Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History

By Dennis Brackin, Patrick Reusse and Harmon Killebrew

A treasury of Twin Cities baseball history packed with photos from the archives.

Major League Baseball came to the Minnesota prairie in the spring of 1961, and ever since, the Minnesota Twins have held a cherished place in the hearts of sports fans throughout the region. With Hall of Famers like Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Kirby Puckett and beloved characters from Billy Martin to Kent Hrbek to Joe Mauer, the history of the Twins encompasses highs and lows, heroes and goats, but always nonstop excitement.

Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History provides an in-depth and entertaining look at the team, its players, its stadiums, and the memorable moments through the years. Illustrated with photos from the Star Tribune’s archives, it is the ultimate celebration of a beloved franchise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9781610602693

Book preview

One of the things I remember about coming to Minnesota was to have the opportunity to play with so many great, nice ballplayers—like Harmon Killebrew, Zoilo Versalles, Camilo Pascual, Dean Chance, Earl Battey, so many more. For me, I grew up here, and Calvin Griffith was like a second father. . . . So far, I’ve been here 48 years. I never expected to be any place that long. I don’t know what it’s like in other organizations, because I have only been with the Minnesota Twins, but I know that here it’s like a family. . . . If I had it to do all over again, and the Twins gave me the opportunity, I would do the same thing.

— Tony Oliva

I was just happy, first of all, to get the chance to play major league baseball, but getting to play with the team you grew up cheering for in your own hometown—there couldn’t be a better way to play big league ball. . . . Then to be a part of not one but two World Championship teams! Things couldn’t go any better than to play your whole career in front of hometown fans. I feel very blessed and very thankful to the fans of not only Minnesota, but of the entire Midwest, and the fantastic Minnesota Twins organization.

— Kent Hrbek

The people you met coming to work here—from the ballplayers to the security guards to the bat boys to people like [team cook and assistant clubhouse manager] Bobby Dorey—it was like a family. It was a neat, neat place to come to work. You could go 0-for-4 and boot the ball in the field, but you never had a bad day at the office. The front office and the Pohlad family made you proud to be a Twins player.

— Dan Gladden

The Twins organization is a pretty close fraternity in the sense that, from the top of the organization to the bottom of the organization, it’s run by quality people. And you don’t find that in many walks of life, let alone a professional sports organization. From top to bottom, it’s class. It’s very loyal. When you’re a Twin, you’re a Twin. Granted, it’s the only place I’ve ever been, but talking to other guys in the league, it’s different over here.

— Michael Cuddyer

MINNESOTA TWINS

The Complete Illustrated History

DENNIS BRACKIN AND PATRICK REUSSE

FOREWORD BY HARMON KILLEBREW

CONTENTS

Foreword by Harmon Killebrew

CHAPTER 1

Twins Prehistory: Bringing Big League Baseball to Minnesota

CHAPTER 2

The 1960s: A Franchise Comes of Age

CHAPTER 3

The 1970s: Tough Times in Twinsville

CHAPTER 4

The 1980s: Reaching the Top

CHAPTER 5

The 1990s: Worst to First, and Back Again

CHAPTER 6

The 2000s: New Hope and a New Home

APPENDIX

Minnesota Twins All-Time Record Book

Index

FOREWORD

BECOMING A TWIN

BY HARMON KILLEBREW

I must admit I was really apprehensive when I learned late in 1960 that the Washington Senators were moving to Minnesota. I had played for Indianapolis in the American Association for about a month in 1958, and one of the trips I took was to St. Paul and Minneapolis to play the Saints and the Millers. I learned enough about the Minnesota weather on that trip to know that I just wasn’t looking forward to playing in Minnesota full-time.

And it wasn’t only the weather. I was a small-town kid from Idaho, and I really enjoyed playing in the nation’s capital. Plus, the Senators had just started to become a good ballclub. We had made a trade with the White Sox before the 1960 season that brought us Earl Battey and Don Mincher, a pair of quality players. Jim Kaat was a good, young pitcher to go along with Camilo Pascual, giving us a potentially formidable twosome at the top of the rotation. Bob Allison had been the Rookie of the Year in 1959, and I had led the American League in home runs that year.

