The Field Of Dreams Project

[Nick Soulis]

THE BOY FROM THE ALLEGHENY TURNS BACK THE TIDE OF TIME
Maddox and Willis Carry Pittsburgh's Deadball Warriors Past the Ghosts of a Broken Champion in Seven Unforgettable Games

There are moments in the long history of this game when a young man arrives on the scene so suddenly, so completely, and with such a serene disregard for the weight of what is being asked of him, that the old men in the press box look at one another and say nothing, because nothing adequate exists to be said. Nick Maddox of the Pittsburgh Pirates is twenty years old. He has thrown, across two complete game performances in the most important series his club has played, eighteen innings of shutout baseball against a Florida Marlins club that scored six hundred and sixty-seven runs during the regular season of their year. He has done this without apparent effort, without visible anxiety, without once suggesting that the moment was larger than the man.

In a just universe, this would be impossible. We do not live in a just universe. We live in a baseball universe, which operates by entirely different laws, and in this universe Nick Maddox walked into Sun Life Stadium in Miami with his team trailing three games to one and facing the end of everything, and he threw a complete game shutout on a hundred and thirty-six pitches in the October heat, and then he came home to Exposition Park and did it again in Game Six with the same calm authority, and the Pittsburgh Pirates forced a Game Seven, and on Wednesday afternoon Vic Willis finished what Maddox had started, and sixteen thousand souls along the Allegheny River celebrated something they will tell their grandchildren about.

Let us speak of Willis, because the stopper deserves his paragraph. Thirty-one years old, twenty-one victories in the regular season, and the kind of pitcher who regards the complete game not as an achievement but as an expectation. Willis threw nine innings in Miami in Game Five to keep Pittsburgh alive, surrendering one earned run and nothing else of consequence. He came back to Exposition Park for Game Seven and threw nine more, giving up two runs against a Florida lineup that had been one of the tournament's most disciplined offensive clubs all series long. He did not overpower anyone. He simply refused to be beaten, which is a different thing entirely and in many ways a more admirable one.

The Florida Marlins deserve a paragraph of their own, because this correspondent has been in enough press boxes to know that fifty-four victories in a season does not produce the kind of baseball this club played for seven games. Jim Leyland is a manager of the first order, a man who understands that the greatest resource in any dugout is not talent but belief, and he installed that belief in a club that had been stripped of its championship roster before the winter snow had melted. Jesús Sánchez threw the game of his life in Game One. Kirt Ojala was magnificent in Game Two. Matt Mantei was untouchable in five appearances, surrendering not a single run across the entire series. These men came to Pittsburgh and Miami and gave everything they possessed against one of the finest deadball clubs the National League has ever produced, and they fell short by a margin so thin that a differently bounced ball here or there might have changed the entire story.

Honus Wagner requires a paragraph, as Honus Wagner always requires a paragraph. The greatest shortstop who has ever played this game hit one sixty-seven through the first four games of this series and three hundred across the final three, which is precisely the kind of arithmetic that defines a career rather than a series. He doubled home the first run of Game Seven. He stole five bases. He is thirty-three years old and he is still the most complete player in baseball, and when the moment demanded that he be what he is, he was.

Fred Clarke managed this series the way he manages every series — with patience and conviction and an absolute refusal to deviate from the principles that have made his Pittsburgh club what it is. He trusted a twenty year old pitcher with his team's season twice. He trusted Vic Willis to close it out in a Game Seven on the road in Miami and then again at home. He constructed a lineup that put the ball in play, manufactured runs, and made the other team execute, and when the other team did not, Pittsburgh scored. That is the deadball game at its finest, and Clarke has been playing it at its finest for longer than most men in this tournament have been managing.

The Field of Dreams Tournament has given us many things. It has given us matchups that strain the imagination, performances that defy expectation, and moments that remind us why this game holds its grip on the human heart across generations and across eras that should have nothing to say to one another and turn out to have everything to say.
Nick Maddox is twenty years old. He has eighteen tournament innings and zero earned runs and a Series MVP award that belongs in whatever passes for a trophy case in 1907 Pittsburgh. Somewhere in the Florida clubhouse Jim Leyland is telling his players the truth about what they accomplished, and the truth is considerable.

The Allegheny runs on. The corn stands tall in Dyersville. The tournament continues.

It always continues.

— Filed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 1907

[Nick Soulis]

Series #267

1988 Minnesota Twins vs 1951 Washington Senators



THE 1988 MINNESOTA TWINS
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota
91-71 | 2nd Place, American League West



The 1988 Minnesota Twins arrived at the Field of Dreams as one of the most complete offensive clubs in the tournament's modern era bracket. Managed by Tom Kelly — whose tournament record of 4-1 marks him as one of the shrewdest skippers in the draw — this club led by Kirby Puckett's historic .356/.375/.545 season, one of the finest individual batting lines any position player has brought to the Field of Dreams. Puckett's 234 hits, 24 home runs, and 121 RBI earned him a third-place MVP finish and a Gold Glove in center field. He was not alone. Kent Hrbek slashed .312/.387/.520 with 25 home runs and 76 RBI. Gary Gaetti posted a .301/.353/.551 line with 28 home runs and 88 RBI, earning his own Gold Glove and a 22nd-place MVP vote. Dan Gladden provided speed and grit at the top of the order with 28 stolen bases. As a team, the Twins scored 759 runs, hit 151 home runs, and batted .274 — a lineup with genuine thunder from top to bottom, playing in a Metrodome that in 1988 carried park factors that favored hitters. They drew over three million fans, the best attendance in baseball that season.

The pitching staff was anchored by Frank Viola, who in 1988 delivered one of the great Cy Young seasons of his era — 24 wins against 7 losses, a 2.64 ERA, and 193 strikeouts across 255.1 innings. Allan Anderson, just twenty-four years old, complemented Viola brilliantly with a 2.45 ERA of his own, going 16-9 and leading the American League in that category. The bullpen was closed out by Jeff Reardon, who converted 42 saves with a 2.47 ERA across 73 innings — a genuine shutdown presence at the back of the staff. The team ERA of 3.93 and 897 strikeouts reflected a pitching operation built on command and efficiency rather than raw overpowering stuff. In their previous tournament appearances, Twins clubs have gone a combined 8-5, with Tom Kelly personally responsible for four of those wins. This 1988 edition may be the franchise's most dangerous entry yet.

