1987 Revisited: Gladden Slams Cards

Gladden had a dour demeanor that rubbed some people the wrong way. While with the Giants, he had exchanged blows with teammate Jeffrey Leonard during an on-field batting practice. The scuffle stemmed from Gladden’s tendency to take long batting practice sessions, fouling off balls and taking extra cuts. This practice irked Leonard and one day Leonard let Gladden know it. Gladden, not one to back down from a fight, jumped Leonard. According to Hank Greenwald, the Giants play-by-play announcer who witnessed the melee from the booth, the two went at it next to the batting cage and ended up rolling in the dirt before being separated by other teammates. Brunansky, who faced Gladden in the minors, said that he “hated” the way Gladden played the game back then. “He seemed arrogant,” the Twins right fielder said. “He didn't seem to care how he went about it.”

In spite of the reputation, the Twins front office felt that the team needed some of that hard scrabble attitude.

Unsatisfied with the performance of veteran Mickey Hatcher, McPhail looked elsewhere for help and targeted Gladden, but the transaction took forever to complete. "Every time I talked to (Giants general manager) Al Rosen, he asked for either Jeff Bumgarner or Steve Gasser,” McPhail told the Star Tribune’s Sid Hartman. “I wasn’t going to give either one up.”

“We talked about the deal at least once every week until we made it. Atlanta and the Dodgers were very interested in Gladden. The Giants had made a deal with the Reds for Eddie Milner, and they had an abundance of outfielders. Rosen was reluctant to trade him to a team in the National League. He didn’t want Gladden to come back and hurt him.”

McPhail said that the trade discussions started early in the offseason during the winter meetings, but the back and forth prolonged the deal until well into spring training.

“Rosen finally called one day late in March and said he was going to deal Gladden that day. He said he was willing to make the trade for three of our young pitching prospects. He gave me a list of five, I took two out, and we made the trade.”

With Gladden acquired, the Twins cut Hatcher on March 31. It was a shock to the fan base. Hatcher, who had played with the Twins for the last six years with a .284 average but inconsistent playing time, saw the writing on the wall as spring training played out and manager Tom Kelly used him less frequently in the exhibition games. “After two weeks of being here I knew it was over for me,” Hatcher told reporters. “When you’re only playing once every four days, you get the idea. It was obvious they wanted to look at the younger players.”

McPhail said he wanted speed. Gladden, who had nabbed 94 bases in 138 attempts with the Giants and was capable of playing center field, would provide that dimension. Additionally, he was tabbed to assume the leadoff hitter role in place of Puckett, who had a breakout power year in 1986, allowing him to hit in the middle of the order where he was better suited and where Tom Kelly wanted him to bat. (Once he assumed the interim manager title the previous September, Kelly shifted Puckett out of the leadoff and into the third spot.) Kelly, however, wasn’t sure what to do with Gladden initially. In the season’s first game Gladden led off but was the designated hitter. It wasn’t until five games later that he got his first start in the outfield, only it was in right field. Kelly preferred Randy Bush and Mark Davidson while spot starting Gladden on occasion. It was not until mid-May that Gladden solidified his role as the team’s starting left fielder and leadoff hitter.

Almost immediately, Twins players took notice of Gladden’s attitude. “We didn’t know much about him but we found out soon,” said left-handed reliever Dan Schatzeder. “In one of the first games he played for us, he got into a jawing match with an umpire. He was asserting himself right away. We thought, ‘This guy’s going to be interesting.’”

Interesting is right. It would be another eight months before his infamous fight with Lombardozzi, but Gladden was about to provide a very memorable punch against the Cardinals.

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In his second at-bat of Game 1, Gladden grounded into a fielder’s choice, erasing Tim Laudner at second. The at-bat was a microcosm of who Gladden was as a leadoff hitter. Magrane struggled with his command, walking three of the last four hitters he faced. Common baseball sense would be to exert patience and make the rookie pitcher sweat through his polyester. However, rather than making Magrane squirm, Gladden took a cut at the the first pitch -- a big curve, no less -- and bounced the ball harmlessly to Lawless at third who fired to Herr at second to retire Laudner.

That was the frustrating part of Gladden as a leadoff hitter. Of course, even though Gladden ignored standard practice like making a pitcher throw a glutton of pitches, on the bases he was able to set up camp right in the pitcher's mind.

In spite of eliminating the lead runner, Gladden, now at first base, became all-consuming to the Cardinals’ rookie lefty who struggle to hold runners. Magrane paid extra attention (and then some) to the irritating long-haired runner who had taken 25 bases on 34 attempts during the regular season. What's more, Gladden was 18 for 21 in attempts in the Metrodome that year. And Magrane was terrible when it came to slowing down the run game -- runners had swiped 18 bases on 21 tries. His big body and lack of a slide step gave runners ample time to trot to the next base.

Gladden, with one foot on the turf and one foot in the dirt cut-out, was an itch that Magrane needed to scratch constantly.

Before even throwing a pitch to Gagne, he thew over to first nine consecutive times. Afterwards, Magrane admitted the obvious that he had obsessed over Gladden. “I messed around with him too much,” Magrane said. “I felt if he was going to go, it was going to be on the first pitch. I should have gone after the hitter a lot more. But I just messed around with him too much.”

A batter later, Gladden eventually did swipe that base but was stranded there when Puckett grounded out to second. It would be in his next at bat, with the bases loaded and Magrane out of the game, that Gladden would break the game wide open.

Gladden was rejuvenated during the Detroit series after the second half of the year saw his production drop off a cliff. After hitting .283/.337/.405 in the first half, he went .195/.273/.290 the rest of the way after the break. In the ALCS Gladden went 7-for-20 (.350), scored five and drove in another five. He did miss out on the opportunity to add to his RBI total when he failed to convert during a bases loaded appearance in Game 4: With the bags filled and two outs in the second inning, the Tigers’ Frank Tanana threw Gladden three straight breaking balls and ended the threat without the ball being put into play.

