiesner, his wife, Marge, and my wife, Jeanie. Courtesy of the Minnesota Twins

  There are some organizations where the equipment manager maybe wouldn’t have even ridden in the parade, or would have been stuck in a car in the back. Wiesey and I had talked for several years about riding together in the same car if the Twins ever won a World Series. Some of that goes back to the way I feel about what it takes to have a winning ballclub. If you’re going to win a World Series, then you’ve got everyone, from the batboys to the players to the front office, all on the same page. You’re all one team, and you should all be treated like you’re important parts of the team.

  Most of the reason I wanted to ride with Wiesey, though, was knowing how much winning meant to him, and the respect I had for him. Wiesey was a huge part of the team. The guy spent 16 hours a day downstairs in the clubhouse, and he kept it as clean as his own home. There were clubhouse managers in the majors who had a lot better facilities to work with, but no one did a better job than Wiesey. Our clubhouse was always a comfortable place to be.

  I will never forget the huge and happy crowds that welcomed us home during the ticker-tape parade. The fans were wall-to-wall. What an experience! Courtesy of the Minnesota Twins

  Jimmy and I have cried more than once as we’ve talked together, reminiscing about the parade. The parade kind of put a stamp on the whole postseason experience. Everything about that October was so spontaneous. You couldn’t go anywhere in the Twin Cities without seeing banners or signs or garage doors painted with “Go Twins.”

  My wife taped some of the news shows after we won, and when I went back and watched them, even I was surprised by how much it meant to people. There was one news clip in particular, where they interviewed some guy who had been working in the same warehouse for 46 years. He said that the Series had been the most fun he’d ever had going to work because everybody was talking about the same thing and everybody was happy. He said he’d never been so happy to come to work.

  That’s pretty special, to know you had made so many people so happy. It was electrifying, like the entire state was into it. I don’t think Minnesota—and the Upper Midwest as a whole—has been able to duplicate what happened that October. And I’m not sure it ever will.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Slide

  Go Figure

  One of the most mystifying events I’ve ever been associated with took place on April 22, 1988. That’s the day we traded Tom Brunansky to the Cardinals for Tom Herr. Twenty years later I still don’t get it.

  Yes, we got off to a rough start in ’88 (4–10 at the time of the deal). But we were less than three weeks into the season and virtually the same team had been good enough to win a world championship the previous summer. I don’t think anybody on our team ever understood it. It sure wasn’t like Bruno was a cancer we needed to get out of the clubhouse. Bruno was a peach, an absolutely great guy.

  I guess our general manager, Andy MacPhail, always liked Herr and thought his left-handed power would be perfect for the Dome, with its short right-field fence. I guess Andy also must have thought we needed to be shaken up after that slow start.

  He accomplished that. We were all just shocked. For me, it was the first guy from our Class of ’82 rookie group—Bruno, Gary Gaetti, Randy Bush, Tim Laudner, Frank Viola, and me—to be traded. We’d been through so much together, and after all that, Bruno was gone.

  What can you do? Andy made a lot of great trades. This just wasn’t one of them. At the time it was numbing, and all you can do is go out and do your job. And my job was to play first base and bat cleanup for the Twins. I didn’t get paid to make trades or comment on them. One thing I’ve never understood are players who feel they should have a say in what the front office does.

  When the Twins traded my buddy Tom Brunansky in 1988, I was shocked, but I still tried to have fun on the field. Courtesy of the Minnesota Twins

  Torii Hunter did that a couple years ago, saying he should have been contacted about a move the team made. I have a lot of respect for Torii, but I’ve never understood that logic. A player has a job to do, and he needs to go out and do it to the best of his ability and not get caught up in other stuff. That’s the attitude I took when Bruno was traded, even though it wasn’t easy.

  Herr’s Reaction

  The trade got more difficult to accept when Herr arrived the next day, and we learned he’d been crying on the flight to Minneapolis. Now, I’m not going to hold that against him. He probably felt as bad leaving the Cardinals as we felt about losing Bruno.

  But he never got over it. I think we—and I mean as a team—could have gotten over the trade if Her
r had gotten over his personal disappointment. But I don’t think he ever wanted to be here, and it showed. I don’t think Tom Kelly was too happy with his attitude because he just didn’t fit in with our clubhouse. As I said earlier, he’s the only teammate I ever had that I didn’t care for. And it had everything to do with his attitude, or lack thereof.

  Still, we rebounded and played some pretty good baseball that summer, winning 91 games, which was more than we’d won in ’87. But it wasn’t enough because the Oakland A’s—the Bash Brothers—won 104 games.

  If you look back, the Bruno trade was the beginning of the end for our ’87 team. Much of the rest of the nucleus was gone in short order. Before the start of the 1989 season, the Twins traded Bert Blyleven, Steve Lombardozzi, and Keith Atherton. Oh, yeah . . . we dumped Herr on the Phillies in a trade for lefthander Shane Rawley less than a month after the 1988 season ended.

  It was the end of an era—in a lot of ways.

  No. 400

  I absolutely hated to see Blyleven go because we had ridden Bert and Frank Viola to a World Series title in ’87. And now half that tandem was gone. I knew what it was like without strong starting pitching, and I feared we could be headed there again. And I was right.

  We had losing records in both 1989 and ’90. By the end of the ’90 season, I felt like I was back where I had started in my Twins career, playing on a club that was sifting through pitchers looking for starters. In 1988, we had three pitchers—Blyleven, Frank Viola, and Alan Anderson—throw more than 200 innings. The next two years, no one threw that many. The days of riding pitching horses to the top were over.

  Not that losing Bert was all bad. Bert had one of the nastiest curveballs I’d ever seen and a better-than-average fastball. Yet for some reason, I owned him. I was always able to hit Bert, and he knew it. After he left the Twins and went to California, Bert gave up career home run No. 400 against me. Someone took a picture of me at the plate and gave it to Bert. The next day he sent it over to our clubhouse in a frame, with this inscription: “Thanks for No. 400. Maybe you’ll be the guy to hit No. 500. Then again, you fat pig, you probably won’t be around then.”