THE 1951 WASHINGTON SENATORS
Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C.
62-92 | 7th Place, American League



The 1951 Washington Senators finished seventh in an eight-team American League, 62 wins and 92 losses the official verdict on a season that was harder than it looked from the outside. Their Pythagorean record of 68-86 suggests a club that was genuinely better than their record indicated — unlucky in close games, inconsistent in stretches, undone at times by a pitching staff that surrendered 764 runs over the course of the season. Managed by Bucky Harris — the most active skipper in tournament history with 37 series managed and a record of 14-23 — the Senators were not without talent. Eddie Yost, just twenty-four years old, was their most valuable player by a significant margin, posting a remarkable .283/.423/.424 line with 126 walks, 109 runs scored, and 4.1 WAR. His plate discipline was extraordinary for the era. Gil Coan hit .303 with 9 home runs and 62 RBI from center field, adding 3.2 WAR. Irv Noren contributed .279 with 8 home runs and 86 RBI in right, and Mickey Vernon hit .293 with 87 RBI at first base — a quietly productive offensive core that could, on their best days, put runs on the board against anyone.

The pitching staff was a study in respectable effort against difficult odds. Bob Porterfield was the club's most effective starter, going 9-8 with a 3.24 ERA across 133 innings — the kind of performance that on a better club might have earned him double-digit wins comfortably. Connie Marrero, forty years old and still competing at a high level, went 11-9 with a 3.90 ERA and completed 16 of his 25 starts — a workhorse in the truest sense. Sandy Consuegra provided versatility as a starter and reliever, logging 146 innings with a 4.01 ERA. The bullpen featured Tom Ferrick, whose 2.38 ERA across 41.2 innings was the staff's best mark. Washington's franchise record in the tournament stands at 5-14 — a history of close calls, early exits, and occasional upsets that keeps Bucky Harris and his men relevant despite the odds. This 1951 club arrives as significant underdogs. In this tournament, that has meant very little.

[Nick Soulis]

THE SPORTING SCENE
By Grantland Rice

PUCKETT AND THE GHOSTS OF GRIFFITH STADIUM
Special Correspondent to the Field of Dreams Tournament
Dateline: Minneapolis, Minnesota — October 1988

There is a young man from Florida who plays center field for the Minnesota Twins with a joy so unrestrained, so genuinely and completely felt, that to watch him take the field is to be reminded of why this game was invented in the first place. His name is Kirby Puckett. He is twenty-eight years old. He hit .356 this season and collected 234 base hits and drove in 121 runs and played his position with the grace of a man who cannot quite believe his good fortune at being paid to do this. He is, in the plainest terms available to this correspondent, a ballplayer.
He will need to be every inch of that against what is coming.
For the Washington Senators of 1951 are not the club their record suggests. The standings showed sixty-two victories and ninety-two defeats when the season drew to its close, and a man reading only those numbers might be forgiven for thinking Bucky Harris brought his club to Iowa to make up the numbers. He would be wrong to think it. The Senators scored 672 runs in a season when runs were not easily come by. They played, by the cold mathematics of the Pythagorean method, like a sixty-eight and eighty-six ball club — better than their record, better than their reputation, and better than at least several teams who have already been sent home from this tournament in considerably fewer games than their partisans expected.

Bucky Harris has managed a baseball game since 1924. He managed the old Senators to a World Series championship in his very first season as a skipper, a boy wonder of twenty-seven who somehow persuaded a collection of seasoned professionals to follow him into the fire. He has been managing ever since — through lean years and lean decades, through rosters built on hope and rosters built on stars, through every variation of circumstance a baseball life can produce. He is not a man who is impressed by the opposition's reputation. He has seen too much for that.
He will face Tom Kelly, who has managed in this tournament with a quiet authority that his record of four wins and one loss reflects precisely. Kelly is not a man who says much. He does not need to. He builds a lineup, sets a rotation, and trusts his players to execute. In Frank Viola he possesses the finest left-handed pitcher currently active in the American League — twenty-four victories, an earned run average of two and sixty-four hundredths, a Cy Young Award that no serious observer would dispute. In young Allan Anderson he has a second starter who led the American League in earned run average at two and forty-five. In Jeff Reardon he has a closer who converted forty-two saves and who does not, as a rule, surrender leads once he has been handed them.

And yet.

This correspondent has watched baseball long enough to know that the ledger of talent does not always balance the way arithmetic suggests it should. Eddie Yost drew one hundred and twenty-six bases on balls this season. One hundred and twenty-six. He crossed home plate one hundred and nine times. He is a third baseman who understands something about patience that most men never learn — that the purpose of a plate appearance is not always to swing the bat, that a walk is as good as a single in the right moment, that the pitcher who cannot find the strike zone with a man like Yost at the plate is already in trouble before the first runner reaches base.
Gil Coan hit .303 in center field. Mickey Vernon drove in eighty-seven runs from first base with the quiet efficiency of a professional who does not require praise to perform. Bob Porterfield went nine and eight with an earned run average of three and twenty-four — numbers that on a better club would have meant fifteen wins and a reputation considerably larger than the one he currently carries. These are ballplayers. They are not famous. They are not celebrated. They are present, and they are ready, and they have nothing whatever to lose.

The series opens at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, that great domed cathedral of Minneapolis where the crowd noise builds to something that has unnerved visiting clubs for years. The Senators will walk into that noise on the first pitch of the first game and discover very quickly what this tournament asks of the underdog. It asks everything. It always has.
This correspondent will be watching. He suspects the rest of the baseball world would do well to watch along.
The best teams in this tournament are the ones still playing. Washington is still playing.

