After winning three of four home games against the Houston Astros last week, the Minnesota Twins headed to New York City with the best record in all of major league baseball. They were 19-10 and had a remarkable .655 winning percentage. But, the Yankees beat the Twins twice (in three games) at Yankee Stadium and Minnesota’s record was 20-12 at the start of Monday night’s three-game series in Toronto.
That’s a mighty good start to the 2019 season — a winning percentage of .625. The Twins had a two-game lead on the Cleveland Indians (18-14, .563) in the American League Central and were up 4.5 games on the third-place Detroit Tigers (15-16, .484).
Only the Tampa Bay Rays (21-12, .636) had a better record than the Twins on Monday afternoon. The Chicago Cubs (19-12, .613) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (22-14, .611) — both in the National League — also had a winning percentage above .600.
All four of the new guys — Nelson Cruz, C.J. Cron, Marwin Gonzalez and Jonathan Schoop — having been hitting the ball hard and producing runs. Jake Odorizzi has been amazing on the mound in his last two starts, pitching 13 consecutive shutout innings (seven against Houston and six against the Yankees). You wonder when they are going to let him throw a complete game?
Last week, I mentioned my trip home from Houston and my drive through and around Commerce, Oklahoma. I was disappointed that there was nothing — which I noticed — about Mickey Mantle being from there.
A couple days later, my wife Cheryl got a call from Bonnie Olson, who used to live north of Heron Lake and west of Windom, just about a mile north of where I grew up. Bonnie lives in Phoenix, Arizona now and told Cheryl that her oldest son, Creighton, lives in Joplin, Missouri — just about 30 miles or so east of Commerce. Apparently, there’s a lot about Mantle in Joplin where Mickey played minor league baseball for the Joplin Miners of the Class C Western Association in 1951, the same year that both Creighton and I were born.
I aim to find out more about Mantle being honored there. I know that Fargo, North Dakota has a museum honoring Roger Maris, who was quite the football star at Fargo’s Shanley High School before becoming a baseball legend with the Yankees and hitting a major league record 61 home runs in 1961.
Mantle, who played center field and hit 54 home runs that same season for the Yankees as a legendary switch hitter, said this about his strong-armed right field teammate: “Roger Maris was the best all-around baseball player I ever saw.”
Maris had a howitzer for an arm and earned a Gold Glove Award in 1960, while also earning American League MVP honors that year (39 home runs, league-leading 112 RBIs). Maris also led the league in extra-base hits and slugging percentage that season — the year before he broke the home run record and also drove in a league-leading total of 141.
Maris played on three World Series winning teams (the ’61 Yankees, ’62 Yankees and ’67 Cardinals). He played in four others (’60 Yankees, ’63 Yankees, ’64 Yankees and ’68 Cardinals).
Prior to his back-to-back “big time” seasons with the Yankees in ’60 and ’61 (100 home runs, 253 RBIs), Maris did well with both the Cleveland Indians (’57 and ‘ 58) and the Kansas City Athletics (’58 and ’59), hitting a total of 58 home runs in his first four seasons before being traded to the Yankees. He finished up his career as more of a slap hitter (after an injury lost him some of his hand power) with the Cardinals in ’67 and ’68. He hit .385 in the ’67 Series, including a homer and seven RBIs, helping St. Louis beat the Red Sox.
Maris hit his first major league home run — a grand slam — while playing for the Indians (against the Tigers at Briggs Stadium) on April 18, 1957 and belted his last major league homer on September 5, 1968 while playing for the Cardinals.
Both Mantle and Maris were offered football scholarships to the University of Oklahoma by legendary Sooners coach Bud Wilkinson, who had starred for the Minnesota Gophers during the 1930s on a trio of national championship teams.
While I know that Mantle was fast, I don’t much about how good he was as a football player at Commerce High School. I have read that Maris once returned four kickoffs for touchdowns in a single game while playing for the Shanley Deacons.
Maris also displayed great speed as an American Legion baseball player in Fargo before excelling as a minor leaguer from 1953-1956, while batting .303 and lifting 78 home runs into the seats during four seasons with three different teams, helping each one to posting a winning record.
That’s something that seemed to follow Roger Maris — he did what he could, without a lot of fanfare, to help his team win games. But yet, he’s not in the Hall of Fame?
