Tales from the Minnesota Twins Dugout

by Kent Hrbek

  That was the last time I ever shared a room with Frank Viola.

  First Taste

  We thought we turned the corner in 1984. We were in the race with the Royals until the final week, thanks in large part to an offseason deal in which one of our few veteran players, Gary Ward, was traded to Texas for three players, including starting pitchers John Butcher and Mike Smithson. Butcher and Smithson were legitimate major-league pitchers, something we hadn’t seen a whole lot of since I joined the Twins. It gave us a little hope. For once we weren’t searching the scrap heap for pitchers. We traded a quality hitter and got a couple pitchers who had some numbers and some time in the big leagues.

  We kind of snuck up on people. We started fairly slow, going over .500 for the first time in six weeks at 40–39 when we beat Baltimore 3–1. Then we ended July with a five-game winning streak, winning 9–2 on the last day of the month against Seattle to improve our record to 54–49.

  When we swept a doubleheader at Milwaukee on August 22, we were 67–58, and people were starting to take notice. We won five straight again, and on September 24, we were 81–75, just a half-game behind a veteran Kansas City club that was 82–75. The Royals had won the AL West Division four times since 1976 and had been in the race every other season. They kept talking about how tough it was for a team to win the first time it experienced a pennant race.

  We proved ’em right, that’s for sure. We lost our final six games, including two that rank among the most memorable losses in Twins history. We lost the final two games of a series against the White Sox, then went to Cleveland for a season-ending four-game series. We were still only 1½ games behind the Royals, and a game in the loss column, when we arrived in Cleveland. Ron Davis entered the opening game of the Cleveland series with a runner on first, one out, and a 3–1 lead in the bottom of the eighth. He gave up two runs, tying the game. The next inning Jamie Quirk hit a two-out, walk-off homer, which was pretty unexpected since it came in Quirk’s only at-bat ever with Cleveland.

  That was nothing compared to the next night, when we took a 10–0 lead in the top of the third with Viola on the mound. We still had a 10–2 lead before Cleveland scored seven runs in the bottom of the sixth. RD took the mound in the eighth to protect that 10–9 lead. He gave up a homer to Joe Carter to tie the game, then walked two of the first three batters he faced in the ninth. Billy Gardner mercifully removed him, but Eddie Hodge gave up a game-winning hit, and we lost 11–10. That loss eliminated us from the race, putting us three games behind the Royals with two games to play.

  At least that night produced one of the most memorable quotes in Twins history. Gaetti had a critical throwing error during Cleveland’s seven-run sixth inning, and after the game, he told a Minneapolis reporter: “It’s hard to throw to first base with both hands around your neck.” That was G-Man, being painfully honest. We choked, and he had the guts to acknowledge it.

  I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about ’84 because what we did in ’87 and ’91 overshadowed the disappointment. I think the ’84 season caught a lot of us by surprise and even caught the fans by surprise. To this day I don’t remember a lot from that season, other than Jamie Quirk and blowing a 10–0 lead—and the fact that I had a darn good season.

  Numbers-wise it was my best year. I hit .311 with 27 homers and 107 RBIs. But you know how a lot of people don’t believe a pitcher should be considered an MVP candidate, being that they have their own award—the Cy Young? Well, they gave the MVP award to Detroit reliever Willie Hernández. My rookie season, when I hit .301 and drove in 92 runs, I finished second to Cal Ripken for Rookie of the Year. I guess I’m just a second-place kind of guy when it comes to awards. But I never finished second in the World Series, did I?

  Farewell

  The 1984 season was an important one in Twins history for reasons that extended beyond our run at the pennant. It was the year that Calvin Griffith sold the club to Carl Pohlad and the year that a rookie named Kirby Puckett took over as the Twins’ center fielder. Calvin is a huge part of baseball’s history, and I always had a warm spot for him. He was the guy who brought major-league baseball to Minnesota when he moved the Washington Senators to the Twin Cities in 1961.

  Calvin was the last of the Great Mohicans, the only guy running baseball as a family business in the 1980s without a billion-dollar business to back him up. Everyone always said Calvin was cheap, Calvin was this, Calvin was that. Calvin just didn’t have the finances to do much, and I understood his position. I never was one to spend a lot of time worrying about what we didn’t have. That was ownership and the front office. My job was to play baseball, period.

