Down to the Last Pitch: How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves Gave Us the Best World Series of All Time
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Down to the Last Pitch
Also by Tim Wendel
NONFICTION
Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball, and America, Forever
High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time
Buffalo, Home of the Braves
Far From Home: Latino Baseball Players in America
Going for the Gold: How the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team Won at Lake Placid
The New Face of Baseball: The One-Hundred-Year Rise and Triumph of Latinos in America’s Favorite Sport
FICTION
Castro’s Curveball
Habana Libre
Red Rain
My Man Stan (a novel for young readers)
Copyright © 2014 by Tim Wendel.
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10987654321
For Jacqueline, Sarah, and Chris
In memory of Bill Glavin, John Douglas, and Eric Wendel, and to the backyard ballgames of yesteryear on Canal Road and the West Bluff
CONTENTS
Preface
Game One
Game Two
Game Three
Game Four
Game Five
Game Six
Game Seven
Epilogue
Appendix I: Aftermath
Appendix II: Great World Series Moments
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
In 1991 Verlyn Klinkenborg came out with a book entitled The Last Fine Time. It was the story of his father-in-law, Eddie Wenzek, who once operated a family-owned tavern on the east side of Buffalo, New York. I grew up in Lockport, New York, only forty minutes away, and Buffalo was once the big city for me. It’s where I saw my first baseball game, taken by my grandfather, along with my younger brother, Chris, to War Memorial Stadium, aka “The Rockpile.” Although many of the scenes from The Natural were filmed here, The Rockpile would never be mistaken for any of the sports palaces of today. As my uncle Brock Yates once wrote, the ballpark “looks as if whatever war it was a memorial to had been fought within its confines.”
No matter how many rough edges may be involved, I believe that every era, every life, for that matter, has a “last fine time.” It can be a brief moment or two when everything comes together in a remarkable way, and even when the world again barrels ahead, intent on reinventing itself once again, we can hold tight to such memories.
When I look back at baseball, which I have written about for several decades, the 1991 season remains for me one of the last fine times. That season was the beginning of Baseball Weekly, a new publishing venture at USA Today. I was fortunate to be on the original staff there, and in 1991 I covered my first World Series, and doing so gave me an inside look at the sea changes that were changing the game forever—soaring team payrolls, an approaching labor storm, the rise of retro-style ballparks and the corporate groupthink in which too many believed that everything could be fixed by firing this guy and hiring somebody else.
The ’91 season marked the first time that a cellar dweller went from last to first place when the Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins rose from the ashes to play each other in the World Series. And what a showdown it was. Experts rank it among the top World Series ever played, and many consider it the best ever.
We always enjoy a story with a beginning, middle, and an end. Perhaps such elements become even more precious in the age of Face-book and Twitter, when so much comes at us so quickly and sometimes with misguided intent. A tale that happened out there, somewhere in the not-so-distant past, can be reassuring to us. So let’s start somewhere near the beginning then—only a few blocks from the banks of the Mississippi River. Even though the late October winds funneled down the wide avenues of downtown Minneapolis early in the day, inside the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome conditions remain comfortably warm and ear-splittingly loud.
Game One
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1991
AT HUBERT H. HUMPHREY METRODOME
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
As the hometown Twins took the field, the sellout crowd broke into another sustained roar. Clamorous and downright chaotic, the rising earsplitting din could have been a beast reawakening after a long sleep.
As shortstop Greg Gagne jogged out to his position, he decided the fans were as loud as they had been in 1987, the last time the Twins played in the World Series. They just had to be. The fans were ready to raise a ruckus and wake up the echoes of yesteryear. The best home-field advantage in sports had been brought back to life again, with the promise of another wild ride in the offing. Now, would the hometown team be able to do its part?
As Gagne took his position for the top of the first inning, he thought about how much the Twins’ lineup had changed in recent years. Sure, such Minnesota favorites as Kent Hrbek and Kirby Puckett were still among the regulars, but besides those two stars, only Gagne, Randy Bush, Al Newman, Dan Gladden, and Gene Larkin remained from the last World Series team, and Larkin had somehow stayed on the postseason roster despite a bad knee, leaving him barely able to run. Here in the infield of hard-bounce Astroturf, with only dirt cutouts around the bases, Gagne was flanked by a pair of relative newcomers on this night. Scott Leius had taken the place of Twins favorite Gary Gaetti at third base. Gaetti, a.k.a. “The Rat,” now played in California. To Gagne’s left stood another rookie, Chuck Knoblauch. Even though the sparkplug of a kid had led first-year American League players in hits, doubles, and RBIs, the hands-down favorite to win rookie-of-the-year honors, no one knew how he would react when things became fickle and unpredictable, as they surely would with so much at stake. After all, this was the World Series, with everybody watching, and like any good story, nobody dared predict the ending or who would be the hero or the goat.
