Best of the Twins

In the veritable orgy of sports replays on TV lately, the Minnesota Twins 1987 and 1991 World Series championships have stood out. They were the best show ever in Minnesota sports at the time, and they're the best show ever in Minnesota sports today. Watching the series got me thinking about the Twins history and the many players who have worn a Twins uniform. Specifically, I got to wondering, did the 1987 and 1991 world champions have the best players? Well, yeah, they had Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti and Frank Viola and Jack Morris, the MVPs of the 2 ALCS and World Series. So, yeah, of course. But, how do the rest of those World Series rosters stack up? Well, here's my cut at it.

First String

1. Rod Carew, 2B

Carew was a Twins' regular from 1967 to 1978 but missed most of 1970 with an injury, for a total of 11 years (8 at 2B and 3 at 1B) and 1,635 games as a Twin. His average production for each 162 games as a Twin was 7 HR-72 RBI-.334. He was the AL MVP in 1977 with the 2nd highest BA of the past 62 years at .388. He led the league in BA 7 times, hits 3 times, and more stuff.

2. Kirby Puckett, CF

Puckett was a Twins regular from 1984 to 1995 for a total of 12 years (10 in CF and 2 in RF) and 1,783 games as a Twin. His average season (162 games) was 19-99-.318. His best 2 seasons came in the 2 seasons after the 2 world titles. In 1988 he was 24-121-.356, but only finished #3 in the MVP race, and in 1992 he was 19-110-.329, and was #2 in the MVP voting. He led the league in hits 4 times, total bases twice, RBI and batting (in 1989 at .339). His catch and HR in Game 6 in 1991 were the greatest Twins moments ever, well, along with Jack Morris' 10 inning shutout.

3. Joe Mauer, C

Mauer was a Twins regular at catcher from 2005 to 2010 and in 2012 and 2013, and at 1B from 2014 to 2018, for a total of 13 years and 1,858 games, 2nd most in Twins history. His average (162 games) was 12-80-.306. His best year was 2009 when he was AL MVP at 28-96-.365 while winning the Gold Glove at catcher. WAR says that Carew's big year was the best ever by a Twin but I dunno about that. It's hard not to like Kirby's best years and it's really hard not to like Joe's 2009 season.

4. Tony Oliva, RF

Tony O was a Twins regular in RF from 1964 to 1971 and at DH in 1974 and 1975, for a total of 10 years (as a regular) and 1,676 games. His average season (162 games) was 21-91-.304. His best year's were 1965 and 1970 when he finished 2nd in the MVP voting each year at 16-98-.321 and 23-107-.325.

5. Harmon Killebrew, DH

There are a lot of ways to argue that Harmon is the best Twin ever. He was regular at 1B (1961, 1968-69 and 1971-72), in LF in 1962-64, and at 3B (1966, 1969-70), and one as DH, for a total of 12 years and a team record of 1,969 games. He was MVP as a 3B in 1969 at 49-140-.271. His average season (162 games) was 39-109-.256.

6. Kent Hrbek, 1B

Kent holds the team record for most years as a regular at one position (13 years at 1B) and he's tied with Mauer for the most years as a regular. People like to complain about his conditioning but he never missed a season and played in 1,747 games, 3rd best ever. His average season (162 games) was 27-101-.282. His best season was 1984 when he finished 2nd in the MVP voting at 27-107-.311. And he was probably the best defensive 1B the Twins have ever had. His play in picking Ron Gant off 1B in Game 6 in 1991 was a great great moment.

7. Bob Allison, LF

This was probably the toughest pick, but who was better? Maybe Torii Hunter, but he never played LF. Anyway, Allison was a regular in RF 1961-63, 1B in 1964, and LF in 1965, 1967-69, for a total of 8 years and 1,236 games. His average season (162 games) was 28-84-.255, almost identical to Gary Gaetti's in a much tougher hitting environment. His best year was 1963 at 35-91-.271. I guess I coulda put Torii in CF, Kirby in RF, Tony O at the DH, and Killebrew in LF. But that's also a lot of guys playing out of position.