So, coming to Minnesota and leaving Washington, D.C., just didn’t sound like a real good thing to me. But I tell you what, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with playing in Minnesota. The people won me over right away. We saw how anxious the people were to have a major league baseball team. The support was just great, and the people were wonderful. To me, the fans of Minnesota are tops.

And it turns out, I was right about us being a team on the rise. We had a rough first year in 1961, getting manager Cookie Lavagetto fired on our way to a 70–90 season. But the next two years we won 91 games each season, and by 1965 we were American League champs. I don’t think any of us thought about winning a pennant that quickly. We were just focused on trying to become a good ballclub.

We had some real talent by 1965. Tony Oliva came in 1964 and won batting titles his first two seasons. Zoilo Versalles always had talent, and in 1965 he put it together and was the American League’s MVP. We picked up Mudcat Grant in a trade with Cleveland in 1964, Jim Perry in another trade with Cleveland, and Dave Boswell came up from the minors. Add those guys to Pascual and Kaat, and we had a heckuva starting staff.

We had so many great guys and great players on that team. I don’t think anyone realized how great a catcher Earl Battey was until we didn’t have him anymore. He wasn’t only a great catcher, but a great teammate. Just a great guy to have in the clubhouse.

I had one of my most memorable moments in the final game before the All-Star break in 1965 when I hit a two-run homer off Pete Mikkelsen with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to give us a 6–5 victory over the Yankees, who seemed to win the AL title every year. That gave us a five-game lead over New York at the break, and we won going away.

Then I got hurt on August 2, dislocating my elbow on a play at first base, and almost missed the World Series. All those years, and that was my only Series, and I almost missed it. But I was able to get back in the lineup for the last 10 games and play in the Series. Still, I really feel I missed a lot of the excitement of the pennant race by not getting to play every day.

We got to the World Series, and I thought we were every bit as good as the Dodgers. But the seventh game, Sandy Koufax beat us with one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. He was pitching on two days’ rest and didn’t have his great curveball working, so he threw mostly fastballs. And we still couldn’t get to him. I was on first when Allison struck out to end the game, and he slammed his bat and broke it. I kidded Bob later that if he’d have swung at the ball as hard as he did when he slammed his bat, we might have won the game.

That summer was just a great experience. We should have been back in the Series in 1967, but we couldn’t get the split we needed at Boston on the final weekend of the season. I still think we’d have won the pennant if Kaat hadn’t hurt his elbow with us leading in the opening game of the weekend series.

As good as those teams were, I think the best team I played on was 1969, Billy Martin’s one and only year as manager. We had Carew in the lineup along with Tony Oliva. We also had Cesar Tovar at the top of the order, and people forget how valuable he was. I had my best year, winning the MVP Award after hitting 49 homers and driving in 140 runs. That was the first year of division play, and we couldn’t get past Baltimore in the playoffs.

I got my 500th home run in 1971, but by 1974 my career with the Twins was done.

I wanted to finish my career with the Twins, and I thought I could play two more years, but Calvin Griffith had other thoughts. He offered me the manager’s job at Tacoma, our AAA farm team, or a coaching job with the big league club. When I said I wanted to keep playing, Calvin gave me my release and I signed with Kansas City. I still think if I’d have stayed in Minnesota, I could have played two more years. But Kansas City had artificial turf and my knees were going bad. I lasted one year.

Calvin took me back in the organization as a broadcaster, and I’ve always appreciated that. I never did get used to the Minnesota weather. I built a home in Prior Lake late in my career with the Twins and tried to get into ice fishing and snowmobiling, but I think the weather was a lot more severe in those days. I just didn’t like the cold winters.

But that doesn’t change the way I feel about Minnesota. I’ve had people ask me if I wished I’d played in New York or another big market, and I always say, No way. I was really happy in Minnesota. The people in the Upper Midwest were the same kind of people I grew up around in Idaho.