— Grantland Rice, Field of Dreams Special Correspondent

[Nick Soulis]

Series #267

1988 Minnesota Twins vs 1951 Washington Senators



SERIES 267 — GAME 1
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota
MY OH MY — PUCKETT WALKS IT OFF AS TWINS STEAL THRILLER IN TEN

Washington 1951 Senators 2
Minnesota 1988 Twins 3 (10 innings)

For eight innings neither club could push a run across, Frank Viola and Bob Kuzava locked in a scoreless duel that had the Metrodome crowd restless and both dugouts searching for an opening, and then the ninth inning delivered everything at once. Mickey Vernon led off the top half with a single and Sam Mele followed with a two-run double off Viola that broke the silence and sent Washington to the dugout with a two-nothing lead and six outs to protect — a lead that Bucky Harris, with his bullpen, had every reason to believe he could hold. Bob Ross came in to close it out and instead watched Greg Gagne turn on the first pitch he liked and drive it over the fence with a man aboard, a two-run home run that tied the game at two and sent nineteen thousand people at the Metrodome to their feet in an instant. Extra innings. Reardon held Washington scoreless in the tenth, and then Kirby Puckett stepped in against Ross, took one pitch, and hit it into the seats — a solo walk-off home run that ended it three to two and left the Metrodome shaking from the turf to the rafters. Minnesota takes Game One, but Washington led this game in the ninth inning and came within six outs of stealing it.

KEY PERFORMERS

Kirby Puckett, CF, MIN — 1-4, HR, RBI, BB, 2 K — solo walk-off home run in the 10th; the only hit that mattered
Greg Gagne, SS, MIN — 1-4, HR, 2 RBI — two-run shot in the 9th that erased Washington's lead and forced extras
Frank Viola, SP, MIN — 8.1 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 6 K — brilliant for eight innings before surrendering the lead in the ninth
Jeff Reardon, CL, MIN — 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K — stranded inherited runners, held Washington off the board in the 10th
Bob Kuzava, SP, WSH — 7.1 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 5 K — kept Minnesota scoreless deep into the game on 108 pitches
Sam Mele, DH, WSH — 1-4, 2B, 2 RBI — the two-run double that broke the scoreless tie and gave Washington the lead
Mickey Vernon, 1B, WSH — 2-3, BB — the single that started Washington's ninth-inning rally


Series: 1988 Minnesota leads 1-0
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SERIES 267 — GAME 2
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota
MARRERO MASTERPIECE — FORTY-YEAR-OLD CUBAN SILENCES METRODOME AS SENATORS EVEN SERIES

Washington 1951 Senators 5
Minnesota 1988 Twins 1

Connie Marrero is forty years old and he just threw a complete game victory at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome against the best lineup Washington has faced in this tournament, and when he walked off that mound after nine innings and a hundred and twenty pitches the crowd that had come to see the Twins take a two-nothing series lead gave him something close to a standing ovation because they understood they had witnessed something worth acknowledging. Marrero worked methodically from the first pitch, holding Minnesota to singles and doubles that never connected into anything — three doubles across nine innings, all stranded, the Twins leaving six runners on base against a forty-year-old Cuban right-hander who simply refused to make the mistake that would cost him the game. Washington scratched the first run across in the third on an Irv Noren RBI, added another in the sixth on a Sam Mele RBI, and then broke the game open in the ninth when Cass Michaels led off with a solo home run off Anderson and Washington piled on for three runs total in the inning to make it five to nothing. Minnesota got one back in the bottom of the ninth on a Gene Larkin sacrifice fly, but by then Marrero was already finishing what he had started — one run, four hits, complete game, series tied. Allan Anderson pitched well enough to win most nights — eight and a third innings, three earned runs — but Marrero was simply better, and the 1951 Washington Senators leave Minneapolis with exactly what they came for.

KEY PERFORMERS

Connie Marrero, SP, WSH — 9.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 K — complete game victory; the performance of the series so far
Irv Noren, CF, WSH — 3-5, RBI, SB — three hits and the first run of the game; Washington's best offensive player on the night
Cass Michaels, 2B, WSH — 1-4, HR, RBI — the solo home run in the ninth that broke the game open
Sam Mele, DH, WSH — 1-4, RBI, BB — quiet but productive; the sixth-inning RBI that extended Washington's lead
Mike McCormick, RF, WSH — 2-5, RBI, SB — two hits and an RBI from the bottom third of the order
Allan Anderson, SP, MIN — 8.1 IP, 8 H, 3 ER, 4 BB, 3 K — competitive but undone by Washington's patient approach
Kent Hrbek, 1B, MIN — 2-3, 2B, BB — Minnesota's most consistent bat; one of four hits against Marrero


Series: Tied 1-1
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SERIES 267 — GAME 3
Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C.

Minnesota 1988 Twins 5
Washington 1951 Senators 2

Gary Gaetti arrived at Griffith Stadium on a cool October night and reminded everyone in the building what this Minnesota lineup is capable of when it finds its footing. The game was scoreless through five innings, Bert Blyleven navigating a Washington offense that peppered him with hits — eleven by the final count — but could not string them together into runs, while Sandy Consuegra kept the Twins at bay through guile and soft contact until the sixth inning arrived and Gaetti ended the stalemate in the most decisive way available to him. With two runners aboard and two outs in the top of the sixth Gaetti turned on a Consuegra fastball and drove it over the fence for a three-run home run, and just like that the game belonged to Minnesota. Washington answered immediately — Cass Michaels drove in a run and Sam Dente, pinch hitting for Consuegra, knocked in another to make it three to two and send a jolt through the Griffith Stadium crowd — but Blyleven steadied, Gagne added an insurance RBI in the seventh, and then Gaetti put the game away for good in the eighth with an inside-the-park home run off Alton Brown, legging it around the bases as the Griffith Stadium outfield scrambled and the Twins dugout erupted. Reardon closed the ninth without incident. Minnesota wins five to two, takes a two-one series lead, and heads into Game Four at Griffith Stadium with Blyleven having gutted through eight innings against a Washington lineup that hit the ball hard all night but could never deliver the knockout punch.