8. Gary Gaetti, 3B

Gaetti was the Twins 3B from 1982 to 1990, for a total of 9 years and 1,361 games. It's weird not seeing him in the 1991 lineup. His average year (162 games) was 24-90-.256, and his best year was 1987 at 31-109-.257 and he was the ALCS MVP.

9. Roy Smalley, SS

OK, this was the toughest pick. I mean, Zoilo Versalles was MVP of the 1965 AL champs, and Greg Gagne is one of the most valuable fielding SS in the history of the world. But Smalley was no slouch. He was the regular SS from 1976 to 1981 and the DH from 1985 to 1987, though he did not play in the post-season. He had to have been hurt, and he never played major league ball again. He played in 1,148 games as a Twin. His average year was 16-68-.257 and his best year was 1979 at 24-95-.271.

Starting Pitchers

Jim Kaat Kaat was a Twins regular for 11 years and 471 games, going an average of 16-13, 3.34. He  was the AL Pitcher of the Year in 1966 at 25-13, 2.75 but couldn't get a vote in the Cy Young because there was just one award for both leagues and Koufax blew everybody away.

Bert Blyleven Circle Me Bert pitched for the Twins for 9 years in 2 separate stints from 1970 to 1975 and 1986 to 1988 so of course he helped 'em win that 1987 championship, going 3-1 in the post-season. He pitched 348 games for the Twins, 3rd among starters after Kaat and Radke. His average season was 17-16, 3.28. His best year was 1973 at 20-17, 2.52.

Frank Viola Frankie was the MVP of the 1987 season, and pitched 7 years (1983-89) for a total of 260 games. His average season was 17-14, 3.86. His best was the Cy Young year in 1989 at 24-7, 2.64, probably the best season a Twins starter has ever had. Of course, Frankie was also the MVP of that 1991 team because we got Aguilera and Tapani for him when he demanded a trade to someplace that suited his ego better.

Camilo Pascual Not as tough a choice as you young folks might think. I mean, first, people loved him. And, second, lots of smart guys said he had the best curve ball in the league. He only pitched 5 years as a regular for the Twins for a total of 184 games, but his average season was 19-12, 3.66. His best season was 1963 at 21-9, 2.46. Believe me, at his best (I mean, not just one game), he might have been the best pitcher the Twins ever had. (For one game, sure, give me Jack Morris.)

Relief Pitchers

Rick Aguilera A couple of easy picks. Aguilera was the closer 1991-95 and 1997-98 and a starter in 1996 for a total of 490 games, 2nd only to Steady Eddie Guardado. His average season was 3-4, 3.50 with 21 saves. His best was 1991 at 4-5, 2.35 with 42 saves.

Joe Nathan Nathan was the closer for 6 years (2004-2009) and pitched 460 games. His average season was 2-1, 2.16 with 23 saves, better than Aggie. His best was 2004 at 1-2, 1.62 with 44 saves. I like that Aggie threw a couple more years for the Twins and helped win it all in '91.

So that's my top 15. Here then are the next 60 or so.

	2nd Team	3rd Team	4th Team	5th Team
Catcher	Earl Battey	Butch Wynegar	Brian Harper	A.J. Pierzynski
1st Base	Justin Morneau	Michael Cuddyer	Vic Power	Doug Mientkiewicz
2nd Base	Chuck Knoblauch	Brian Dozier	Bernie Allen	Luis Rivas
Shortstop	Greg Gagne	Christian Guzman	Jorge Polanco	Pat Meares
3rd Base	Corey Koskie	Rich Rollins	John Castino	Steve Braun
Left Field	Jacque Jones	Dan Gladden	Marty Cordova	Larry Hisle
Center Field	Torii Hunter	Jimmie Hall	Lyman Bostock	Ken Landreaux
Right Field	Cesar Tovar	Tom Brunansky	Matt Lawton	Bobby Darwin
Designated Hitter	Zoilo Versalles	Shane Mack	Don Mincher	Jason Kubel
Starting Pitchers	Johan Santana Brad Radke Jim Perry Dave Goltz	Scott Erickson Mudcat Grant Dave Boswell Scott Baker	Eric Milton Jerry Koosman Kyle Lohse Allan Anderson	Geoff Zahn Ray Corbin Jose Berrios Carlos Silva
Relief Pitchers	Eddie Guardado Bill Campbell	Glen Perkins Ron Perranoski	Mike Marshall Doug Corbett	Juan Rincon Brian Duensing Tom Burgmeier

Some highlights.