And I can’t think of a better compliment.

CHAPTER 1

TWINS PREHISTORY

BRINGING BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL TO MINNESOTA

By the summer of 1961, Minnesota’s new major league baseball team was attracting big crowds to refurbished Metropolitan Stadium. More than 23,500 fans came to watch the Twins sweep a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox on July 4. Parts of the grandstand were still under construction during the first season. Charles Brill/Star Tribune

The 1950s was a decade of growth and prosperity for much of the United States. The Great Depression and World War II were behind us. Suburbs, Baby Boomers, and rock and roll were here to stay.

Things were changing rapidly in the Minnesota river towns of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The Twin Cities by the latter 1950s had a combined population of about 800,000, with burgeoning suburbs like Bloomington, Edina, and Richfield. The population of the metro area was more than one million, making it one of the 15 largest metropolitan areas in the nation.

Evidence of the area’s suburban growth was the 1956 opening of Southdale Mall, the nation’s first enclosed shopping center. But a shopping mall wasn’t going to stamp the Twin Cities as special. To be major league, you needed a major league baseball team.

So, a small group of civic leaders set out on a quest to bring big league baseball to the Twin Cities. Oh, how they tried—and oh, how they failed.

There were courtships with the St. Louis Browns, Philadelphia Athletics, New York Giants, Cleveland Indians, and almost annually with Calvin Griffith and his lowly Washington Senators. Near the end of the decade, the Twin Cities leaders put a down payment on a franchise in the newly proposed Continental Baseball League, which billed itself as a third major league.

So desperate was the quest to bring big league baseball to the Twin Cities that new stadiums were constructed in Bloomington and St. Paul, each one capable of expanding to satisfy potential suitors. Committees were formed in Minneapolis and St. Paul, bonds were sold, and tax breaks were approved with the hope of putting the Twin Cities in position to lure a team.

From 1952 through 1959, however, Minnesotans were consistently rebuked in their efforts. Frustration mounted. Rejection ate at our collective pride. We thought we were big league—but where was the proof?

By the time the proof came—at the American League owners’ meeting in New York on October 26, 1960—there was such a prevailing sense of gloom and doom that the decision initially evoked as much shock as euphoria. On the eve of the announcement, Charles Johnson, executive sports editor of the Minneapolis Star and Morning Tribune, had laid out an all-too-familiar scenario for his readers in the October 25 evening edition of the Star. Johnson advised readers that Dallas–Ft. Worth and Los Angeles were apparent locks to be the two American League expansion sites. The columnist wrote that his best information indicated that four of the American League team owners would attempt to block any effort by Calvin Griffith to leave the nation’s capital. A franchise relocation required 75 percent approval of owners, meaning three was enough to block a bid.

Having scrambled for the last seven years for a major league baseball club for the Twin Cities, Johnson wrote, we can’t be anything but pessimistic about our chances.

Johnson was proved wrong in his pessimism, and it was he who had been a key driving force behind the quest’s ultimate success. The original effort to bring major league baseball to Minnesota dates to 1952 when a small group of dedicated Minneapolis leaders—the principals being Johnson, Minneapolis Chamber of Council president Gerald Moore, and Norm McGrew—began meeting informally to discuss ways to attract a team to the area. By 1953, the Twin Cities baseball committee was formed.

Johnson and Moore remained the two most central figures right up until the day in 1960 that Griffith received permission to move the Senators to Minnesota. Without the drive and leadership of Johnson and Moore, the arrival of major league baseball to the area would have been delayed by years, perhaps decades.

Johnson had a powerful ally in Moore, who is credited with being the first in 1952 to suggest trying to lure major league baseball to the Twin Cities. Moore was the first chairman of the Twin Cities baseball committee, which became known as the Minneapolis Baseball Committee after St. Paul officials declined to support the Bloomington stadium site. Moore was also chairman of the Metropolitan Sports Area Commission, which oversaw construction of Metropolitan Stadium.

