Game 97: Twins at Rockies

LaTroy thoughtfully posing in a PSA about kitchen safety. Do you have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen? DO YOU? | Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon

First pitch: 7:40 Central

Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, slight chance T-storms, 86°

Opponent’s SB site: Purple Row

TV: Twins TV. Radio: No relievers allowed except when they are

Not-great Rockies lefty Kyle Freeland is starting against the Twins today, for... reasons. I dunno what the reasons are. Maybe the thought process is “no point in readjusting the rotation post-All Star break when you’re 22-74.” (Also, his numbers are better than his ERA would indicate.) Freeland is a Denver native, so that’s kinda cool. Although he lives in Arizona. He throws in the low-90s and adds in a curve, sleeputter, sinker and change. YTD digits:

Recently, a former Twins draft pick and fringe

major-leaguer was found guilty of first-degree murder involving a Lake Tahoe real estate dispute. You know who invests big in Lake Tahoe vacation property? Michael Corleone and nobody good.

As nagurskiinnortheast pointed out, Missouri’s gasbag governor guaranteed several hundred millions of dollars for new stadiums at the same time he was torpedoing a law requiring employers to provide paid sick leave to workers. After Missouri voters said “no” to a stadium funding ballot measure and “yes” to a sick leave measure. Which goes to show how much these politicos worry about anything their constituents actually want. Oh, and by the way, this is just the start of what the Royals’ owner is asking for. He will get much more.

Since those stories suck, here’s one from 2023 you may have missed, about the Rockies’ goofy scoreboard operator. One JumboTron message seemed oddly personal:

From the site meaww.com, whose “about” page says “we are the global hub for Reality TV and Entertainment.” They’re based in India, but don’t have any stories about Indian entertainment. Too bad.

Or, in another one, “The last time the Orioles visited Denver was 2004 - Nolan Arenado was just 13, the iPhone was just three years away from hitting shelves, and I was in the early stages of alimony litigation with my delight of a first wife. Time flies, eh?”

They’ve also had fun with how friendly the bandmembers and music of Hootie and the Blowfish are, when actual blowfish are often quite poisonous. So none of this is to be taken seriously, kids. (Some people on the internet thought “Becky” was real.)

Here’s a cute Guardian article about people in Pennsylvania who play old-timey baseball. As in, no gloves, wool uniforms, and balls caught on one hop are outs. My favorite quote is by someone who said they used to do Civil War re-enactments, but the outcome was always the same. (Although their old-timey uniforms are made by a Civil War re-enactment uniform supplier. This sounds like an expensive hobby.)

The Twins had an all-player broadcast crew for a bit against the Cubs last week, and it seems like the boys had a good time. At one point, they ragged on Trevor Plouffe a little bit.

Moving on to Today in Baseball History, there’s a fun one from 1986, when Detroit’s Jack Morris threw his third consecutive shutout. It wouldn’t be a shutout in his next game, on July 23rd; Kirby Puckett scored in the first inning on two errors. But Morris still went 8.0 innings that day and had 0 earned runs.

Better yet, in 1962, both Bob Allison and Harmon Killebrew hit grand slams... and both were in the first inning! Allison’s was off Barry Latman, who’s been an All-Star the previous year. Latman was Jewish, and never played on high holidays (like Sandy Koufax in the 1965 Series); unlike Koufax, he was pretty observant — with Koufax, the 1965 thing was more about showing solidarity during a rise of antisemitism in the U.S. Latman played for four teams over 11 seasons and had a respectable 3.91 career ERA.

As you’d expect, Killebrew hit his dinger off a different pitcher — Jim Perry! The Jim Perry who’d be traded to the Twins the next season, for the fairly decent Jack Kralick. (Kralick threw the Twins’ first no-hitter in 1962... and once bowled a perfect 300, too.) Perry would spend 10 seasons with the Twins, winning the Cy Young in 1970. He’s one of 40 people in the Twins’ Hall of Fame.

But the day belongs to a very good reliever who’s one of the just plain neatest people in Twins history, recent college graduate LaTroy Hawkins.

The whole story of the LaTroy Hawkins Fan Club is pretty legendary, so you probably know it already. Just in case you don’t, it started in 2001. Hawkins had already spent part of five seasons with the Twins, and it hadn’t gone all that great; 99 games with a 6.16 ERA. Two Twins fans, Heidi Sutter and Eric Englund, were hanging outside the Metrodome hoping to get some player autographs. They met Hawkins, and had a great time talking to him, so they decided to start a fan club. And yep, they got the autograph, too:

From this ESPN article. Credited as “Courtesy of LaTroy Hawkins Fan Club.”

The club would start the next day, with Sutter and Englund asking fans around them in section 216 to join. Many did. And things deepened when some members went down to Florida for Spring Training the next year, and Hawkins took them out to dinner. Over the years, Hawkins became basically a part of the family for some of the members, and vice versa — they’ve helped Hawkins and his wife Anita with babysitting, he’s been to their birthday parties and weddings. One wedding was a guy marrying his former high-school prom date. He’d taken her to the prom in Hawkins’s car. (He picked it up at the Dome after a game, and Hawkins got his ride home in his mom’s minivan.) And yup, they still know each other.

Hawkins always was a great teammate, too. Check out this really nice article from the Denver Post’s Benjamin Hochman and Nick Groke back in 2015 (which would be Hawkins’s last season); it opens with Hawkins dancing at the bar mitzvah of a team doctor’s kid. It’s about Hawkins doing things like buying the rookies suits, because that’s what Puckett did for him. And teaching them how to be decent people, too — that they darn sure better be tipping the hotel staff.

He was drafted in 1991, and was a little frustrated at first, so he told his grandfather he’d be quitting baseball to attend college on a basketball scholarship. Grandpa told him right back that if he was gonna quit, he’d better find another place to stay, and Hawkins agreed to keep trying at baseball. During his early struggles with the Twins, the front office wanted him gone, but Tom Kelly didn’t — he admired Hawkins’s work ethic. It got Hawkins the closer’s job in 2001, and that didn’t go great; 28 saves in 38 opportunities. By September, the job was Eddie Guardado’s.

In a setup role, though, Hawkins was much more successful. He’d have 5.5 bWAR in 2002-2003 with a 2.00 ERA; the Twins let him walk at the end of the year, thinking he was nearing his sell-by day at age 30. A little off, there — Hawkins would pitch in MLB for another 12 seasons, with a 3.37 ERA. Maybe nothing amazing, he never made an All-Star team, but pretty impressive all the same. And just an all-around nice guy, which matters most.

From this article, with members of the fan club, photo credit Bruce Bisping /Star Tribune

Also, the Twins today will be wearing Securian Financial logos on their sleeves. Not that I fuggin’ care in the slightest about how many more ads they run. But you might see these things and wonder “that’s new, what are they?” It’s an investment company based in St. Paul, and as-yet unconnected to any giant financial fraud indictments. You’d be surprised how many have been. Or maybe you wouldn’t.

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