I could see a preference for Morneau over Hrbek, but in the end I like the 450 extra games and 2 world titles for Hrbie.

I could see putting Knoblauch at 2nd and figuring out how to keep Carew and Killebrew both on the field but as in the idea of getting Torii Hunter on the 1st team, it just means getting too many guys out of position.

As I said, I could see either Versalles or Gagne at short ahead of Smalley. That's a tough call.

Further down the list, I could argue Wynegar and Harper. I could argue Castino and Rollins. I could argue that Larry Hisle is too low and Kenny Landreaux is too high, though neither was a Twin for that long. Maybe Kubel is too low? Nah. And, I know what some of you are gonna say, and if you're gonna say that Bruno is too low, you'd be wrong. And as much as I loved watching Dan Gladden, the fact is he might be a little too high.

And, keep in mind that these rankings are heavily weighted based on how long somebody played for the Twins. If it was just pure ability, Lyman Bostock would be on the 2nd team, not ahead of Torii, but I'd have to find a spot for him. Hisle was that good, too. And Brian Dozier might be a little low.

Among the pitchers, I could easily see Santana on the 1st string, though he too was not a Twin for very long. I mean, what next? David Ortiz? And, don't forget that Jack Morris only pitched for the Twins for one year. Pretty good year, yeah, but still. The starting pitching really flattens out pretty quick, while there were some good relievers who didn't make the cut--Mike Marshall, Jeff Reardon, Juan Berenguer, even Mike Trombley (365 games #8 all-time but Rincon was a lot better).

Finally, you'll notice only two current Twins on the list--Jorge Polanco at #4 and Juan Berrios at #5. There's a bunch of guys who are coming up to where they could be pounding on the door. They need to stay healthy, get another year or two. And, if they never get out there in 2020, do you give a guy credit because it's not his fault? Stay tuned. The lower reaches of this list could change a lot in the next one-and-a-half to 2 years.

Introduction to the Awesome, the Above Average and the Truly Woebegone of Minnesota Sports, Or What I Did During My Coronavirus Vacation

Minnesota and Minnesotans are known for many things. Mostly, there’s the cold and ice and snow of our winters. They say that that keeps a lot of people from coming here. It’s what keeps the Twin Cities from growing too fast and getting too big. Then there’s our 10,000 lakes, though now of course we’re told that there are really 17,000 of them. And those, we’re also told, are the only reasons why anybody would ever come here in the first place—well, that and the parks that surround them, and our “big league” amenities like the Walker and the Guthrie and the Twins and Vikings. Stuff like that. Those are the things that keep us from becoming “a cold Omaha.” Minnesotans themselves are understood to be taciturn, stoic, ambivalent, passive-aggressive, “Minnesota nice,” a little woebegone. We accept—but grudgingly and not completely—that life isn’t always a bed of roses. Nobody said that life would be easy. It could always be worse.

So it is with our sports. We love-hate our sports. Sid Hartman recently wrote a column in which he quoted the old-time sportswriter, Dick Cullum, who characterized Minnesota sports fans as “Lose and Love It” fans. They’d rather lose and whine than win. But, you know, its not that our sports teams and athletes are bad. They’re pretty good. They’re above average. The Minnesota Twins have even won a couple of world championships! Of course, there were decades of truly woebegone baseball before and after. And, how about those Vikings? Their 0-4 record in the Super Bowl is the worst in National Football League (NFL) history, and it has now been 43 years since their last Super Bowl—the fourth-longest drought in the NFL. The Timberwolves’ 15-year drought since their last playoff series win ties them for the longest current streak in the National Basketball Association (NBA), and their 13-year drought of playoff appearances (2004-2017) is the third-longest in NBA history.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Gopher football team has gone 53 years without a Big 10 title and 59 years since a Rose Bowl appearance. The Gopher basketball team has won four Big 10 titles in 100 years, and two of them bear big asterisks—1972 was tainted by the infamous “basketbrawl” against Ohio State, and the 1997 title was in fact vacated for reasons we won’t go into right now.