One last time Gagne glanced at the fresh faces to either side of him, everyone now ready for the first pitch, and he could only smile at how baseball worked—so cutthroat one minute, in need of team unity the next.
“What people forget is that both of them—Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Leius—were originally shortstops,” he said years later. “They came i
nto the organization playing my position, looking to take my job. . . . But the thing with baseball, once things are decided, you pick yourself up and do your best. I mean, what choice do you have? Either of those guys, Knobby or Leius, wanted my job back in the spring. But it didn’t matter. Now we had to come together and try to beat a really, really good Braves team.”
Behind the plate Twins catcher Brian Harper caught the last of Jack Morris’s warm-up pitches, heartened that Black Jack’s split-finger fastball, his signature pitch, had plenty of bite on this night. After throwing down to second base, Harper glanced around the infield one last time before settling into his crouch. Years later the Twins’ catcher and shortstop would realize that they were thinking nearly the same thing at this point, on the eve of it all: the Twins’ infield, ready to go amid the noise, alternated between veterans and kids—Hrbek to Knoblauch, Gagne to Leius—all the way around the horn. Although Harper had almost as many years in the majors as Hrbek or Puckett, he hadn’t exactly made a mark for himself, at least not on this big a stage. After bouncing between five ball clubs—California, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit, and Oakland—he hadn’t caught more than a hundred games in a season until after he arrived in the Twin Cities in 1988. Now he was back in the World Series, after almost being an improbable postseason hero once with the Cardinals.
The Atlanta Braves liked to run the bases, push the envelope, and Harper’s arm wasn’t the strongest in the league. He couldn’t argue with that. So as the Braves’ Lonnie Smith stepped in and the crowd ramped it up a few more decibels, Harper took a deep breath and told himself be like Hrbek, Gagne, and Puckett out there in centerfield. Nothing against the newcomers—they had plenty of talent, for sure. Still, Harper couldn’t help thinking that experienced hands would ultimately carry the day in this unlikely matchup.
Nobody in uniform for either team knew they were about to take the first step into a series for the ages, one that many would soon regard as among the best in baseball history, perhaps the best of all time. Such postseason classics can be counted on a hand or two and include the 1975 matchup between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox, when Carlton Fisk homered in the twelfth inning of Game Six. Back in 1972, the start of Oakland’s dynasty run, that Series served up six one-run games. In 1968 a taut seven-game series between the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals helped a grieving nation carry on after the tragic assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Of course, there was Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run in 1960 that carried Pittsburgh past the New York Yankees. And in 1955 the Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke through against the Yankees’ juggernaut. All of them were memorable times for sure, but none would have five games determined in the home team’s last at-bat. That would be the case in 1991—a Series that would see four games decided on the last pitch.
To truly appreciate what unfolded in 1991, we need to go deep into each ballgame, letting these contents play out in the actions and words of those who were on the field. “Every pitch, every strike, every ball every inning—everything mattered in every game,” said Terry Pendleton, who played third base for Atlanta in this epic showdown.
“My father told me—and I think he was right—he said that each game is like you’re reading a book,” Twins manager Tom Kelly later said. “You’ve got chapter one or Game One, and then Two, and it’s getting better and better and better and better and better.”
Yet, as we do so, we need to keep in mind that almost everything of merit often cuts both ways. Braves general manager John Schuerholz called the 1991 series “great for our industry.” Maybe. Maybe not.
In having two teams go from last place to the Fall Classic, it underscored that any team could—dare we say should—be able to reach such heights. In the profound changes of the early 1990s—the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror, the shift in national leadership from the “Greatest Generation” to the baby boomers, the rapid transition from family-owned companies to corporate multinationals—everything became much more demanding. Everybody seemingly became more impatient for results and success. Nobody really talked about rebuilding anymore, about being in it for the long haul. Instead the buzz word became retool, which often was explained as an almost magical phenomenon that didn’t require methodical and careful reconstruction or perhaps even due diligence. You could almost hear owners throughout sports, strongly mirroring what was going in the private sector, saying to themselves that if the Twins and the Braves could reach the World Series, then why not us? Telling their general managers and front-office personnel to fix it or else they would be sent packing too.
