1987 Revisited: Twins Draw The Cards

[Parker Hageman]

“I’ve been reading about some people who have said that it’s a disgrace to have us representing the American League,” Gary Gaetti told reporters not long before the start of the 1987 World Series. “The way I figure it, we might as well go ahead and disgrace the whole game by winning it.”

Yes, while the Twins were heavy underdogs facing the powerful and experienced Tigers in the previous round, sentiments shifted as the battered and bruised Cardinals landed in town. For as much as they wanted to continue to play the role of the dark horse, suddenly people believed in the Twins’ chances. On display in the ALCS was power, pitching and solid decision-making by the rookie manager. More national media types were throwing their weight behind the team that had torn the stuffing out of Detroit in five games.

“Now that the Twins have become America’s team, I’ll say Minnesota in six games,” ESPN’s Chris Berman predicted.

“Twins in six,” speculated the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Gerry Fraley. “Their pitching staff is in order. They have the first two games at home. They’re relatively healthy. The series is set up perfectly for them.”

Tim Kurkjian, who had written that the Tigers would trounce the Twins in the American League Championship Series, now saw them as the superior team.  He still threw shade by saying “the Twins will win in seven because the Cardinals are so banged up and because of the Metrodome factor.”

While the Twins shifted to favorites, no one was counting St. Louis out.

Were the Cardinals injured? Yup. Were they offensively depleted? Of course. But they had speed and speed never slumps. They were battle-tested with recent World Series experience. And they had Whitey Herzog at the helm. Herzog had guided his team to the best record in the National League and pulled them through a bloodbath of a playoff series against the San Francisco Giants. 

At 95-67, the Cardinals had finished with the National League’s best record. Yet, in many ways, they had lost the magic from the first half of the season. At the All Star Break St. Louis led all of baseball with 56 wins. Despite pitching well and playing good defense throughout the year, it was the offense that was ablaze in the season’s first half, scoring an MLB-best 486 runs. Even though speedsters like Vince Coleman, Ozzie Smith and Tommy Herr were getting on and getting over, the vast majority of the lumber was supplied by first baseman Jack Clark, who was hitting .311/.459/.645 with an MLB leading 86 RBI at that point.

His loss would be monumental to the Cardinals' lineup.

On September 9, while playing at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, his season all but ended. In the top of the sixth, Clark hit a harmless grounder off of Dennis Martinez that third baseman Tim Wallach fielded cleanly only to make a wide throw to Andres Galarraga at first. In an attempt to avoid Galarraga’s tag, Clark rolled his ankle. Herzog would later say that he knew that Clark’s season was finished right then and there. Cardinals pitcher Bob Forsch wrote in his biography that the injury was one of the “ugliest” he had ever seen, describing Clark’s foot grossly swollen and the color of an eggplant.

''Without Jack Clark in the lineup we’re missing a big weapon,'' Jim Lindeman, Clark’s replacement, told reporters. “When he walks up to the plate, he's the only guy who gets the crowd buzzing and the other team fidgeting. He's the only guy who intimidates people with his bat.''

Indeed. After Clark's bat in the lineup, there was a prolific drop-off in power for St. Louis. And to make matters worse, the next closest power contributor had also just injured himself. 

Terry Pendleton, who had the most home runs on the team behind Clark, pulled a muscle in his rib cage during the final game of the National League Championship Series and was not expected to participate much in the World Series. “Right now it is doubtful that he will play at all,” Herzog said addressing the media before the series.

Clark and Pendleton’s absence was no doubt felt throughout the Cardinal lineup. Rather than having Clark, a hitter with a 1.055 OPS that season, Herzog was forced to choose from the rookie Lindeman, who possessed a .632 OPS over his last two seasons, or the 35-year-old Dan Driessen, who had spent most of the year in AAA and posted a .625 OPS in 24 games with the Cardinals. In place of Pendleton, who had posted a respectable .772 OPS that year, it was the 30-year-old Tom Lawless, owner of a career .549 OPS. 

“Two hundred RBIs,” Herzog answered when asked if they team would miss Clark and Pendleton in the heart of the order. “I’d say that is a hole.”

Clark led the team with 35 home runs during the regular season. After that, Pendleton’s 12 was a distant second followed by center fielder Willie McGee’s 11. McGee, a light-hitting speedster, sadly represented St. Louis’ biggest long-ball threat. In fact, no other Cardinals starter managed more than five that year. 

Prior the series, the Star Tribune’s Doug Grow marveled at the juxtaposition of the two teams. “The Twins dig in at the plate and grunt as they play long-ball. Watch ‘em in batting practice. They love that time in the cage. They stand there and laugh and measure how far they hit it,” Grow observed. “When the St. Louis Cardinals step into the batting cage, the walls are safe from baseballs. Batting is something the Cardinals do only so they can get a chance to run.”