KEY PERFORMERS

Gary Gaetti, 3B, MIN — 2-3, 2 HR (1 inside-the-park), 4 RBI, 2 R, BB — the dominant performance of the series so far
Bert Blyleven, SP, MIN — 8.0 IP, 11 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K — gutted through eleven hits to give Minnesota the win
Jeff Reardon, CL, MIN — 1.0 IP, 2 H, 0 ER — clean ninth, second save of the series
Kirby Puckett, CF, MIN — 2-4, SB — two hits and a stolen base; finding his rhythm
Irv Noren, CF, WSH — 3-5 — three hits but stranded; Washington's best bat on the night
Mickey Vernon, 1B, WSH — 2-5 — consistent presence but couldn't deliver with runners aboard
Cass Michaels, 2B, WSH — 1-4, RBI — the run that briefly made it a one-run game in the sixth


Series: 1988 Minnesota leads 2-1
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SERIES 267 — GAME 4
Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C.

Minnesota 1988 Twins 3
Washington 1951 Senators 6

Minnesota came to Griffith Stadium and put three runs on the board in the fourth inning with the kind of explosive sequence that looked like it might decide the game — Kirby Puckett tripling home two runs, Dan Gladden following with a triple of his own, and Gary Gaetti capping the rally with a solo home run, his third of the series, to make it three to nothing and send the visiting dugout into full celebration. But Washington had seen this kind of deficit before and Griffith Stadium had not emptied its belief. The Senators scratched two back in the bottom of the fourth on an Eddie Yost sacrifice fly and a Pete Runnels RBI, then tied it completely in the fifth when Mike McCormick drove in another, and suddenly the three-run lead Minnesota had constructed with such authority was gone and the game belonged to whoever wanted it most. Both clubs traded zeroes through the sixth while the October crowd at Griffith Stadium held its collective breath, and then the seventh inning arrived and Pete Runnels decided the series. With two outs and the bases loaded Runnels drove a Germán González delivery into the gap for a bases-clearing double — three runs scoring, Washington ahead six to three, the old ballpark shaking from the rafters to the grass. Alton Brown and Bob Ross held Minnesota scoreless through the final two innings and the Washington Senators walk off Griffith Stadium with a six to three victory that ties this best-of-seven series at two games apiece. Four games played. Everything still to decide.

KEY PERFORMERS

Pete Runnels, SS, WSH — 3-4, 2 2B, 5 RBI — the bases-clearing double in the seventh was the moment of the series; carried Washington on his back
Irv Noren, CF, WSH — 3-4, SB — three hits and a stolen base; the most consistent bat in this series for Washington
Mike McCormick, RF, WSH — 2-3, BB, RBI — the tying run in the fifth; quietly productive all night
Gary Gaetti, 3B, MIN — 2-4, HR, RBI — his third home run of the series; Minnesota's most dangerous hitter
Kirby Puckett, CF, MIN — 1-4, 3B, 2 RBI — the triple that opened the scoring and briefly made this look like a Minnesota night
Freddie Toliver, SP, MIN — 6.2 IP, 11 H, 4 ER — gave up too much contact against a Washington lineup that would not quit
Alton Brown, RP, WSH — 2.0 IP, 2 H, 0 ER — held Minnesota scoreless after inheriting the lead; the unsung bridge to Ross

Series: Tied 2-2
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SERIES 267 — GAME 5
Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C.

Minnesota 1988 Twins 2
Washington 1951 Senators 5

Greg Gagne gave Minnesota everything it needed and more in the second inning, turning on a Bob Kuzava fastball with a runner aboard and driving it over the fence for a two-run home run that silenced Griffith Stadium and put the Twins in front with their ace on the mound — exactly the position Tom Kelly had drawn up. But Washington is not a club that stays silent for long, and what unfolded over the next seven innings was a methodical, grinding dismantling of Frank Viola that nobody who watched Game One could have fully anticipated. Irv Noren doubled in the third and Mickey Vernon drove him home with a sacrifice fly to make it two to one, and then Gil Coan tripled in the fifth with two outs and Mickey Grasso drove him in to tie the game at two, and suddenly the two-run lead Gagne had constructed was gone and Griffith Stadium had found its voice again. The game sat tied through the sixth and seventh while Viola threw pitch after pitch and Washington kept fouling things off and working counts, and then the eighth inning arrived and the Senators broke it open — three runs scoring, Mike McCormick's run-scoring single off a three-one Viola curveball the decisive blow, the old ballpark erupting as Washington took a five to two lead it would not relinquish. Julio Moreno closed the ninth. The 1951 Washington Senators lead this series three games to two with two games remaining at the Metrodome, and a sixty-two win club is one victory away from one of the great upsets in tournament history.

KEY PERFORMERS
Mike McCormick, RF, WSH — 2-4, 3B, RBI — the run-scoring single in the eighth was the decisive moment; two extra base hits on the night
Gil Coan, LF, WSH — 2-3, 3B, BB, SB — the fifth-inning triple that tied the game; relentless on the bases
Mickey Grasso, C, WSH — 1-4, 2 RBI — the two-out RBI that knotted it in the fifth; quiet but clutch
Greg Gagne, SS, MIN — 2-4, HR, 2 RBI, BB — his two-run homer was Minnesota's entire offensive story
Dan Gladden, LF, MIN — 3-5 — three hits and nothing to show for it; Minnesota left sixteen runners on base
Frank Viola, SP, MIN — 7.2 IP, 7 H, 5 ER, 5 BB, 5 K — gutted through but ultimately undone by Washington's patience
Gene Bearden, RP, WSH — 2.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER — bridged the gap between Kuzava and Ross with two scoreless innings

Series: 1951 Washington leads 3-2
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SERIES 267 — GAME 6
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Washington 1951 Senators 3
Minnesota 1988 Twins 9