While Johnson worked behind the scenes and wielded influence in print, Moore was the public face of the drive. He had clout as chamber of commerce president, and he used it to get area businessmen behind the bond sales drive that allowed the stadium to be built. He appeared before baseball owners, touting the Twin Cities’ readiness as a major league site. And during the fateful 24-hour period in 1960 that preceded Griffith’s decision to formally seek a move, it was Moore who wined and dined the Senators’ owner while keeping Johnson at bay for fear that the plan would leak before it had a chance to succeed.

The three central figures in the long saga to bring big league baseball to Minnesota were (left to right) Charley Johnson, Calvin Griffith, and Gerry Moore. They are shown here in November 1960, just days after the American League agreed to let Griffith move the Washington Senators to the Twin Cities. Paul Siegel/Star Tribune

CHARLEY JOHNSON

The product of a unique era in journalism, Charley Johnson wielded a great deal of power on the Twin Cities sports scene as executive sports editor of the Minneapolis Star and Morning Tribune. Johnson was, in essence, the front man for the newspaper’s owner and publisher, John Cowles Sr., who felt that professional sports would help stamp Minneapolis as a major metropolitan area—and might help boost circulation.

Johnson began working on the Griffith family to bring baseball to Minnesota in 1953 when he arranged a 30-minute meeting with Clark Griffith, Senators owner and the uncle of Calvin Griffith. That first meeting lasted five hours.

For the rest of the decade, Johnson was a tireless lobbyist for getting a big league team in the Twin Cities. Although it proved to be a several-years-long process, Johnson and his colleagues on the Minneapolis Baseball Committee ultimately succeeded in their quest.

In July 1965, on the recommendation of Calvin Griffith, Johnson was chosen to throw out the first pitch at the major league All-Star Game at Met Stadium. Griffith said it was a thank you for Johnson’s work in bringing the franchise to Minnesota. Johnson had also been a driving force in getting Minneapolis and Bloomington to cooperate in the building of Metropolitan Stadium.

As the Twins prepared to move into the Metrodome in 1982, several people wrote letters to the Star and Tribune, suggesting the stadium be named after Johnson, rather than Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. Supporters noted that Johnson had done much more for sports in the area than Humphrey had, but the honor nonetheless went to Humphrey.

Johnson died in 1984 after suffering a heart attack in Orlando, Florida. In his obituary in the Minneapolis Tribune, Tom Mee, Twins public relations director, said Johnson was probably the one individual singularly responsible for convincing Calvin Griffith to move the Washington franchise to Minnesota.

THE MISSING INGREDIENT

Although the Twin Cities boasted a rich baseball tradition that dated back to the late 1800s, the area lacked one key ingredient in the quest to land a big league club: a major league stadium. Both of the Twin Cities’ minor league franchises were playing in old, antiquated urban ballparks, the Minneapolis Millers in Nicollet Park and the St. Paul Saints in Lexington Park.

Shown here in 1954, Nicollet Park had hosted professional baseball since the 1890s, but the ballpark’s 4,000-seat capacity wasn’t going to cut it for the big leagues. Home to the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association, the park was a landmark in Minnesota’s early baseball history. Swan-Gillis/Star Tribune

MINNESOTA’S BASEBALL ROOTS

Long before the arrival of the Twins in 1961, baseball had been an important part of Twin Cities culture and recreation. The minor league franchises of the American Association in Minneapolis and St. Paul had a long, storied history.

The Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints were both charter members of the American Association in 1902. During their 59 seasons in the league, the Millers posted the best winning percentage in the American Association, with the Saints a close second. The two franchises shared the Association record with nine pennants apiece.

The rosters were filled with young players who would go on to become major league stars. Saints alumni include six major league Hall of Famers, including Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, and Walter Alston. The Millers had 16 future Hall of Famers, including Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, and Hoyt Wilhelm from the team’s years as a Giants affiliate, and Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski from its years as a Red Sox farm club.