With so few options Herzog decided to use the right-handed part-time player in Lindeman -- who had nine career home runs to his name -- as his cleanup hitter against left-handed pitching in the postseason. In Game 3 of the NLCS, Lindeman responded by hitting a 1-1 fastball from San Francisco’s Atlee Hammaker over the left-center field fence for a two-run shot (one of two home runs the Cardinals hit that entire seven game series). It was his first cleanup duty since April of that year. "I think the last time I batted cleanup I probably went oh for four and broke three bats," he told reporters after the game.

With another left-hander on the mound from Minnesota in Game 1 and the switch-hitting Pendleton unable to swing from the right-side, Herzog went forward with a lineup card that included Lindeman in the middle of the order, another rookie at DH (Tom Pagnozzi and his .583 OPS) and Lawless, who had a .080 batting average in the regular season, at third.

They would meet the man affectionately known in Minnesota as Sweet Music.

***

On the night of October 17, 1987, 27-year-old Frank Viola was at work and not at his brother’s wedding in New York where he was supposed to be the best man, like he had committed to a year prior.

In 1986 the Twins were well out of postseason contention and the left-handed starter figured that if 1987 were anything like the previous year, he would have his October wide open to participate in his brother’s nuptials. After all, how could a team that won just 71 games make up that much ground?

“I thought it would be a little far-fetched. I told ‘em, yeah, I shouldn’t have any problem making it. That was last year, when we were 20 games under .500. It’s unbelieveable,” said Viola.

Viola was heavily responsible for the Twins making this postseason run. He had finished the year 17-10 with a solid 2.90 ERA (a career-best 159 ERA+). It was a coming out party of sorts. Viola went from a very good pitcher in 1986 to a great one in 1987. When people asked how he was able to shave an entire run off his ERA over the previous year, he attributed it to his changeup.

Viola’s development of the changeup was the difference maker from the good pitcher that arrived with the Twins in the early 1980s into the great one towards the end of that decade. In 1983, Viola was a lefty who used a solid fastball and a slider-curveball combination to retire hitters (or not retire them when you consider his 128 earned runs that season was the most in baseball). That same year, Twins pitching coach Johnny Podres taught Viola how to throw a changeup, keeping his arm action consistent with his fastball delivery. When Podres left and Dick Such took over pitching coach duties, Viola’s changeup became a significant weapon. “I had been working on it for 3 ½ years under Podres but was using 15 or 20 grips. None of them worked. When Such joined us, he made a few adjustments and all of a sudden I found myself comfortable throwing a changeup,” Viola said in spring training before the 1986 season.

By 1986, he had mastered command of the pitch and scrapped his slider in favor of the off-speed pitch.

"The changeup I use now is the one I felt most comfortable with, but it took me two years to throw it over the plate," Viola told the LA Times in August 1987. Because the Twins were pushed out of the pennant race early in 1986, Viola said he was able to experiment with the pitch until he got it right. It was working swimmingly -- after striking out 5.3 hitters per nine innings over his first four seasons, he was now whiffing 7 per nine, a massive jump. Most notably, the changeup also gave Viola an advantage over right-handed hitters he did not have before. From 1982 through 1985, Viola struck out 13 percent of right-handed hitters but saw that rate jump to 19 percent in 1986 through 1987.

That's one reason why that, on October 17, 1987, Frank Viola was standing on the mound at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and not at his brother's wedding ceremony. 

The game started off with a failed bunt attempted by Cardinals' leadoff hitter Vince Coleman on Viola’s first-pitch curve. That brought shortstop Ozzie Smith to the plate. Smith took his stance in the right-handed batters’ box. With the exception of Bill Buckner, no hitter was more difficult to strike out than the Wizard of Oz. From 1982 through 1987, Smith had struck out in just 4.9% of his total plate appearances. If there was one thing Ozzie was going to do, it was put the ball in play.

In his first appearance against Viola in his career, the left-hander shot a low-90s fastball on the inner-half of the plate at Smith's knees for strike one and then missed wide on a big curve that skipped in the dirt to even the count. Viola now turned to that off-speed weapon that the National League was not accustomed to. The first changeup he threw split the plate in half while falling rapidly, leaving Smith waving over the top of it. Viola followed that one with a near clone of it that Smith once again swung over for strike three.

Up to that point in his career, Ozzie Smith had 55 World Series plate appearances under his belt without a strikeout. If their first match-up was any indication, Frank Viola was showing the Cardinals hitters and viewers across America that something special was afoot.

