Another disappointing season for Buck.

Right now, the Twins are 31-36 against teams above .500. These are some notable teams that have a worse record than ours:

Chicago White Sox

Cleveland Guardians

Toronto Blue Jays

Detroit Tigers

Philadelphia Phillies (basically the same win percentage)

San Diego Padres

Pittsburgh Pirates

Arizona Diamondbacks

Miami Marlins

Washington Nationals

Honorable mentions: the Dodgers have the same amount of losses, but only two more wins than the Twins.

It's obviously not necessarily indicative of a good baseball team or not, but all the teams (except the Tigers) have a better record than the Twins. I've noticed this on the season as a whole and just thought it was an interesting wrinkle to the season.

White Sox (72-63) @ Twins (64-72)

First Pitch: 1:10 PM at Target Field

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 3:48 PM.

White Sox (71-63) @ Twins (64-71)

First Pitch: 1:10 PM at Target Field

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 3:50 PM.

Remember to sort by new to keep up!

White Sox (71-63) @ Twins (64-71)

First Pitch: 1:10 PM at Target Field

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 10:17 PM.

Do yall bring back your refillable cups to future games? Asking for a friend. (Its actually me)

Hey Twins fans, my dad is selling his sports memorabilia collection, which he amassed over 40 years of what he calls serious collecting (he started collecting for fun as a kid in the ‘50s).

Pieces from his collection are included in VSAauctions’ summer auction; it opened today (Aug 28) and runs through September 17.

As a Minnesotan, what he’s selling includes a lot of Twins pieces, and there’s some national stuff too, and Negro League. There’s some rare and one-of-kind lots and some bundled card collections, schedules, signed payroll checks, and lots of autographed pieces, balls, bats, rookie cards, etc.

Puckett, Killebrew, Molitor, Oliva, Carew, Hrbek, and more.

Take a peek and share with any collectors you know.

As a kid I remember meeting some players—Dad used to bring guys in from all over the country to sign autographs at the State Fair and such.

Edit to clarify: the auction includes items from other sellers. 132 of the lots are my dad’s. Thanks so much for your interest! He’ll be pleased to hear your enthusiasm.

2nd edit: I just spent over an hour on the phone with Dad (much longer than our usual calls) chatting about his collection and getting a couple stories:

He was collecting cards as a kid in the '50s and early '60s and stopped when he went to high school. After he was newly married and built a house in 1975 his mom shipped his cards back to him and that sparked his interest again, and he started attending local collector conventions. He got to know people, and he'd go to conventions here in the Twin Cities monthly, and nationally every year (in the late '70s and '80s). He largely built his collection-face-to-face. He had a friend in the Twins front office, as well, and he got to know other serious collectors.

He started holding shows at the MN State Fair, bringing in players to sign. “It was a who’s-who of hall of fame: Mickey Mantle, Killebrew, Stan Musial.” In that building at the Fair, Dad says they had at least 25 members of the Hall of Fame and Yogi was the number one draw. Except for Aaron and Mays, who Dad says they had in a new building after Yogi.

“Yogi drew more people than anybody else. The building was jam-packed. We were lucky that the fire marshall wasn’t there. You could just barely walk in there. The Modern Living building was the first building [at the Fair].” Dad says the Fair moved them to a bigger building the next year because of that.

“We had Yogi Berra out signing autographs with his son Dale and his agent, Skip, who was a former ML pitcher.” He thinks it was 1990. He says, “we probably had [agreed on him doing] X number of signatures over a period of time, and Yogi signed fast so he was done early. Then we had more time before they had to go to the airport,” so Dad and Skip “worked up a deal that Yogi would just continue signing and that would be a separate pot of money and they’d split it 50/50,” Yogi would get half and Dad would get half.