  I think it hurt him to death when he sold the team. It probably killed him. He loved the game. It was his whole life. Late in his life he moved to Helena, Montana, and I heard he showed up every night to watch the Class-A team play in the Northwest League. Calvin Griffith just plain loved baseball.

  After I finished playing in the minor leagues for the Wisconsin Rapids in 1980 I got to visit Met Stadium and meet Calvin. Angelo Guiliani, the scout who signed me, brought me into his office and said, “This is Kent Hrbek, the kid from Bloomington that we signed. He’s playing in the minors now.” Calvin was eating a bowl of tomato soup at the time, and he had this napkin tucked in his shirt. On that day he had tomato soup all over his napkin. He just looked up from his soup and said something to the effect of: “You’re a pretty big kid. Just get out there and hit the ball hard.”

  That was Calvin: no airs about him—just a regular guy who happened to own a baseball team. Every time I saw him in a hallway at the ballpark I’d say, “Hi, Mr. Griffith.” I had a lot of respect for the man. I thank the guy a million times for giving me a chance. I’ll tell you, the guy could find talent, right up to the end.

  And when we won the pennant in ’87, I think he took a lot of pride in that, because the core of that team—me, G-Man, Kirby Puckett, Brunansky, Tim Laudner, Randy Bush, and Viola—was a product of his farm system. We all felt that Calvin was a big part of that victory.

  Hello

  Kirby Puckett was typical of the way the Griffith organization found talent. Puckett wasn’t drafted out of high school, and he worked some manual-labor jobs before getting into Triton Junior College in Chicago. He played summer ball in Chicago with the son of Jim Rantz, the Twins’ longtime minor-league director. Rantz was in the stands to watch his son, took a liking to Puckett, and the Twins drafted him in the secondary phase of the draft for undrafted college players.

  The 1986 crew included (from left) Tom Brunansky, Roy Smalley, Kirby Puckett, Gary Gaetti, and me. Courtesy of the Minnesota Twins

  It made for a great story, like much of Pucks life. He was the best player I’ve ever seen or played with. But I’ll be honest: I was never close to Puck. All the years we played we never went out to dinner alone together or sat in the same fishing boat.

  That’ll surprise some people because Puck talked quite a bit about fishing with me, and he often made it sound like we were best friends. It was like if you saw Hrbie, you expected to see Kirby. Hrbie and Kirby. The Twins put out a poster of us one year, and I guess it made for good marketing. It just wasn’t the way it was.

  Puck did some things that bothered me, one of them being that he would always be visiting with the opposing players before games. Puck would walk on the field, and the whole team would come over to talk to him. That always burned my crank. My feelings were you didn’t socialize with the other team. I talked with him a couple times about that. I told him, “We’re trying to whoop that guy’s ass, you can’t be friends with him. And if you want to be his friend, do it off the field.”

  But Puck had his own way of doing things. He loved the attention. One of the stories you hear over and over about Puck is how he told his teammates before Game 6 of the 1991 World Series to jump on his back, that he was driving the bus tonight. Well, Puck said that before every game he ever played. Every time he left the clubhouse, he said, “Jump on my back. I’m driv
ing the bus tonight.” We used to laugh at that. Randy Bush would check the lineup card, see that his name wasn’t on it, and yell out, “Jump on my back tonight, guys. I’m driving the bus.” I’d say, “I don’t want anyone on my back tonight because I’m too fat and I’m too sore.” We’d all laugh at that stuff, including Puck. But then it became part of Puck’s legend. And Puck didn’t mind being legendary.

  In the end, I think we all learned how tough it is to be a legend. The media loved Puck, and they put him on a pedestal. Then after he retired he went through a very public divorce and some nasty things stuff came out about him. But people didn’t want to believe negative things about Puck. They still wanted him on that pedestal, and that’s pretty tough for anyone to live up to.

  When the Twins didn’t rehire him as a vice president after some of his problems became public, it hurt him. It hurt the Twins, too, but it was a decision that had to be made, the way things were going. I honestly think that was the first time in Kirby’s life that someone said no to him. Kirby moved to Arizona after that. For Kirby to leave Minnesota when he once had the whole state in the palm of his hand, I think it ended up costing him his life. He got in way too deep with partying, and he didn’t have anyone to steer him before he died way too young of a stroke in 2006.