But, there are always high school sports, and the really great thing about them is that somebody from Minnesota actually wins. 

Being a Minnesota sports fan often is a tough slog. But, being honest, that just makes the good times better. And, frankly, the negativity is sometimes more than the situation would seem to support. So, on the following pages, we will relive each year in Minnesota sports from 1900 to the present—the best, the above average and, yes, the truly woebegone; the slogging, and the good times. On balance, you may find that Minnesota sports aren’t so bad. Above average. Occasionally great. And, yes, of course, occasionally woebegone. Nobody said life would be easy.

Big League: Minnesota Sports 1960-1999

In 130 years of Minnesota sports, essentially from 1890 to 2020, the biggest single turning point occurred in 1960 when Minnesota became “big league.” Frankly, we think that Minnesota was big league previous to 1960 because we (principally but not only the Minnesota Gophers) competed at a national level, and not just regionally. But, of course, most people today don’t see it that way. Conventionally, the big leagues are MLB, the NBA, the NFL and the NHL and maybe the MLS and the WNBA. The PGA tour is big league. The Olympics are big league. Still, it’s awfully hard to say that the Big 10 and the ACC and the SEC and Notre Dame aren’t big league. On the other hand, the MIAC and the NSIC and the high schools are not big league. Mostly, they compete regionally, not nationally. 

Still, the fact remains that Minnesota sports changed forever, and changed for the better in 1960 and 1961. In 1960, it was announced that the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings would be created and, then, in 1961, they played their inaugural seasons here in the Twin towns. The Minnesota North Stars followed in 1967 and 1968 to further establish Minnesota and the Twin Cities as big league. The Twin Cities became big league towns where the Twins, Vikings and North Stars enjoyed a most-favored status and the greatest fan loyalty. The investment in big league sports paid off with the Twins appearance in the 1965, 1987 and 1991 World Series, the Vikings playing in four Super Bowls from 1969 to 1976, the North Stars playing in the Stanley Cup finals in 1981 and 1991, and in the Lynx’ four WNBA titles in the 2010s.

But, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, the reaction was a loss of interest in and loyalty to the Minnesota Gophers. Football attendance had peaked at more than 60,000 in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It dropped into the 40s in 1966 and the 30s in 1967, despite tying for a Big 10 title. 

The Gophers are almost unique among the original ten universities in the Big 10 in that the Gophers share their home market with those major league franchises. Iowa has no major league teams to compete with the Hawkeyes. Illinois has the Chicago Bears, Black Hawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox, but they’re two hours away from Champaign, home of the University of Illinois. The Indiana Hoosiers had to compete with the Fort Wayne Pistons until 1957, and has competed with the Colts since 1983, but even they (the Colts) are an hour up the road in Indianapolis. Michigan and Michigan State are 40 and 90 miles, respectively, from Detroit, home of the Lions, Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings. Madison, WI, home of the Badgers, is more than a hour’s ride from Milwaukee, and two hours from Green Bay. Northwestern, like Minnesota, competes with Chicago’s professional sports teams for the affection of Chicagoland fans and sports reporters. But, even in Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, where the big league teams are only about an hour away from their Big 10 college towns, the hometown university has its own media who show a consistent bent toward supporting rather than tearing down their college teams.

Here in Minnesota, sports fans and sports media alike have shown a clear preference for major league professional sports, and something of a disdain for the Gophers. In the case of the media--the Strib and the Pioneer Press, and especially the Minneapolis Strib--the disdain for anything to do with the local college has been just palpable and dispiriting. Apparently, we're supposed to love a bunch of horses asses who write about sports and disrespect those who play and coach at the college level. What a load of horse manure. This is a cross that Minnesotans and, especially, the Minnesota Gophers bear as a part of our embrace of the “big leagues.”