The Saints and Millers may be best remembered, however, for the intensity of their rivalry, which typified the rivalry between the two cities. For more than a decade in the 1940s and 1950s, the Saints and Millers were the top farm clubs (Class AAA) of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, respectively. There was no greater rivalry in pro sports at the time than the Dodgers and Giants, and the roots of that rivalry could be seen in their minor league franchises in St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Saints and Millers played each other 22 times a season in the eight-team Association, and fights and feuds were commonplace.

St. Paul and Minneapolis is where the rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants all started off, said Al Worthington, a former Millers standout who later became the Twins’ closer. That’s where the Dodgers players learned to hate the Giants, and the Giants learned to hate the Dodgers. And those are the feelings that continued on after you got to New York and Brooklyn.

One of the legendary players to display his baseball skills in Minnesota prior to the arrival of the major leagues was Ted Williams, who played for the Minneapolis Millers in 1938. In his one season, the future Hall of Famer batted .366 with 43 home runs in 148 games. A year later he was tearing up the big leagues with the Boston Red Sox. Star Tribune staff photo

Minneapolis Miller Willie Mays is congratulated by manager Tommy Heath after homering in a game at Nicollet Park on May 10, 1951. It was one of eight long balls Mays hit during his brief stay in Minneapolis. The 20-year-old was quickly called up to the parent club after batting .477 in 35 games.

It quickly became evident to the Twin Cities baseball committee that a new ballpark was the critical component in landing a team. You could promise to build one, but having one already standing was the way to go. History had shown that.

The city of Milwaukee, which also hosted a AAA team of the American Association (the Brewers), had spent $6.6 million to construct County Stadium, and in 1953 the city was rewarded for its efforts when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee, marking the first time since 1903 that a major league franchise switched cities.

A flurry of franchise relocation followed. Before the 1954 season, the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, where Memorial Stadium was ready to accept a major league tenant. A year later, the Philadelphia Athletics headed to Kansas City, where officials had elected to pour money into the city’s minor league stadium to attract a club.

Civic leaders, politicians, and baseball fans gathered for the groundbreaking of a new stadium in Bloomington in 1955. Metropolitan Sports Area Commission chair Gerry Moore, at the microphone, is joined on an Allis-Chalmers tractor by (left to right) Minneapolis mayor Eric Hoyer, Minneapolis Millers general manager Rosy Ryan, Bloomington village clerk Dana McCutchan, and commission member James Kempf of Bloomington. Star Tribune staff photo

Milwaukee and Kansas City had been among the eight member cities in the American Association, and seeing them land teams fueled the fire of Twin Citians. Moore’s committee previously had undergone talks with both the Browns and Athletics, but with no stadium, the talks went nowhere.

So, Minneapolis and St. Paul officials decided to build. And in typical Minneapolis–St. Paul fashion, each city constructed a stadium of its own that it hoped would lure a big league team.

Minneapolis and St. Paul had been feuding since the nineteenth century over such things as the site of the State Fair, railroad routes, and navigational control of the Mississippi River. The intense rivalry manifested itself in the push to acquire a big league club, as it had in just about everything else.

At first, the cities tried to work together on a stadium site. In 1954, the Twin Cities baseball committee zeroed in on a site north of the State Fairgrounds, on land owned by the University of Minnesota at its St. Paul campus. The committee offered to swap 42 acres of equivalent usable property for a 42-acre tract west of the fairgrounds and north of Como Avenue. University regents voted down the proposal, however, after the city council of Falcon Heights (where the stadium would be located) passed a resolution opposing transfer of the land and stating that the council would not grant a building permit for construction of a stadium.

On the very day that the regents said no, Bloomington mayor Herman Kossow invited committee members to a meeting to consider land in his city, near 78th Street and Cedar Avenue. Minneapolis leaders got behind the site, not only because it offered cheap land by its proximity to the airport, but also because they saw it as a compromise that might satisfy St. Paul leaders. It didn’t. Just as the Bloomington site was gathering steam, St. Paul mayor Joseph E. Dillon declared that under no circumstances would his city support the suburban plan.