The Metrodome was ready for this and Gary Gaetti was ready for the Metrodome. Minnesota needed a win to survive and Gaetti gave them one from the first inning, ripping a run-scoring double off Connie Marrero with two men aboard in the bottom of the first that opened the floodgates in a three-run inning and set the tone for everything that followed. Washington clawed back — Gil Coan drove in two in the third to make it a one-run game and Irv Noren added another in the fifth to tie it at three — and for a moment Griffith Stadium's traveling faithful believed the Senators might steal the Metrodome one more time. Then the sixth inning arrived and Minnesota ended the conversation. Kirby Puckett led off with a solo home run and Gaetti followed two batters later with a two-run shot off Joe Haynes, and the four-run sixth put the game away at eight to three before Gladden added one more in the eighth for the final margin. Allan Anderson was brilliant — seven innings, seven hits, one earned run, working around Washington's contact all night without ever losing the thread. Berenguer handled the final two frames. The Metrodome crowd that had been nervous from the first pitch was on its feet from the sixth inning on, and when the final out was recorded the building shook with the relief and joy of a club that refused to go quietly. Gary Gaetti — three for four, two doubles, a home run, three RBI, his fourth home run of the series — was everywhere tonight. The series is tied three games apiece. Game Seven tomorrow at the Metrodome. Winner takes all.

KEY PERFORMERS

Gary Gaetti, 3B, MIN — 3-4, HR, 2 2B, 3 RBI, 2 R, BB — four home runs in the series now; the most dominant individual performance of Series 267
Kirby Puckett, CF, MIN — 2-5, HR, 2B, RBI — his solo homer in the sixth broke the game open; finding his best baseball at exactly the right moment
Allan Anderson, SP, MIN — 7.0 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 2 K — masterful under pressure; kept Washington to one earned run in a must-win game
Steve Lombardozzi, 2B, MIN — 2-3, RBI, BB — quiet production throughout; two hits and an RBI in a big game
Gil Coan, LF, WSH — 2-4, 2 RBI, SB — Washington's most dangerous bat again; kept the Senators in the game with two RBI in the third
Irv Noren, CF, WSH — 2-4, SB — five hundred for the series; relentless even in defeat
Connie Marrero, SP, WSH — 5.2 IP, 10 H, 6 ER — the Game Two hero unable to replicate his magic; the Metrodome crowd wore him down

Series: Tied 3-3
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SERIES 267 — GAME 7
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Washington 1951 Senators 1
Minnesota 1988 Twins 4

Gil Coan led off the game with a solo home run off Bert Blyleven and for one brief shining moment Griffith Stadium's traveling faithful believed that the 1951 Washington Senators were going to do something that nobody who watched this series could have honestly predicted when it began — walk into the Metrodome and win a Game Seven on the road against a ninety-one win club with a Cy Young pitcher. The belief lasted exactly one inning. Randy Bush — pinch hitting for Greg Gagne in the second with two outs and two men aboard — turned on a Sandy Consuegra fastball and drove it over the fence for a three-run home run that put Minnesota in front three to one and changed the entire complexion of the game in a single swing. Kirby Puckett added a solo shot in the third and that was all Bert Blyleven needed. The thirty-seven year old right-hander who had been written off after a ten and seventeen regular season took the baseball in Game Seven and threw eight innings of four-hit ball, striking out four, walking nobody, allowing only Coan's first-inning homer to cross the plate, working with the efficiency and authority of a man who understood completely what the moment required. Jeff Reardon closed the ninth — his second save of the series — and when the final out was recorded the Metrodome erupted in the full-throated joy of a baseball town that had watched its club come back from three games to two to win two straight and take the series four games to three. The 1988 Minnesota Twins are Series 267 champions. The 1951 Washington Senators, a sixty-two win club that pushed one of the more talented rosters in this tournament to seven games, walk away with something that no record in any spreadsheet can fully capture.

KEY PERFORMERS

Bert Blyleven, SP, MIN — 8.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K — the performance of Game Seven; nobody pitched better in this series when it mattered most
Randy Bush, PH, MIN — 1-1, HR, 3 RBI — the three-run pinch-hit home run in the second inning was the decisive moment of the series
Kirby Puckett, CF, MIN — 2-4, HR, RBI — his third home run of the series; found his best baseball when the series needed it
Jeff Reardon, CL, MIN — 1.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER — clean ninth; two saves in the series, never allowed an earned run
Gil Coan, LF, WSH — 1-4, HR, RBI — the leadoff home run that gave Washington its last moment of hope; hit .355 for the series
Pete Runnels, SS, WSH — 1-4, 2B — the series hero of Game Four never stopped competing; the double in the seventh a last act of defiance
Mickey Harris, RP, WSH — 3.1 IP, 3 H, 0 ER — three and a third scoreless innings in relief; gave Washington every chance to get back in it

1988 Minnesota Twins Win Series 4 Games To 3

Series MVP:

(.375, 4 HR, 8 RBI, .958 SLG, 5 R, 2 2B)

[Nick Soulis]

THE FIELD SCENE
By Grantland Rice



THEY CAME TO PLAY — AND WASHINGTON MADE MINNESOTA EARN EVERY INCH
Special Correspondent to the Field of Dreams Tournament

There is a particular kind of baseball that does not announce itself. It does not arrive with trumpets or with proclamations or with the weight of a dynasty behind it. It arrives quietly, in wool flannel, with a third baseman who walks more than he swings and a forty-year-old Cuban pitcher who has been doing this since before half the men in the opposing dugout were born. It arrives in October with sixty-two victories to its name and proceeds to play seven games against one of the finer clubs of its era, and when it is finally done it walks off the field having given everything it possessed and left nothing behind.
That is what the 1951 Washington Senators did in Series 267 of the Field of Dreams Tournament. That is the whole of it, stated plainly. And this correspondent submits that the plain statement does not begin to capture what actually happened.