Minnesota sports changed some more, and changed for the better, with Title IX, as girls and women’s sports came online. Janet Karvonen, Kelly Skalicky, Coco and Kelly Miller, Natalie Darwitz and Krissy Wendell, Lindsay Whalen, Lindsey Vonn and many others have added their names to the list of Minnesota sports heroes. 

Minnesota sports changed some more—though, whether for the better is in the eye of the beholder—with the advent of free agency in our professional sports. For 100 years, pro athletes had been held in perpetual bondage thanks to the so-called “reserve clause” in professional contracts, which stated that the athlete would play for a specific team “this year and the next.” This clause was successfully challenged in court in the 1970s and, after playing for their team this year and next year, many would now be free agents. This drove up the cost of professional athletes, and it meant that poorer professional teams, such as the Minnesota Twins of Calvin Griffith, would have difficulty competing. Eventually, the “mom and pop” sports franchise was driven out of our games, to be replaced by much wealthier individual and/or corporate owners. Compared to the Calvin Griffiths of the world, they were better equipped to sign and pay athletes for their teams. They were also better equipped to demand more and more public support for their teams, meaning public subsidies for their stadiums. And, if a particular city didn’t pony up, then they would leave for another city that would.

Minnesota was threatened more than once in this way by the Twins and Vikings and the Timberwolves. Ironically, when the North Stars left town in 1993, it had nothing to do with the customary stadium extortion racket. It was not for lack of public support of the beloved North Stars. It was simply because the owner, Norm Green, was a greedy and incompetent bastard. No matter how much revenue his businesses produced, he could always spend more. And, he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He was sued by a female employee for sexual harassment, and his wife announced that she would leave him unless he moved the team to another town. 

The first 40 years of big league sports in Minnesota, then, saw three World Series, four Super Bowls, two Stanley Cup finals, the arrival of three-plus major league teams, the departure of two more (the Lakers in 1960, and the North Stars), and the emergence of girls and woman’s sports, and Minnesota becoming “the state of hockey,” among much more. It wasn’t quite the best of times, nor was it altogether woebegone. It was above average. It could always be worse. 

The Times They Are A-Changin': Minnesota Sports in the 1960s

The Baby Boomers came of age in the 1960s and, man, they were a pain in the ass. Mainly, they refused to fight for their country like their fathers had done. Of course, not everybody was opposed to the war. Ten percent of the Boomers fought in Vietnam, and social scientists say that no more than ten to 15 percent of young Americans at the time were really hippies or radicals or anything like that. Sure, there was sex, drugs and rock & roll. But, for every hippie there were ten boys and young men who played football and basketball and other sports at school just like their daddy did.

Sports is, of course, a meritocracy. If you fail, it’s your own damn fault. And, so there was little sympathy in the sporting world for the communal values of the day, not even among the Boomers. Still, a few sports figures went native. The boxer Muhummad Ali, who was stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to be drafted into the military in 1966, neatly tied together the two big issues of the day when he said, “Ain’t no Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” 

Even some white athletes affected the accouterments of the counter-culture, whether it was long hair or liberal opinions or what have you. Joe Namath and Bill Walton come to mind. But, for the most part, sports and country music remained the two places in America where one could escape from that idea, advanced by the Minnesotan, Bob Dylan, that “the times they are a-changin,’” and that they were changing in a counter-cultural direction. 

And, yet, the times they were a-changin.’ Sports continued the great restructuring that it had begun in the 1950s. The major leagues continued to expand into the south and the west. Television picked the winners and losers. The networks had loved boxing in the 1950s. Now, after several highly publicized deaths in the ring, boxing disappeared from the small screen. The Olympics went from a curiosity to a multi-million dollar business, thanks to TV coverage. ABC’s Wide World of Sports introduced Americans to exotica like, well, soccer, and to “the agony of defeat.” TV made superstars out of people like Arnold Palmer and Peggy Fleming.