  A lot of times it’s much tougher to be forced to quit the game than to retire and leave on your own terms like I did. We all knew how much it hurt Puck when his career ended in the spring of 1996 because of glaucoma. I don’t think he ever let on how much he missed it. But I think we all know now.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Step Back

  WHATEVER OPTIMISM WE GENERATED IN 1984 evaporated quickly the following season when we lost nine of our first 11 games. You could almost hear the fans saying, “Same old Twins.” We did put together a 10-game winning streak at the end of May to get over .500, but that proved only temporary. We lost 10 straight at the end of May and never got back over .500.

  If you’re looking for someone who symbolized that season, try a young left-handed reliever named Tom Klawitter, better known as “The Klaw.” Now, on a legitimate pennant contender, The Klaw wouldn’t have been considered the answer to your left-handed relief problems. He’d pitched in Class-A ball the year before and should have been in camp getting a little experience.

  But The Klaw quickly worked his way into the team’s bullpen plans, which should have been a clue for us that we might not be ready to be a serious contender. Plus, RD—Ron Davis—was back as closer after the demoralizing final week in Cleveland in ’84.

  It seemed like we always had some phenom in spring training who would put up fantastic numbers and we’d give him a shot in the majors. That was the state of our pitching staff back then.

  Klaw became something of a cult hero during spring training, with the help of our manager. When Billy Gardner walked out to the mound to signal him in, he’d put his hand in the air and make a claw sign. That was kind of a fun thing to do.

  Klaw seemed like a nice guy. We were asking him to make the jump from A ball, but some guys do it. I had done it myself. But The Klaw didn’t make it. The start of the ’85 season was his one and only in the big leagues, mostly because he walked 13 in 9⅓ innings. I think he had a little “light standarditis,” as Rick Stelmaszek used to call it. The light towers seem taller, and a lot of people get more scared and nervous. We saw a lot of that in those years. You’d see minor leaguers with great talent, but when they got to the majors, they didn’t have something. Maybe part of that was the makeup of our team, because most of us were still so young, we really didn’t have anyone to lead the way when a young guy started struggling.

  In terms of experience and age, left fielder Mickey Hatcher was one of our veteran leaders. Hatch played the game hard and got the most out of his ability, but he was a little off the wall to be a father figure to struggling youngsters. One day in Oakland he settled under a towering fly ball, and we’re all thinking, “Good, there’s another out for us.” Then his knees started shaking, and he dropped to the ground, like he had fainted. Of course, he didn’t catch the ball. They took Hatch in for a brain scan, but I guess the old joke that the scan showed nothing applied to what they found in Hatch’s brain. None of the players were too concerned awaiting the test results because some of the guys knew that Hatch had been out the night before and had a little too much to drink. We figured, correctly, that he was just dehydrated and got dizzy trying to track that fly ball.

  That’s the way things went for us back then.

  Goodbye Billy

  Our failure to build on ’84 cost Billy Gardner his job. I hated to see him go, although I’m not sure I ever knew Billy real well. He was the nicest guy in the world, and he probably did as well as anyone could with the talent on hand. We had the core group of guys who had come in together as rookies in ’82, but beyond that, it seemed like there were guys coming in and out all the time, and we had no idea who we’d have on the team the next week.

  I had a hand in Billy being fired because I struggled big time the first two months of 1985. I was hitting .211 at the end of April and then .249 when Billy was fired in mid-June. It was probably the toughest two months hitting I’ve ever had. I know I put on a face at the ballpark to try not to show things were bothering me. But that ate at me. There was a newspaper article in 1986 where Jeanie talked about that period, saying: “After a game last year, the first thing he’d say was, ‘I’m not going to let it bother me.’ But a half-hour later he’d be asking me, ‘Jeanie, what am I doing wrong?’ He’d always be going over videotapes of himself batting, trying to figure it out.”

