Last of the Ninth….Twins Pennant Drive in ’65
This is a huge day for baseball in Minnesota. Today marks the official opening of Target Field, the Minnesota Twins new home. The Twins play two exhibition games against the St. Louis Cardinals before the regular season starts on Monday. To celebrate the return of outdoor baseball to Minnesota, I thought I’d post this album of highlights from the Twins 1965 World Series appearance. The Twins eventually lost to the Dodgers in 7 games but since I was only two years old at the time, the loss didn’t leave the same emotional scars as the the Vikings countless failures.
For me, the best part about listening to this record was being able to listen to professional announcers. Halsey Hall, Ray Scott and Herb Carneal are all legends in Minnesota broadcasting. I’ve ranted before about the lack of professionalism that ex-jocks bring to the booth, but for some reason, the powers that be seem to feel that they add some extra dimension to the game. They don’t. Ninety-nine percent of all ex-jocks are just plain painful to listen to.
Herb Carneal was my favorite baseball announcer. He became the Twins lead announcer in 1967 and remained so until 2002 when he scaled back his workload. Herb continued his role part-time through the 2006 season and passed away on April 1st, 2007. His replacements, John Gordon and Dan Gladden, are so bad that I refuse to even listen to them.
I’ve been a big baseball fan all of my life. When I was a kid, my dad and Uncle took me to quite a few Twins games at the old Met Stadium. When the Twins moved indoors in 1982, most of us who grew up with outdoor baseball were horrified. If you’ve never been to the Metrodome, the first thing that you notice is that most of the seats point to the outfield. You actually have to keep your head turned to watch the game. After nine innings, you can barely turn your head. The stadium was actually designed for football. Baseball was an afterthought. All of which makes today one of the greatest days in my life. In case my wife is reading this, I’ll say that the days we met and got married were better. Although she’ll probably know that I’m lying.
No talk about the Twins would be complete without a clip of game 163. I’ve heard a lot of people call this one of the greatest games ever played, myself included. But my pal Bob-O from Recordo Obscura had a great point. It was a pretty sloppy game where both teams threw away chances to win. And he’s right (something I usually won’t say about a Tiger’s fan). This wasn’t an exhibition of great baseball. What made the game so great is that even though both teams threw away chances, they both left everything on the field. So even though it wasn’t great baseball, I still think it was a great game.
Thanks to the fine people at YouTube for sucking the life out of the internet by removing any video that might be even remotely interesting. You’ll have to imagine a clip of game 163 here.
Tracks:
Side One
Side Two
F the Twinkies!
“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.”
Fulton J. Sheen
Twins Pennant Drive in ’65 audio does not play. Your other stuff plays just fine on my PC. What’s with the Twins record audio?
Seems to be a browser issue. It works fine in Chrome, Firefox and
Safari. Doesn’t seem to work in I.E. Try a different browser.
Thanks,
PC