The 1988 Minnesota Twins won this series four games to three. Frank Viola pitched for them and Allan Anderson pitched for them and Jeff Reardon closed games for them with the precision of a man who has converted forty-two saves in a season and intends to keep converting them until told otherwise. Kirby Puckett walked off the first game with a home run in the tenth inning. Gary Gaetti hit four home runs across seven games and drove in eight runs and was named the series Most Valuable Player, an honor he earned so completely that the conversation barely required having. Bert Blyleven, thirty-seven years old and coming off a season that suggested the end might be near, threw sixteen innings in this series and gave up two earned runs and pitched Game Seven as though his entire professional life had been preparation for that specific October evening in Minneapolis.
These are the facts of what Minnesota did. They are considerable facts. A club that won ninety-one games during the regular season advanced in this tournament as clubs of that quality are expected to advance, and they did it by competing with genuine character when Washington pushed them to the wall and dared them to find something extra. They found it.

But this correspondent keeps returning to Bucky Harris.
He has been managing baseball games since 1924. He won a World Series in his first season — a boy wonder of twenty-seven who somehow persuaded a roomful of seasoned professionals to follow him into October and prevail. He has been back to this tournament thirty-seven times before this series and he has won fourteen of those appearances and lost twenty-three and kept coming back because that is what Bucky Harris does. He comes back.
He came to Minneapolis in October 1988 with a sixty-two win club and no ace available and proceeded to make the 1988 Minnesota Twins work harder than any club of their talent level should have to work against a seventh-place team from the American League. He started Bob Kuzava in Game One when everyone expected Bob Porterfield and Kuzava threw seven and a third scoreless innings and nearly stole the thing outright. He started Connie Marrero in Game Two when everyone expected Kuzava and Marrero threw a complete game shutout at the Metrodome at forty years old on a hundred and twenty pitches. He managed his bench and his bullpen with the economy of a man who knows exactly what he has and refuses to waste a drop of it. He got contributions from Pete Runnels and Mike McCormick and Mickey Grasso and Sam Mele — men whose names do not appear on any list of the great players of their era — and he wove those contributions into three victories against a club that should have beaten Washington in five.
He lost the series in seven games. He is fifteen wins and twenty-seven losses in this tournament now. Neither number tells you the first thing about the quality of the man.

Gary Gaetti is the series Most Valuable Player and the record will reflect that designation permanently and correctly. But the player this correspondent will remember longest from Series 267 is not Gaetti, fine as he was. It is Connie Marrero, walking to the mound at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Game Two with forty years of baseball behind him and nine innings of work ahead of him and proceeding to throw every one of those innings as though he had been saving them for precisely this occasion. He allowed four hits. He struck out three. He walked three. He allowed one run. He threw a hundred and twenty pitches and when he was done he had given Washington a victory that nobody in that building had believed was coming.
There are moments in this tournament that belong to the record permanently. Connie Marrero in Game Two at the Metrodome is one of them.

The 1988 Minnesota Twins advance. The 1951 Washington Senators go home. Seven games were played in two ballparks separated by thirty-seven years of baseball history and the games were worthy of the history they were asked to carry. That is all this correspondent can ask of any series and it is more than most series manage to deliver.
Bucky Harris will be back. He always is.
And the game will be waiting for him when he arrives.

— Grantland Rice, Field of Dreams Special Correspondent

[Nick Soulis]

Series #268
1945 Detroit Tigers vs 1971 Minnesota Twins



THE 1945 DETROIT TIGERS
88-65-2 | 1st Place, American League | Briggs Stadium, Detroit
Manager: Steve O'Neill | WAR Leader: Hal Newhouser (11.3)
Team ERA: 2.99 | Team BA: .256 | Runs Scored: 633 | Runs Allowed: 565



The 1945 Detroit Tigers were the last great team of the wartime era, and they earned every syllable of that distinction. In a league depleted by military service, O'Neill's club was not merely the best team standing — they were genuinely, demonstrably excellent, a fact that becomes clearer with every statistical lens applied to them. Their pitching staff posted a team ERA of two-ninety-nine across a hundred and fifty-five games, led by the most dominant individual pitching performance of the entire decade. Hal Newhouser, twenty-four years old and pitching with the fury of a man who had something to prove to every scout who ever doubted him, went twenty-five and nine with a one-eighty-one ERA and two hundred and twelve strikeouts across three hundred and thirteen innings — numbers that would have led any league in any era. Behind him, Al Benton went thirteen and eight with a two-oh-two ERA, and Dizzy Trout added eighteen wins and three-fourteen across two hundred and forty-six innings. This was not a staff that survived on weak competition. It was a staff that dominated.

The position players were anchored by a pair of outfielders who could punish a pitcher in entirely different ways. Roy Cullenbine, a switch-hitter with one of the most disciplined eyes in the American League, drew a hundred and two walks en route to a .398 on-base percentage, driving in ninety-three runs while posting an OPS-plus of one-thirty-nine. Hank Greenberg, returning from four years of military service with his legs and his hands still very much intact, hit .311 with thirteen home runs and sixty RBI in just seventy-eight games — a pace that staggered the imagination. Rudy York held down first base and knocked in eighty-seven. Eddie Mayo gave them a .285 average and four-point-eight WAR at second base. This was a complete ballclub, deep and dangerous from top to bottom, and Steve O'Neill — whose tournament record stands at an extraordinary eight wins and one loss — managed them with the calm authority of a man who had never doubted for a moment that they would win.

THE 1971 MINNESOTA TWINS
74-86 | 5th Place, AL West | Metropolitan Stadium, Bloomington
Manager: Bill Rigney | WAR Leader: César Tovar (3.8)
Team ERA: 3.81 | Team BA: .260 | Runs Scored: 654 | Runs Allowed: 670



The 1971 Minnesota Twins finished fifth and twelve games below five hundred, and the record tells only part of the story — and perhaps not the most important part. This was a franchise in a transitional moment, the great Killebrew-Oliva core beginning to age at the edges, the pitching staff shuffling through a rotation that was simultaneously too young and too old, and a manager in Bill Rigney who was doing his level best with a club that scored six hundred and fifty-four runs but allowed six hundred and seventy. What the record does not tell you is that buried inside this seventy-four win season were three of the most genuinely dangerous offensive players in the American League. Tony Oliva hit .337 with twenty-two home runs and eighty-one RBI, posting an OPS-plus of one-fifty-four that ranked among the very best in the league. César Tovar played a hundred and fifty-seven games, collected two hundred and four hits, scored ninety-four runs, and did everything asked of him with the quiet relentlessness that defined his career. Rod Carew, just twenty-five years old, hit .307 and was already becoming something — though the world would not fully understand what for another few years yet.