  Jeanie wasn’t misquoted, let’s put it that way. I did struggle. I think it might have been easier for me if my dad had been alive. He’d watched me play since I was a little kid, and when I needed someone to talk to about hitting, he was the guy. As the years went on, I talked more and more baseball with my mom. A couple of times, she made suggestions in my stance that I tried. And a couple times, they worked. But during 1985, I missed having my dad to talk to.

  The best thing I learned from Billy Gardner was the same thing I learned in high school from Buster Radebach: The game has to be fun. Play it hard, play to win, but have fun.

  Billy got canned in June when we were 27–35 and was replaced by Ray Miller, who had built a name for himself as the pitching coach with Baltimore. Hiring Ray seemed like a good idea for a team that needed to upgrade its pitching. And we did play .500 ball after Ray was hired in ’85, so some people thought we were headed in the right direction.

  But in the end, Ray’s stint with the Twins didn’t turn out a whole lot better than The Klaw’s. Ray got canned late in the ’86 season with our record at 59–80. Ray never did solve our pitching problems, and he didn’t build much of a rapport with the everyday players. I liked Ray as a person, but as a manager, he really didn’t do much to build any chemistry in the clubhouse. Plus he put a ban on fishing when he told us to stay out of the sun. I just don’t think he thought that one through. Did that mean you shouldn’t be playing in the backyard with your kids because you could get sunburned?

  Ray was a guy who liked being a manager, if you know what I mean. He liked sitting in his manager’s office, talking to the media about the game. Even while he was the manager, the guy who was working the clubhouse, getting to know the players and building relationships, was Tom Kelly.

  TK was named the interim manager when Ray was fired. The choice for a permanent manager dragged out for months during the offseason. We had a young general manager, Andy MacPhail, who was in TK’s corner. But our owner, Mr. Pohlad, appeared to favor a more veteran manager like Jim Frey, who had been the manager of the Chicago Cubs.

  I lobbied hard for TK. I thought he’d be perfect. I’d never played a full season for him as manager, but he had been our third-base coach, and he knew the players. Plus, he had managed Tim Laudner, Gary Gaetti, Randy Bush, and Frank Viola in the minors, and they each had a good relationship with him. Tom K
elly was already in our clubhouse, and he knew the personalities. Why go outside the organization when it’s going to take another half year to get to know the personalities?

  TK finally got the job, which was a relief.

  The Trade

  Ray Miller did make one lasting contribution to the Twins: He moved RD from the closer’s role and was manager when RD was traded to the Cubs on August 13, 1986. There are some people who think that date was a turning point in Twins history. I don’t buy it. People wrote that RD was a cancer, and that was horrible.

  RD had a heart bigger than his chest, and he was a great teammate. I’m not going to deny that he did things that got some people angry, like singing that damn tune, “Jimmy Crack Corn,” after a loss. He also was known to trade baseballs for bratwurst sitting in the bullpen in Milwaukee. I heard that, and I got a little angry because we’re out there busting our butts to try to win a game, and RD is eating brats in the bullpen. But you know what? If I had been out there in the bullpen, I’d have probably been eating brats, too, so I forgave him.

  RD gave us everything he had, which when it came to closing games wasn’t enough. It got to the point where something had to be done. Miller took RD out of the closer’s role fairly early in the year, which basically left us without a proven closer. Keith Atherton, a veteran long reliever, led us with 10 saves that year. But there were games when Ray would have to turn to RD simply because he’d run out of pitchers.

  The night before he was traded, RD lost an extra-inning game in California. RD’s ERA at the time was over 9.00, and things were so bad that night that he sat in front of his locker and cried. A reporter asked Miller if, despite the loss, he felt sorry for RD. Ray looked up and said: “Do you ever feel sorry for me? My future depends on a reliever who’s sitting in front of his locker right now crying.”

  Well, that pretty much summed up the state of things. The next day, RD was traded to the Cubs, and I don’t think we reacted too well. The charter flight from California to Seattle turned into a party. People got a little goofy. Puck kind of started it by singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” as he got on the bus to the airport. And the singing continued for most of the flight to Seattle. Puck went nuts with it. People started laughing at Puck, and when Puck got the floor, he didn’t give it up. Harmon Killebrew, who was a TV analyst at the time, said it was the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen in baseball. He said it was like the team had been exorcized of a demon.