****

When you consider the personnel loss the Cardinals had, it was a near miracle that they were able to overtake the Giants in the NLCS. ABC’s Al Michaels’ suggested that Herzog reached baseball’s pinnacle series by virtue of “paste and glue and tacks and the rest of it”. They were missing Clark. Pendleton had a strained rib cage that kept him from being able to hit right-handed. Everything about the lineup felt patchwork.

Following his tendon tear Clark attempted to do everything possible to make it back for the postseason to face his former team. He made a pair of pinch-hitting appearances in the regular season and was kept on the roster for the NLCS despite the inability to put much weight on his right leg. Prior to games, he and some of the coaching staff took private on-field batting practice, away from the attention of his teammates and onlookers. It did not go well. He lunged and lurched at balls and produce off-balanced swings with mediocre contact.

"It's going to take a while longer," he said in response to an inquiry about his injury status, "and I don't know how much longer it will be. This is more than just a little twisted ankle. There isn't any medicine I can take. If there were shots or pills that would help, I'd have had them by now.”

Herzog used Clark once in the seven game series against San Francisco -- a pinch-hit appearance in Game 3 -- where Clark struck out looking with runners on first and second. Before the start of the World Series, the Cardinals ran Clark through a simulated game. Clark went down looking in his at-bats, barely able to transfer his weight off his front leg. That was enough for Herzog to decide not to keep him on the roster for the series, instead opting to carry reliever Lee Tunnell.

Surprisingly, it was Clark’s replacement who got the Cardinals on the board first.

Leading off the second inning, Viola ran a fastball off the inside edge of the plate, inciting the right-handed Lindeman to flinch. Naturally, the next offering after going hard in was to throw something soft away. Viola spotted a changeup just off the outside corner but left it too far up and Lindeman, now swinging off his front foot, was able to lift toward center field. Puckett, who enjoyed playing a deep center in order to defend the wall and takeaway would-be home runs, initially froze.

Perhaps Puckett misjudged the contact, or lost the ball momentarily in the sea of white Homer Hankies; either way, by the time he made his furious break back toward the infield and the landing spot, the ball hit the artificial turf and Lindeman gained second. Following a Willie McGee fly out to right center that moved him up a base, Lindeman later scored on an RBI groundout by Tony Pena, putting the Cardinals up 1-0.

As it turns out, the run proved to be as harmless as a minnow bite.

Although Magrane had kept the potent Twins hitless through the first three innings, his habit of falling behind hitters and issuing free passes eventually catch up to him. The Twins offense also used their first plate appearances to calibrate themselves against the young pitcher. After their first looks, they were ready to pounce.

Magrane had relied mainly on his sinking fastball -- one that didn’t find the zone consistently. In the bottom of the fourth, he started Gaetti with a fastball inside which the reigning ALCS MVP rapped on the ground down the third baseline. Lawless, playing deep for the power hitter, laid out to snare the ball well behind the bag and came up firing. In a bang-bang play, Gaetti beat it by a step -- the Twins’ first hit of the 1987 World Series was an infield hit.

After Gaetti’s single, veteran DH Don Baylor did the same. Ditto for Tom Brunansky.

***

Brunansky didn’t know it at the time but he was showcasing his talents his future employer.

It was no secret that the Cardinals lacked power. When Clark left as a free agent after the 1987 season, St. Louis was left with a pile of toothpicks for bats. Internally, they hoped that Lindeman would progress in the power department but they looked for more of a proven presence, adding beefy Bob Horner to the mix, much to manager Whitey Herzog’s chagrin.

The 30-year-old Horner had averaged 24 home runs in his ten seasons in Atlanta but had spent 1987 in Japan playing for the Yakult Swallows where he smacked another 31 home runs. In his exit interview, Horner took parting shots at the Japanese version of the game, calling out the pitchers for not throwing him strikes, chastising the fans for their choice of whistles and noisemakers, and saying the umpires’ strike zones were prejudice against foreigners. His words nearly incited an international incident. While he never was asked about Horner’s remarks, the Redbirds’ manager wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of adding him based on his pool of play. “I don’t like Horner,” Herzog told reporters where rumors surfaced that Cardinals’ GM Dal Maxvill was targeting the large first baseman. “Of his lifetime homers, about seventy percent were hit in Atlanta. He never could hit in St. Louis. He can’t hit, and he can’t field.”

It was true that the bulk of Horner’s home runs had come in Fulton County Stadium -- 174 of his 218 homers came in Atlanta. Herzog’s words, however, eventually reached Horner who had signed with St. Louis on a one-year, $960,000 deal, significantly lower than the $10 million multi-year deal that Yukult offered him to stay. “Obviously it’s not something you want to read,” Horner said. “But even though Whitey had criticized me in making those statements, I would still enjoy the challenge of proving him wrong.”