And then there was the pitching staff, which was simultaneously the team's greatest liability and its most thrilling asset. Bert Blyleven was twenty years old. Twenty. He threw two hundred and seventy-eight innings, struck out two hundred and twenty-four batters, and posted a two-eighty-one ERA with seventeen complete games and five shutouts — by any measure, one of the finest seasons ever thrown by a pitcher his age in the history of the American League. Jim Kaat added thirteen wins and a three-thirty-two ERA across two hundred and sixty innings, and Jim Perry won seventeen despite a four-twenty-three ERA that reflected a staff that too often left him without margin for error. Harmon Killebrew hit twenty-eight home runs and drove in a hundred and nineteen despite a batting average of .254, drawing a hundred and fourteen walks and posting an OPS-plus of one-thirty-eight. This team could hurt you. In a short series, against even the best competition, the 1971 Twins had the personnel to be genuinely dangerous — and Blyleven, in any single game, was capable of shutting down anybody.

[Nick Soulis]

YOUTH AND GLORY ON A COLLISION COURSE: BLYLEVEN'S ARM AGAINST NEWHOUSER'S LEGEND AS MINNESOTA INVADES THE HOUSE THAT CHAMPIONS BUILT
By Grantland Rice — Filed from Detroit, Michigan, October 1945

There is a ballpark on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull that has seen its share of history, and history, as any man who has spent his life around this game will tell you, has a way of accumulating in the old places like sediment at the bottom of a river — layer upon layer, each one pressed down by the weight of what came after. Briggs Stadium holds its history the way such places do, in the smell of the grass and the creak of the wooden seats and the particular quality of the afternoon light that falls across the infield in the late months of the season. It is a place that knows what winning looks like. And this autumn, it is about to be asked once more whether it remembers.

The Detroit Tigers of this championship year are, by any honest accounting, a remarkable baseball organization. They have won eighty-eight games against a league that was not, in these wartime years, stripped entirely of its quality — merely reorganized by circumstance, reshuffled by the demands of a nation at war. And into that reshuffled deck, Steve O'Neill drew the finest hand available. He drew Hal Newhouser.

To write about this Detroit ballclub without beginning with Newhouser is to write about the ocean while ignoring the tide. The young left-hander from Detroit — a hometown boy pitching in his hometown park before his hometown crowd — has done things this season that defy the ordinary vocabulary of baseball description. Twenty-five victories. Nine defeats. An earned run average of one and eighty-one hundredths across three hundred and thirteen innings pitched. Twenty-nine complete games. The numbers accumulate with the quiet authority of a mathematical proof, and what they prove, simply and without room for argument, is that Harold Newhouser is the finest pitcher in the American League and quite possibly in all of baseball. He throws with his whole body, with a ferocity that is somehow elegant, and batters who face him describe the experience in the hushed tones men reserve for things they cannot quite explain.

But O'Neill's Tigers are more than one magnificent arm, and this is what makes them truly formidable. Roy Cullenbine walks to first base with the frequency of a man who has read the rulebook and understood it more completely than the pitchers who face him. One hundred and two bases on balls. A .398 on-base percentage. He does not swing at your worst pitch, and when you give him your best, he makes you pay for the insult. Hank Greenberg — and here one must pause, because Hank Greenberg returning from four years in military service to post a .311 average with thirteen home runs in seventy-eight games is not merely a baseball story but an American one — swings the bat with the righteous authority of a man who has earned the right to swing it. Rudy York provides the thunder at first base. Eddie Mayo provides the craft at second. This is a balanced and dangerous assemblage of baseball talent, and Steve O'Neill, whose record in this tournament reads eight victories against a single defeat, manages it with the serene confidence of a man who has long since stopped being surprised by winning.

Against all of this, from the cold northern precincts of Minnesota, comes a ballclub that finished fifth and twelve games beneath the five hundred mark — and yet. And yet there is something in this Twins outfit that cannot be so easily dismissed by the arithmetic of the standings. Tony Oliva hit .337 with twenty-two home runs and drove in eighty-one runs with the fluid, wristy stroke of a man born to hit a baseball. César Tovar played a hundred and fifty-seven games and collected two hundred and four hits with the kind of tireless, uncelebrated excellence that wins ballgames quietly while louder men collect the headlines. Rod Carew, twenty-five years old and still becoming whatever it is he will eventually be, hit .307 with the patience and the instinct of a natural. And Harmon Killebrew — broad through the chest, quiet in his manner, devastating in his intentions — struck twenty-eight home runs and drove in a hundred and nineteen, drawing walks with a frequency that suggests he has studied the strike zone the way a scholar studies a text he intends to master.

And then there is the boy.

Bert Blyleven is twenty years old. He stands on the mound with a composure that has no business belonging to a man of his age, and he throws a curveball that veteran hitters have described, in moments of unguarded honesty, as something close to unfair. Sixteen wins. Two-eighty-one earned run average. Two hundred and twenty-four strikeouts. Seventeen complete games. Five shutouts. In two hundred and seventy-eight innings pitched. At twenty years of age. The old men who have watched this game across the long decades will tell you that talent of this particular order arrives rarely and announces itself plainly, and what Bert Blyleven announced this season, in the undramatic surroundings of a fifth-place ballclub in the American League West, is that he intends to be spoken of for a very long time.