The notable firsts began early and often in this 1991 championship. The Braves’ Lonnie Smith was the designated hitter for Game One, and in batting leadoff for the visiting Braves, his appearance marked only the third time in the last sixty-one World Series games that the DH had taken the first swings in a contest. Amazingly, in all three cases Smith was the guy. He was also the designated hitter, batting leadoff, in Game Four of the 1980 Series and in Game Five of the 1982 series. Also, on this night in Minneapolis Smith became the first player in baseball history to appear in the World Series with four different teams—the Kansas City Royals, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, and now the Atlanta Braves. Perhaps these were nothing more than footnotes for anybody else, but Smith’s exploits at the plate and certainly on the basepaths would loom large in this Fall Classic.
Smith began the game by lining out to Twins left fielder Dan Gladden. From there Morris kept the Braves off the scoreboard early on, with Atlanta starter Charlie Leibrandt matching him. Some had found Leibrandt a curious choice to start Game One over twenty-game winner Tom Glavine. Yet Braves manager Bobby Cox often depended on Leibrandt, who had a decade at the major-league level, between Cincinnati and Kansas City before coming to Atlanta in 1990. The left-hander had posted a 15–13 record during the regular season and was regarded as the elder statesman on a pitching staff of young guns that also included Steve Avery and John Smoltz.
In the bottom of third inning the Twins broke through for the Series’ first run. Gladden, who had tracked down three fly balls in the first three innings of the game, walked and then stole second base. Rookie Chuck Knoblauch promptly drove him in with an opposite-field flare to right field. Gladden crossed home plate, and Knoblauch was tagged out trying to stretch his single into a double.
The Twins had decided months before that they could live with such rookie mistakes, though. Drafted in the first round out of Texas A&M in 1989, Knoblauch had risen quickly through the minor leagues, sticking with the big-league ballclub coming out of spring training. His father, Ray, had been a minor-league pitcher, and his uncle, Ed, was an outfielder in the Texas League. Originally a shortstop whose boyhood hero had been Ozzie Smith, Knoblauch switched to second base at Double-A Orlando, realizing it was the fast track to the majors. In winning the regular job during the spring, he filled a hole in the Twins’ lineup that had seen the likes of Steve Lombardozzi, Tom Herr, Chip Hale, Fred Manrique and Wally Backman in recent years.
Off field, the twenty-three-year-old often acted like the rookie he was, telling reporters how big a fan he was of the soap opera Days of Our Lives and how breakfast most mornings was a heaping bowl of Frosted Flakes. But on the field Knoblauch regularly came through, and that’s all anybody in the Twin Cities cared about at the time.
“Chuck’s development is a major reason why we’re here,” Twins general manager Andy MacPhail said. “What I first liked about him is that he knows the game.”
Twins hitting coach Terry Crowley added, “What Chuck has done this season is one of the most difficult things to do in baseball. He’s stepped in and made a good team that much better.”
“I don’t think of him as a rookie anymore,” Kent Hrbek said. “He’s done too good a job to still be called a rookie.”
Throughout baseball, teams were increasingly on the lookout for somebody like Knoblauch, a kid who could move into the regular
lineup without a lot of fanfare or hand-holding. For opportunity awaited with the ballclubs that could quickly flesh out their rosters and prove that they could compete. Since the 1969 season Major League Baseball no longer crowned one regular-season champion in the American and National Leagues, respectively, and then had them go directly to the World Series. Instead, baseball now sported divisional winners, a total of four teams in the postseason, with the promise of more divisional champions and even wild-card berths on the horizon.
As the 1991 season began, the Atlanta Braves had plenty of young stars of their own. The pitching staff not only sported Glavine, who would go on to win the Cy Young Award, but also left-hander Steve Avery and right-hander John Smoltz as well. In the everyday lineup fan favorite Dale Murphy had been traded to Philadelphia the year before to make room for David Justice. Perhaps this was a painful move for Braves followers, but it certainly paid off. Despite such potential, the Braves spun their wheels throughout the first half of the season. It wasn’t until after the All-Star break that they took off, winning fifty-five of eight-three games, including twenty-one of their last twenty-nine, as they surged past the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“It was a glamour team against a Cinderella team,” team president Stan Kasten said of the National League stretch drive. “This was a race people will talk about for years to come.”
The Braves clinched the Western Division title on the next-to-last day of the 1991 season, finishing with ninety-four victories. That total was an Atlanta team record and twenty-nine more victories than they recorded the year before.
The Twins also got off to slow start in 1991 before putting together a fifteen-game winning streak that lifted them into first place in June. Minnesota had a promising young hurler of its own in right-hander Scott Erickson, who won twenty games, including twelve in a row this season. Perhaps the decisive series of the regular season occurred in mid-August when the Oakland Athletics, the reigning American League champions, arrived in the Twin Cities for four games. Although Minnesota had been in a slump, after dropping three of four to the California Angels, the Twins turned the tables on the Athletics, winning three games behind Morris and bullpen victories by relievers Carl Willis and Rick Aguilera.