But, locally, the big sports story of the 1960s was pretty obvious: Minnesota was now big league with the arrival of the Twins and Vikings in 1961. The NHL and the North Stars arrived in 1969. The Twins came to play respectable ball as early as 1962. It took the Vikings until about 1968. The North Stars? 1981? Meanwhile, Gopher football got one final taste of glory with a national championship in 1960 and a Rose Bowl victory after the 1961 season, but then decline set in. Another co-championship in 1967 was not enough to rekindle interest. The Gopher basketball team experienced a burst of hope mid-decade but then it, too, declined. 

#5 Season #6 Event Twins Storm Into the 1965 World Series, Lose to Sandy Koufax and the L.A. Dodgers 4-3 The Twins and Vikings made Minnesota “big league” in 1961, and the Twins were the first to enjoy success on the field. They became known for their “murderer’s row” of home run hitters—Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Jimmie Hall, Tony Oliva, and more. After winning just 70 games in 1961, they won 91 in 1962 and 1963. They slumped in 1964, but added Oliva’s bat to the lineup, as “Tony-O” won the batting title and Rookie of the Year honors. It all came together in 1965 around the mercurial shortstop Zoilo Versalles. Identified in 1961 as a player of unlimited potential, Versalles had been erratic. And, yet, in 1962 he got a smattering of MVP votes. In 1963, he led the league in triples, won a Gold Glove and made the All-Star team. In 1965, he led the league in at bats, runs, doubles, triples, extra-base hits and total bases, and was a near-unanimous pick as MVP. Oliva won a second batting title and finished second in MVP voting. Killebrew, Allison, Mincher and Versalles all hit 20-plus home runs. Mudcat Grant won 21 games while Jim Kaat was 18-11, 2.83.  The Twins won the American League pennant by seven games. They faced the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers, 1963 world champions, with superstar pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, in the World Series. Well, the Twins beat Drysdale and Koufax in games one and two. But, they lost all three games in L.A. and came home needed to sweep the final two games. Grant beat Drysdale, and hit a three-run home run, in game six. But Koufax two-hit the Twins in game seven, and the Twins lost 2-0 and four games to three. Still, it was a wonderful season. The future looked bright. Even owner Calvin Griffith was beloved, a star of Twin Cities sports.

#7 Athlete Harmon Killebrew Harmon Killebrew came to the major leagues at 18 in 1954 as a highly-touted “bonus baby” and a second baseman. It took him awhile to hit his stride. He hit eleven home runs and .224 in 254 games in his first five major league seasons. Then, in 1959, he led the American League with 42 home runs. He also struck out 116 times, and it wasn’t clear whether he was better known for the HRs or the Ks.  In 1961, in his first year as a Minnesota Twin, he again led the league in taters with 46 and he hit .288. Yet, there were those strikeouts. In 1962, the Twins improved by 20 wins to a total of 91, and Killebrew led the league with 48 HR and 126 RBI. But, his batting average dropped to .243 and the strikeouts increased to a league-leading 142. By the time he was done, he had hit 40-plus home runs eight times and struck out 100-plus times in seven seasons. When he retired, he was second only to Babe Ruth in home runs in the American League, and he was second only to Mickey Mantle on the career list for strikeouts with 1,699. So, not everybody noticed that Killebrew cut down dramatically on his strikeouts as the years went by. Beginning in 1965, he struck out 100 times only once, and in 1969 he really put it all together. He led the league in HR and RBI at 45 and 140, and in walks with 145. He struck out just 84 times, he hit .276 and led the league in on-base percentage at .427. He was a runaway winner of the AL MVP. In 1970, he went 41-113-.271 with another 84 K, and he finished third in the MVP voting. In 1971, he went 28-119-.254 with 96 K. And, remember, he came up as an infielder and played a lot of decent third base over the years, though he finished up as a first baseman, of course.  The other thing people admired about Harmon Killebrew was that he was regarded as a quiet and a kind man. Somebody once asked him what his hobbies were. “Just washing the dishes, I guess,” he said.

