Joe Ryan just became the Twins' second rookie opening day starter, after Tom Hall in 1969. Who is Tom Hall, and how did he get that honor?

After all, Tom Hall is hardly a household name among Twins fans, and that was a successful era for the franchise, behind a veteran starting staff. Patrick Reusse of the Star Tribune recently published a nice biographical sketch of Hall, but omitted key circumstances about his unusual 1969 assignment.

Holdouts
Before the advent of free agency and multi-year deals, players still negotiated contracts with their clubs every winter, and the players' only real leverage came from not reporting for work. In 1969, pitchers and catchers were due to report on February 21, but relatively few Twins were in Orlando on that date, instead waiting to satisfy their own contract demands and a wider dispute over player pensions. Among the holdouts were four veteran pitchers: Jim Kaat, Dean Chance, Dave Boswell, and Jim Perry.

Minneapolis Tribune, February 22, 1969

The Twins wouldn't see all four of those pitchers in camp until March 14, and they wouldn't all pitch in a spring game until March 21, just two and a half weeks before opening day on April 8. This is strikingly similar to the lockout-delayed 2022 Twins spring schedule, and also illustrates the climate from which free agency and future labor strife was born. 

Expectations
Today, a player reporting that late to camp would not be expected to pitch deep into games, but that was not the case in 1969. Rookie manager Billy Martin, who later gained a reputation for overworking his pitchers even by the standards of the time, expected his starting pitchers to go the distance, all nine innings, in a spring game before the season even started. None of the veteran hurlers met that expectation in 1969, both due to the tight timeline and due to injuries: groin issues for both Kaat and Chance, and a finger cut while cleaning fish for Boswell.

Minneapolis Star, March 25, 1969

Roles
One veteran pitcher, Jim Perry, stayed healthy that spring, and could have been a candidate for opening day despite reporting late -- but he spent most of spring training and the early part of the season coming out of the bullpen. His Twins career of 6 seasons thus far had been spent as a "swingman", split almost equally between starting and relief. It wasn't until late May 1969 that Perry cemented his status as a full-time starter, finishing the year with 20 wins, starting game one of the 1969 playoffs, and following that with a Cy Young Award in 1970.

Tom Hall would ultimately become a swingman for the Twins too, perhaps limited by another factor not present in the modern game: military service for active players. With the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Hall was in the Marine Reserve. This meant he had to spend two weeks every summer in training, plus various weekends, which certainly limited his availability for regular rotation duty early in his career.

Still, Hall got the starting nod for opening day 1969, which like Joe Ryan's start in 2022, proved to be a 1-run Twins loss. The next day, Jim Kaat pitched 11 innings, so despite his late spring and injury, perhaps Kaat could have started opening day after all.

Hall's 1969 Twins would go on to win 97 games and the first American League West division title, before getting swept out of the playoffs by Baltimore. Can Ryan's 2022 Twins match that, or do even better?

Minneapolis Star, April 7, 1969