With a need for more power, the Cardinals turned to the Twins. On April 22, 1988, the two sides agreed to swap the outfielder Brunansky for St. Louis’ switch-hitting second baseman, Tommy Herr. According to Sid Hartman, who had learned of the trade on the radio while driving his close, personal friend Bobby Knight to his hotel in Bloomington, he immediately called McPhail at home in the middle of the night to ask “what the hell is going on?” The Twins GM told the Star Tribune columnist that they were convinced Brunansky couldn’t throw the ball from right field any more and was turning into a defensive liability. What’s more, Brunansky was hitting .184 with just a lone home run through the season’s first 14 games. And, more importantly, the Twins were 4 and 9 and looking for a spark.

Herr reportedly cried when he heard the news. His desire to play for the Twins was questioned by fans, the media and teammates when he was continually sidelined with injuries. In his autobiography, Kent Hrbek called Herr the only teammate he ever played with that he really didn’t like. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, Brunansky brought with him some of the Twins’ loosy-goosy clubhouse attitude that involved various pranks which endeared him to his coworkers -- possibly with the exception of pitcher Joe Magrane.

Later that summer, with the help of Ozzie Smith, the outfielder orchestrated a prank on the pitcher. Magrane, who had a reputation as being a pretty-boy clotheshorse, was sent a telegram from GQ magazine requesting a photoshoot. Smith had been profiled in the April issue so it seemed somewhat plausible that the magazine was interested in more St. Louis subjects -- this time to display winter fashion. On a day in which the heat reached 105 degrees, a photographer and Magrane, along with five winter suits, took to the Busch Stadium field and began a photoshoot that lasted over an hour in the oppressive Missouri summer heat. In his book, Cardinals pitcher Bob Forsch described Magrane as “sweating like a stuffed pig” as he ran from the field to the clubhouse for an attire change.

Several days later, Magrane received another telegram that said “because of your subpar season, we’ve decided not to use your session in GQ.” A day later, a follow up telegram arrived. It read: “Roses are red, violets are blue. You’ve been had. There’s no GQ.”

***

While wearing winter knits in 105 degree heat sounds uncomfortable, it probably was nothing for Magrane compared to the pressure on the mound at the Metrodome with the bases now at maximum capacity (in the form of Gaetti, Baylor and his future teammate Brunansky) and Kent Hrbek coming to the plate looking for a meal.

People worried about Hrbek. After all, he went 1-for-20 in the ALCS against Detroit. Fans expressed frustration with their team's best run producer's inability to produce. Was the pressure to carry his hometown team -- his childhood rooting interest -- to their first World Series victory be too much? Throughout the regular season, Hrbek did little against left-handed pitching. While he finished with 34 home runs, all but six came against right-handed pitchers and he posted a .225/.290/.370 line against southpaws in 155 plate appearances. So it was no surprise that the first baseman was batting seventh in the game against Magrane. Magrane had been tough on left-handed opponents, limiting them to a .226 average and just one home run.

Given that Magrane held the platoon advantage, it shouldn’t come as surprise that Hrbek’s contact on the 0-1 pitch wasn’t solid. The ball hit the ground inches in front of home then again just beyond second base -- a classic Dome ball that found its way between Smith, arguably the best defensive shortstop in the game, and Herr at second to score Gaetti and Baylor, putting the Twins ahead 2-1.

“I just looked at it on the TV, and it was a high fastball away,” Hrbek told the Star Tribune. “I was just trying to hit it to the outfield and go to the left field to get the run in. It’s the old Randy Bush theory. You try to swing as hard as you can in case you hit it.”

When Steve Lombardozzi walked, the fifth consecutive Twins hitter to reach base, Whitey Herzog emerged to tell Magrane his night was over. Magrane exited to a chorus of “Happy Trails” by Twins fans. Herzog called on the veteran Bob Forsch, in hope of coaxing a double-play grounder out of catcher Tim Laudner. Forsch did get the grounder but the right-handed hitting Lauds was able to will it through the left-side of the infield between Herr and Lindeman, scoring Brunansky from third and loading the bases once again.

That’s when outfielder Dan Gladden came to the plate.

****Come back to TwinsDaily.com tomorrow for more of the "1987 Revisited" series****

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[horngary]

I was at this game. It was a highlight of my life. My hearing was impaired for two days afterwards.

[Parker Hageman]

I was at this game. It was a highlight of my life. My hearing was impaired for two days afterwards.

 

 

If you believe Al Michaels' account, some of that noise was artificially created. You might have a class action lawsuit on your hands. 

 

Then again, Dave St. Peter has denied that happening.