Twins Hope You Can Go Home Again

By Jim Murray

Oct. 21, 1987 12 AM PT

ST.LOUIS — A leopard is dangerous in a tree. A lion is big trouble in a veldt. Outside of it, they may be just big pussycats.

Minnesota Twins are man-eaters in that big dirigible they call a ballpark. Outside of it, they’re just little lost sheep.

Remember the Minnesota Vikings? In the ice palace between St. Paul and Minneapolis they were the Purple People Eaters. When they thawed out and got to Pasadena or New Orleans or even Houston they were just meltdowns.

The Minnesota Twins have taken up the slack. They are to baseball what the Vikings were to football. Pratfalls.

What do these guys do? Raise the shades in the morning, look out and say, “Oh, God, it’s St. Louis! I got to lose today.”

Are they afraid of offending someone? It’s not a question of If-it’s-Tuesday-it-must-be-Kansas-City, but more If-it’s-Kansas-City-we-lose.

Cheap race horses are that way. They run a hole in the wind at Juarez. Then, they ship East and they seem to think, “Oh-oh, this is Belmont. I can’t handle this track.”

What kind of cockamamie stage fright is this? When the Twins see a hanging curve out of town do they say, “Wait a minute, I better not hit this--this is Milwaukee!”

They’re like a guy who only sings good in the shower.

Take a look at these guys. Tom Brunansky. A holy terror in this World Series. At home. A smash hitter in the playoffs. Tom hit .300 at home, .216 on the road. Gary Gaetti? A loose cannon in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, where his batting average is .306. On the road? .205.

Juan Berenguer’s earned-run average is 2.31 at home, 5.98 on the road. Bert Blyleven is 3.77 at home, 4.40 away. Frank Viola is 2.69 guess where? And he’s 3.14 guess where?

Never mind that. The team as a whole was 56-25 at home, 29-52 on the road. They lost more than twice as many road games as home games. They were 29-10 at home against the West teams and 13-26 on the road. Home cooking can’t be that good.

These guys are the 1927 Yankees in area code 612. They’re the 1950 St. Louis Browns when they didn’t play under cloth. They might be the worst outdoor team in history.

They got outdoors again in St. Louis Tuesday night where the wind blew and the flags flew and the ball curved and the stadium didn’t look like Starship Zebra. And they lost road game No. 54 this year. And they let the St. Louis Cardinals, whom they had all but obliterated under the air-bag in Minneapolis, creep back into the World Series.

It wasn’t easy. Minnesota Manager Tom Kelly was coasting along with a one-run lead. His pitcher, Les Straker, was mowing down the Cardinals, shutting them out on four hits in six innings, when, suddenly, Kelly must have looked out of the dugout and said to himself, “Holy smoke! That’s St. Louis out there.” He had to think of a way to lose.

He figured out a dandy. He took his shutout pitcher out and put in this portly party named Juan Berenguer, who has that aforementioned 2.31 ERA at home and 5.98 on the road.

Berenguer knew where he was, all right, and what was expected of him. He was equal to the occasion. He put the World Series back on hold. He threw 17 pitches. The Cardinals singled on three of them and doubled on another and they scored three runs and Berenguer retired only one batter--on a sacrifice bunt.

They should have beamed up a rousing chorus of Willie Nelson doing “On The Road Again” for the Twins at that point. They had once more come through in the clutch and maintained their reputation as baseball’s most distinguished shut-ins.

It’s not easy to lose to the Cardinals anywhere. A four-hit inning for them is the wildest kind of offensive explosion. That is sometimes a pretty good week for them. They get runs in cluster of one.

But, St. Louis has a ballpark that is not only open-aired but also open-ended. Center field is a rumor, the power alleys are a road trip themselves. Right field is a long-distance call. Casey Stengel once said on a July day that it held the heat well. It also holds the cold well, and on this night the bat must have felt like giant icicles in the hands of the hitters.

You couldn’t have mailed a ball over the fences. It’s well known that a cold ball doesn’t travel well and, in the old days, teams long on pitching but short on power used to put balls in the refrigerator to mute the attack of more gifted hitting teams.

The Cardinals had everything going for them. The hot bats were snapping like Popsicles, it was like hitting snowballs for the batters.

And, still, they were a buck short--till the Minnesota manager put his best cerebrations on the problem.

It’s as if he knew there had to be some way to lose. There usually is for Minnesota. Somehow, in some manner, the Twins had to come up with a design for losing. It’s their trademark. A lot of people were counting on them. They didn’t let them down.

They’re like guys who get in card games with strangers on boats. They should stay home. Their theme song should be “Take Me In To The Ball Game.”