In the bottom of the fourth inning of Game 1 of the World Series, with Hrbek, Lombardozzi and Laudner occupying the bases, Gladden was given a second chance to do some damage.

With his golden hair escaping out of the back of his navy helmet by several inches, Gladden assumed his standard closed stance at the plate -- his front foot almost touching the plate-side batter’s box chalk and his back foot splayed out behind him -- and teased his bat several times in Cardinals' reliever Bob Forsch’s direction.

Forsch started Gladden off with a fastball up and away for ball one. On the 1-0 count, the pent-up party atmosphere of the Dome’s left field bleachers released a beach ball onto the field, causing a break in the action while Willie McGee grabbed and tossed the ball over the plastic wall in center. “What’s a ballgame without a beach ball these days,” Michaels inquired to the audience during the brief delay. Dome announcer Bob Casey took that moment to remind the crowd not to throw things on the playing field.

After the brief delay, Forsch tried to hit the outside corner again with a fastball but it drifted back over the plate. Gladden was behind and fouled into the first base stands. Forsch then went to the breaking ball on the outer half that Gladden spun down the first base line. Similar to the Detroit series, Gladden now had the bases loaded with two strikes. Then Forsch made a critical mistake. He went back to the curveball.

Maybe it wasn’t so much that Forsch went back to the curveball but that he didn’t bury the breaking ball as much as he should have. Forsch’s curve was a looper that started at the belt and broke to the knees. Gladden was out over his front leg when he greeted the pitch and lifted it towards left field.

Off the bat, it looked like a chip shot. But it carried.

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“High in the air to deep left field,” Michaels bellowed as Gladden’s shot drifted toward the plexiglass-guarded fans. “Coleman goes back...a grand slam!”

The 55,171 people in attendance fell into hysteria. Reports later said that the decibel level reached 118. At that level, it was similar to sitting next to an ambulance siren or a jackhammer, a level of exposure that is only recommended for less than 30 seconds. The Metrodome crowd roared like that for several minutes. The first grand slam in a World Series game since 1970 put the Twins squarely ahead 7 to 1.

Gladden later joked to the media that he should have put his “flap” down, the act of keeping one arm motionless while rounding the bases. “I was pretty excited running around the bases” said Gladden, a former Giant. 'I thought about putting my flap down like Jeffrey Leonard, but I thought twice about it.”

Had Gladden opted for the flap-down look, it would have been a solid troll move to start the opening game of the series. The St. Louis Cardinals had seen plenty of Leonard’s “one flap down” routine during a contentious National League Championship Series. “I don’t like Jeffrey Leonard,” said Cardinals pitcher John Tudor. “It’s no secret to him or anyone else.” That feeling was shared by most of Tudor’s teammates. In Game 3, Bob Forsch dotted him with a pitch that Leonard felt was intentional. In Game 4, Leonard had already launched a home run deep to left field when later he tried to score from first on a misplayed fly ball. The relay reached home plate and the waiting Cardinals’ catcher Tony Pena in plenty of time. Rather than sliding, Leonard came in high and Pena took the opportunity to place a “tag” right in Leonard’s mug.

The Twins were now firmly in the driver’s seat and the stadium was rocking off its hinges. Greg Gagne, who followed Gladden at the plate, said afterwards that the volume of the crowd was unbelievable.

“After Gladden hit that grand slam, I was in the batter's box and my ears were ringing. I asked Tony (Pena) if his ears were ringing and he couldn’t even hear me.”

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As bedlam overtook in the Dome, the action outside throughout the Twin Cities was just as Twins-centric.

With tickets difficult to obtain, fans waited around the Metrodome ticket offices for over an hour after the start of the game in hopes of landing an unclaimed ticket. At the Orpheum Theater, singer-songwriter Warren Zevon performed in front of 1,500 fans and provided them with continuous updates of the score for Game 1. Zevon worked Kirby Puckett’s name into one of his songs and disparaged the Cardinals in another. For an encore, he returned to the stage with a Twins jersey.

Back on the mound Frank Viola remained a magician. Viola was unsolvable for the majority of the game. Having a 10-1 lead didn’t hurt either. Outside of the Puckett misplay that led to the Cardinals’ only run, he was virtually flawless. Prior to being pulled after eight innings, he retired 12 of the last 14 batters he faced and did not allow a baserunner past first from the fourth inning on. Interestingly enough, if things had gone differently and the Twins were inclined to shop Viola during the lean years, he may have been in the other dugout. “I’ve always like Viola,” Whitey Herzog told the Star Tribune’s Steve Aschburner. “We’ve tried to get him for years. He’s a premier pitcher. He knows how to pitch, he changes speeds real well. He pitched an outstanding ball game.”

Gladden added an RBI double in the seventh inning, cementing his spot as the game’s most valuable offensive player. His five RBI in one game topped the five he drove in through the entire ALCS series. He had gone from a roster afterthought to a celebrity in the span of two and a half hours.

The crowd was delirious leaving the ballpark. Outside the Metrodome, each local TV newscast positioned a reporter on the scene and each reporter was inundated with fans chanting “we’re number one” or the Twins fight song. No doubt that the lopsided results of Game 1 had people thinking that this series would be over after the next three games. With the area’s population all clamoring to participate in the largest screamfest the state had ever seen, Kent Hrbek offered up words that every Twins fan unable to join the party thought.

“I wished they had built a bigger stadium.”

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Previous installments...

Tame The Tigers

Dealt The Cards