As Minneapolis and Bloomington started selling bonds to build their stadium, St. Paul city officials went their own way, putting up a couple of million dollars to build a ballpark in the Midway district, off Snelling Avenue and Energy Park Drive. They contended that it was the most convenient location, closer to downtown Minneapolis than it was to St. Paul. Most important to them, of course, was that it was well within the St. Paul city limits.

Minneapolis officials, in turn, had no interest in the Midway site. Minneapolis and Bloomington sold $4.5 million in bonds to finance a 20,000-seat stadium, which opened in 1956 as the new home of the AAA Minneapolis Millers. Midway Stadium, home to the AAA St. Paul Saints, was completed in time for the 1957 season.

As late as August 1957, as momentum was building for bringing a team to the Minneapolis side, St. Paul’s council guaranteed a bond issue of between $3 and $4 million if the city landed a major league team for Midway Stadium. St. Paul was offering a yearly rental fee of just $27,500 until attendance reached 750,000. The team would pay 12.5 cents per adult admission for anything above that attendance, and the club would receive all the income from concessions and advertising, with parking money going to the city.

Remarkably, as Metropolitan and Midway Stadiums were being planned, a fourth parcel of land was also in play. Forty acres just west of Highway 100 on the south side of what is now Highway 394 had been purchased in 1951 by New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who also owned the Giants’ AAA farm club in Minneapolis.

By the middle of the decade, Stoneham was telling people he intended to move his team to Minneapolis, presumably to a new stadium that would be constructed on his land. The decision by the city to build on the Bloomington site did not end Stoneham’s flirtation with Minneapolis.

In fact, city leaders believed that Stoneham went well past the flirtatious stage, and by 1957 they were convinced that Stoneham was committed to moving the Giants to Minneapolis. Some believe that it would have happened had it not been for Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, who had his eyes on the lucrative Los Angeles market and who convinced Stoneham that it would be in the best interests of both franchises if they continued their rivalry on the West Coast. Stoneham was swayed. The city of San Francisco promised a new ballpark, rich television contracts, and the all-important geographical ties to the Dodgers. O’Malley, of course, was the big winner, netting the riches of sun-drenched Los Angeles while Stoneham got the cold, damp bay breezes that made baseball often intolerable in Candlestick Park. The Giants owner found no sympathy in the Twin Cities.

New York Giants executives, including owner Horace Stoneham, farm director Carl Hubbell, and scout Tom Sheehan, visit the brand-new Metropolitan Stadium with Millers general manager Rosy Ryan (far right) on April 23, 1956. Many Twin Cities officials, journalists, and fans were convinced that the Giants were headed to Minnesota—only to watch Stoneham take his ballclub to California. Star Tribune staff photo

Stoneham clearly had been playing both sides of the fence, listening to simultaneous overtures from Minneapolis and San Francisco. When Stoneham announced his intention in May 1957 to move to San Francisco, it was a crushing blow to Minneapolis’ hopes of acquiring a team.

Charley Johnson had been so certain that Stoneham would move to Minneapolis that he called the initial reports of Stoneham’s decision to move to California a wild-eyed fairy tale concocted by a New York newspaperman. He could not bring himself to believe that Minneapolis had been jilted.

It did not take long for Minneapolis to revive its pursuit of a major league team. After the 1957 season, the Cleveland Indians entered into talks about moving to the new stadium in Bloomington. The rumors continued to swirl throughout the 1958 season. Cleveland’s ownership group, which included St. Paul native I. A. O’Shaughnessy, seemed serious. This would have been a coup for Minnesota, since the Indians were just a few years removed from a III-win season and a trip to the World Series in 1954. The club could not escape its lease in Cleveland, however, and the courtship ended.

Once again, the Twin Cities were jilted. Two cities, two brand-new stadiums, no team.

