“Cool of the Evening: The 1965 Minnesota Twins”
Bibliographic Data: Trade Paperback, Kirk House
Publishers, January 2005
Author: Thielman, Jim
List Price: $17.95
Status: In Print
BINC: 7846773
ISBN: 1886513716
When Jim Thielman began researching "Cool of the Evening: The 1965 Minnesota Twins," he realized not much had been written about that season. In fact, many of his sources explained to him that the team's first pennant was seen as a regional story with limited national interest.
However, Thielman builds a case that 1965 was a pivotal year in Major League Baseball history.
• The Twins were the first team to emerge as American League champions when the New York Yankees dynasty began a decade-long decline.
• The Twins were the last major league team to integrate their spring training facilities, finally persuading the Cherry Plaza Hotel in Orlando, Florida, to allow its black players to stay there.
• Jim Grant, who unexpectedly became as the team's ace when Camilo Pascual missed nearly two months because of shoulder surgery, was the first African-American to win 20 games in an American League season.
• Newly hired coach Johnny Sain reshaped the Twins staff, building his legacy as one of baseball's most influential pitching minds.
• Shortstop Zoilo Versalles, under the tutelage of new third-base coach Billy Martin, had a career year and became the first foreign-born player to be named Most Valuable Player.
The season opened on an ominous note as Jim Kaat, who had drawn the first start of the year, third baseman Rich Rollins and relief pitcher Dick Stigman had to be airlifted by helicopter to Metropolitan Stadium because flooding had closed a bridge. Just 15,000 fans saw the Twins defeat the defending AL champion Yankees 4-3 in 11 innings. Wet weather plagued the Twins all season long, as more than 40 inches of rain fell on the Twin Cities in 1965, making it the wettest year on record since 1891. Still, the Twins managed to draw a league-leading 1.2 million that season.
"In a storm-filled year in Minnesota, the Twins were a perfect storm," said Thielman, a freelance writer from suburban Minneapolis who also has written about MSBL leagues in Minnesota.
Thielman dispels several commonly held assumptions about the 1965 Twins, namely that they outslugged their opponents. True, the Twins scored a league-leading 774 runs, but they finished fourth in home runs. After leading the league with 221 home runs in 1964 but also finishing second in stranded base runners, the Twins, under manager Sam Mele's prodding, committed to an aggressive running game in spring training of 1965.
The Twins pitching staff, anchored by Grant and Kaat, finished third in the league in ERA. Sain, who served as the Yankees pitching coach from 1961-1963, returned from private business to supervise the Twins pitchers, helping Grant develop a consistent breaking ball, and with Johnny Klippstein. Bill Pleis and Al Worthington as mainstays in the bullpen, became an early proponent of using middle relievers to set up a closer.
Thielman also dispels the myth that Martin and Mele were rivals, with the future Yankees manager conveniently on staff to take over in case the Twins struggled. In truth, the two Italian-Americans were friends who spent time off the field together.
As third-base coach Martin carried out Mele's orders to run the bases aggressively, a daring strategy with slow-footed regulars such as Earl Battey, Harmon Killebrew and Don Mincher in the lineup. And when Martin removed Reggie Jackson for lackadaisical play in a Yankees game in 1977, it mirrored how Mele pulled Versalles from a spring training game 12 years earlier. Mele, then a scout with the Boston Red Sox, was in the stands and fittingly witnessed Jackson's removal.
"In writing this book, I talked to 17 players from that team. And what struck me most was the friendships these guys developed among themselves," Thielman said, describing a trait also common to MSBL teammates. "Many of them still stay in touch regularly."
The first chapter can be downloaded for free at www.cooloftheevening.com.
The book also is available at www.amazon.com.