The matchup at its simplest is this: a great team against a flawed one. A champion against a also-ran. A manager who wins against a manager whose record in this tournament suggests the opposite. And yet the simplest matchups are rarely the truest ones, and any man who has watched enough baseball to know better understands that a short series has a physics entirely its own — that Blyleven against Newhouser is not a foregone conclusion but a genuine argument, and that Oliva and Cullenbine and Greenberg and Killebrew hitting in the same series is the sort of thing that ought to make a man find a good seat and settle in for the duration.

Briggs Stadium is ready. The old walls have seen champions before. They are about to be asked, with all the particular gravity that this tournament supplies, whether they are ready to see one more.

They are.

[Nick Soulis]

1945 Detroit Tigers vs 1971 Minnesota Twins



SERIES 268 — GAME 1
Briggs Stadium, Detroit, Michigan

Minnesota 1971 Twins 1
Detroit 1945 Tigers 2 (10 innings)

Ten innings of baseball at Briggs Stadium on a cool October afternoon produced one of the finest pitching duels this tournament has yet witnessed, and when it was over the Detroit Tigers had stolen game one by the narrowest possible margin — a walk-off single by pinch-hitter Joe Hoover in the bottom of the tenth that scored the decisive run and sent thirty thousand people home hoarse. Hal Newhouser was simply magnificent, throwing all ten innings on a hundred and forty pitches, allowing four hits and one run — Tony Oliva's ninth-inning sacrifice fly that briefly tied the game — while walking one and striking out six with the calm, total authority of a man in complete command of his craft. On the other side of the argument, Bert Blyleven threw nine and a third innings of baseball that deserved a better fate, surrendering thirteen hits but only two earned runs across a hundred and forty-seven pitches, keeping Detroit's lineup in the ballpark through sheer force of stuff and composure while Eddie Mayo turned two double plays behind him and the Tigers stranded twelve runners on base without ever delivering the killing blow. Jimmy Outlaw's third-inning triple had given Detroit its first run and the game its early shape, and the two clubs traded zeroes inning after inning with the particular tension of a game that both pitchers refused to let go of, until Hoover stepped to the plate in the tenth with one out and drove a Blyleven pitch into the outfield to end it. Detroit wins, two to one, and leads the series — but Minnesota played them ten innings and lost by one run, and that is not a fact either club will forget quickly.

KEY PERFORMERS

Hal Newhouser — 10.0 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 140 pitches — Ten complete innings, one run allowed, the game's dominant presence from first pitch to last.
Bert Blyleven — 9.1 IP, 13 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 147 pitches — Extraordinary in defeat, holding the World Series champions to two runs across nearly ten innings at twenty years old.
Eddie Mayo — 3-for-5, 2 double plays turned — Relentless at the plate and indispensable in the field, the engine of Detroit's defensive effort.
Doc Cramer — 3-for-5 — Quietly one of Detroit's best days at the plate, grinding contact throughout and keeping constant pressure on Blyleven.
César Tovar — 2-for-4, 2B — Minnesota's most consistent presence against Newhouser, doubling sharply in the fourth and providing the Twins' best threat of the afternoon.
Joe Hoover — 1-for-1, walk-off RBI single — One at-bat in the tenth inning. One hit. Series lead for Detroit.
Jimmy Outlaw — 2-for-5, 3B, R — The third-inning triple that broke the scoreless tie and gave the game its defining early moment.


Series: 1945 Detroit leads 1-0
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SERIES 268 — GAME 2
Briggs Stadium, Detroit, Michigan

Minnesota 1971 Twins 6
Detroit 1945 Tigers 0

Bill Rigney's unconventional gamble paid off in full on a fifty-seven degree October afternoon at Briggs Stadium, as Tom Hall — the twenty-three-year-old left-hander pulled from the Minnesota bullpen and handed a game two start that nobody outside the Twins' dugout fully expected — threw nine complete innings of shutout baseball against the defending World Series champions, allowing six hits and four walks while striking out four, and the 1971 Minnesota Twins walked out of Detroit with a six to nothing victory that evened the series at one game apiece. Hall induced thirteen ground and fly outs, worked out of trouble with the quiet economy of a pitcher who understood exactly what the moment required, and never allowed the Detroit lineup to find any kind of rhythm against his mix of pitches across the full nine innings. César Tovar set the tone from the top of the order, finishing three for five with two runs scored and two RBI — including two crucial two-out hits that drove in runs when the game needed them most — and Rod Carew was magnificent, going three for five with a double, a triple in the eighth that plated two, and the kind of all-around offensive performance that reminded everyone watching why he was already becoming something special. Tony Oliva provided the decisive blow in the sixth inning, a solo home run off Al Benton that broke a three to nothing game open and effectively ended Benton's afternoon, the Detroit right-hander lasting seven innings but surrendering ten hits and four runs while throwing two wild pitches that kept the Minnesota offense in advantageous counts throughout. Walter Wilson came on in relief and fared no better, allowing three more runs across two innings as Minnesota piled on in the eighth behind Carew's triple. The series is tied. Game three shifts to Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota — and the Twins are going home.

KEY PERFORMERS

Tom Hall — 9.0 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 128 pitches — A complete game shutout against the World Series champions in his first career tournament start. Rigney's gamble validated entirely.
Rod Carew — 3-for-5, 2B, 3B, RBI — Six total bases and a performance that announced itself clearly to everyone watching. The triple in the eighth was the exclamation point.
César Tovar — 3-for-5, 2 R, 2 RBI, OF assist — Table-setter, run-scorer, and defensive contributor. The engine of everything Minnesota did offensively today.
Tony Oliva — 1-for-5, HR, RBI — The solo home run in the sixth was the killing blow, the hit that told Benton and Detroit that the game had gotten away from them.
Harmon Killebrew — 1-for-4, RBI, BB — Quiet but productive, driving in a run and drawing the walk that kept Detroit's pitcher working.
Al Benton — 7.0 IP, 10 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 WP — Undone by contact and his own wildness, the two wild pitches costing him dearly in a game Detroit needed badly.
Jim Nettles — 1-for-4, RBI — Contributed a run batted in as Minnesota spread the damage across the lineup.


Series: Tied 1-1
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