CALVIN GRIFFITH

The 1987 Twins had just knocked off the favored Detroit Tigers four games to one to reach the World Series for the second time in franchise history. The clinching game was a 9–5 victory at Tiger Stadium, and a celebration was taking place inside the tiny visitors’ clubhouse.

Owner Carl Pohlad and his henchman Howard Fox arrived along with team president Jerry Bell and general manager Andy MacPhail. They wore large smiles as the door opened and they headed into the tumult.

There was shouting in the hallway, where other people who would be riding the Twins’ buses to the airport were gathering. Among those in the hall was Calvin Griffith, who had been the owner of the Twins from the team’s arrival in Minnesota until he sold to Pohlad in 1984.

Griffith was carrying a paper bag containing a few souvenirs from this American League Championship Series. His real souvenirs were in the clubhouse—the coaching staff and the players, most of whom he had brought into the organization.

No one in power invited Griffith to come in to join the celebration, not even Fox, who had come with the team from Washington in the winter of 1960 and had been a vice president, traveling secretary, and high-priced valet for Calvin for many years.

In the hallway, Calvin was asked, jokingly, if he had any memory of what stood at the time as the organization’s lone World Series championship: The Washington Senators’ seven-game victory over the New York Giants in 1924.

As it turned out, Calvin had been around baseball so long that he, indeed, had a wonderful memory of that triumph 63 years earlier.

I was 12 and the bat boy for the ’24 Senators, he said. "I was in charge of the bats and balls. We beat the Giants in the seventh game, and the crowd poured onto the field to celebrate.

"The fans kicked over the box of baseballs and then took all the balls as souvenirs. I thought, ‘Boy, I’m really going to catch hell now.’

I went to the boss, crying, but he told me not to worry about it. He said, ‘We just won the World Series. That doesn’t happen every day.’

In November 1961, Twins owner Calvin Griffith was still getting settled in to his new surroundings after the debut season in the Twin Cities. It had been a long journey to get the team to Minnesota, but the move would bring early dividends, as the Twins quickly asserted themselves as contenders in the American League—and as a popular draw among Minnesota fans throughout the decade. Wayne Bell/Star Tribune

The boss was Clark Griffith, Calvin’s uncle, and winning a World Series did not happen again for the Griffith family in six more decades of owning an American League franchise.

Clark Griffith started playing baseball in a Missouri pasture in the 1880s when the game was still in its infancy, and a decade later he was a premier pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.

Clark married Addie Robertson, a young lady who had emigrated with her family from Scotland, in 1895. Her older brother, James, was a ballplayer, although not of major league quality.

James moved to Montreal, married, and had seven children. The family was living in poverty, and Clark and Addie Griffith, who were childless, agreed to take in two of the Robertson children. Calvin and Thelma moved in with the Griffiths and eventually took the name.

Clark had become owner of the Washington Senators baseball team in 1920 and remained at the helm until his death in 1955 at the age of 89. Calvin and Thelma inherited the team as equal partners, with Calvin in charge of all decision-making.

The decision that made him a hero (short-lived) in Minnesota and a villain (to this day) in Washington was to move the Senators to the Twin Cities. The announcement was made on October 26, 1960, simultaneously with baseball’s first expansion, adding a replacement group of Senators in Washington and a team in the Los Angeles area (the Angels).

Calvin said he had been impressed with Met Stadium when his Senators had played an exhibition game against Philadelphia in 1958. What impressed him the most, though, was the willingness of Hamm’s Brewery to pay what was then a handsome sum to acquire the team’s radio and television rights.

The Griffiths’ financial situation had been so precarious in Washington that Calvin would later say: We had to borrow money from our radio sponsors every year to go to spring training.

Griffith went home to Washington for a week after the announcement was made, then came to the Twin Cities and spent the next decade smiling. He had the Hamm’s money, and from 1961 through 1970, the Twins led the American League in yearly average attendance.

It was the greatest thrill I ever had in my life—bringing baseball to Minnesota, Griffith said in the mid-1990s. "Everybody there was