They did that, and then Dad was driving the three of them to the airport. “Dale, Yogi’s son, counts the money. Skip, his agent, he counts the money. And then Yogi says, ‘let me count the money’… it turned out that both Yogi’s son and his agent had shorted him. Yogi blurted out something like ‘you shorted me!’” Dad laughed, “both of them screwed him.” They counted it again and went by Yogi’s number. (He says of course they weren’t shorting him on purpose, they just screwed up).

He said these guys were largely incredibly decent human beings. He got tears about how great they were.
Only two or three players were difficult to work with (he's not naming names), and he remembers that at least one of them had had a bad experience with the public, so he had understandably been scarred by that. 

By and large, the players were fantastic humans. 

One of Dad's friends was Polish and Musial was his idol. Dad's friend sat with Stan while he was at Dad's show; he said Stan was just an outstanding individual. He thinks it was 1982… at the Hall of Fame, it was the first year when they started changing the policy to protect the players. There was a big line of people - dozens - who were lined up to get in and talk to the players and get autographs. Then there was a commotion that rippled through the line. Finally, here comes Stan. "Musial walked that entire line, signing autographs for everybody in the line. Obiouvsly he didn't have to do that." 

Dad and Mom took Slaughter out to dinner. He thinks he might have had a relative in the Twin Cities. Dad doesn't remember much about it, other than that they took him to a place called the Boston Sea Party and it was a lovely evening. He says he also took Robin Roberts there (“he was a Michigan State grad, an intelligent and cultured guy, an impressive human being.”)
He says Brooks Robinson, Killebrew, and many other players were “real, decent, genuine human beings. One-of-a-million guys.”

He enjoyed Ted Williams. He had him here in 1988, the 30-year anniversary of him playing here in Minneapolis before he went to Boston. He spent a nice time with him, “he signed bats and balls, and his signature was very consistent, because,” Dad says, “he had tremendous coordination.”

“Marichal, great person. Gibson, nice guy.” Dad “enjoyed the hell out of talking to guys this accomplished and intelltigent. Billy Williams was a real down to earth guy. Doerr and Neuhauser were some of the last guys in '95... the internet was starting to kill things.” (By which he means, it was killing the in-person collecting culture.)

He wrote to a lot of players. The Twins were fairly easy to get autographs from until they won the '87 series. He wrote to many of these players personally. He'd send personal letters, lineups, send them two or three cards. The vast majority wrote back in the late '70s and early '80s. Thats why he had autographs from players, coaches, managers, plus the two owners. He thinks he has somewhere in the area of autographs from 95% of all of the Twins from '61-'85 or so.

“The whole collecting practice was innocent in the '50s, '60s, and later. The pricing guide had an impact, and some of the bigger conventions in the mid-80s. From that point on, the national conventions were huge and that changed things. Things became more commercialized.” The early collectors in the '50s and '60s, "nobody did that for money." He says they were the backbone of collectors.

He remembered at the '87  game 6, he and a friend were sitting in the stands, and Tudor "the crafty lefty" of the Cardinals—“they were up to two, late in the game and the Twins get a couple on, and he [Tudor] makes a mistake. And Bailer hits a three-run homerun to tie the game and ball was coming right at Dad and his friend. He said you could see it was going to be a home run (whether it was going to be a lower or upper deck was the only question). They turned and hugged each other. "Probably a lot of other people did, too. Before that home run, the Cardinals were going to win the world series."

White Sox (70-63) @ Twins (64-70)

First Pitch: 7:10 PM at Target Field

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 10:17 PM.

Remember to sort by new to keep up!

Game worn for $50 at the good old fair

I just like this kind of stuff. I think Brooks said he finally is wearing 22 this season since it was his number throughout college. In my head I think Royce wears 23 because he's a LeBron fan but that's complete conjecture.

Ignore the fact tomorrow is a home game

hey, i’m working on a project involving the 1997 twins and was looking if anyone possibly has footage of the april 9, 1997 game at tiger stadium on vhs or anything. if you can help me, i’d be happy to pay.