#4 Team Minnesota Vikings 1969 Expansion franchises used to get nuthin.’ You had to suffer for awhile. And, the Minnesota Vikings did that. They won their first game ever, shocking the Chicago Bears 37-13 as Fran Tarkenton threw four touchdown passes. But, by the end of 1967, coach Norm Van Brocklin and Tarkenton were both gone, and the Vikings were 32-59-7. Then, in 1968, they seemed to turn it around, going 8-6 and playing quite respectably against the powerful Baltimore Colts in the playoffs before losing 24-14. Then, in 1969, they opened with a disappointing loss to Tarkenton and the New York Giants. Then, in week two, they demolished the heavily favored Colts 56-14 as new QB Joe Kapp threw an NFL record seven touchdown passes. Before they were done, they won twelve straight games by an average score of 29-8. In the playoffs, the came from behind to beat the L.A. Rams 23-20, then manhandled the Cleveland Browns 27-7. The Vikings were 12 to 13-point favorites to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. Instead, the Chiefs defense dominated and the Vikings lost, embarrassingly, 23-7. But, until Super Bowl Sunday, it was a glorious season for the Vikings and the making of the reputations of coach Bud Grant and the so-called “Purple People Eaters” (the defensive front of Eller, Marshall and Page). Mostly, it made a legend of coach Grant in just his third season at the helm.

# 4 Event The Vikings Demolish NFC Opponents,  But Lose First Super Bowl to Kansas City, 23-7 The Minnesota Vikings vastly exceeded any and all expectations in 1969. They were just 40-65-7 going into the season, and they relied on a third year coach and a new quarterback. Sure enough, they opened with a loss to their former QB Fran Tarkenton and his new team, the New York Giants. Then, in week two, they clobbered the Baltimore Colts 56-14, and they were off to the races.  They won in Chicago 31-0. They humiliated the Cleveland Browns 51-3 as Kapp threw three more TD passes. They bombed the Steelers 52-14. They beat the undefeated L.A. Rams 20-13 after leading 17-3 at the half.  But, in the first round of the playoffs, they fell behind the Rams 17-7. In the second half, they forced the Rams to punt for the first time and scored on their first possession. The Vikings went ahead 21-20 at 8:24 of the fourth. Then, Carl Eller sacked L.A. QB Roman Gabriel for a safety and Alan Page intercepted a Gabriel pass to effectively end the game. The Vikings then manhandled Cleveland for the second time this year, leading 24-0 at the half and winning 27-7. The Vikings were favored to win Super Bowl IV, but were able to run for just 67 yards and turned the ball over five times. The Vikings first half possessions ended in three punts, two fumbles lost and a missed field goal. They were 0-for-5 on third down and trailed 16-0. They got within 16-7 early in the third period, but that was the extent of the rally. What really grates in hindsight, of course, is that in four Super Bowls, the Vikings never really played any better than this.

Success for the Gopher football and basketball teams had come about four years apart, which is also how much time passed between the day when Murray Warmath decided to recruit African-American athletes from around the country and the day when John Kundla decided to do the same. What they, and we, didn’t know was that there was a very short window of opportunity for the Gophers to do so. The Gophers were able to recruit football stars like Bobby Bell, Carl Eller and Sandy Stephens and basketball stars like Archie Clark and Lou Hudson because their hometown universities were still segregated. But, those hometown universities quickly saw that schools with black athletes were winning and the schools without black athletes were not. Soon enough, they, too, had black athletes, and those black athletes no longer needed to travel a thousand miles from home into an unfamiliar land of ice and snow to play major college sports. 

#8 (tie) Event

Gophers Clobber #1 Iowa, 27-10

The 1965 World Series was the only sports event of the 1960s that could hold a candle to the Gophers 1960 football win over Iowa, 27-10. It featured #1 (Iowa) vs. #3. A national championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl were at stake. And, for the Gophers, revenge for a series of humiliations by the hated Hawkeyes.

Iowa coach Forest Evashevski was of course no stranger to the Minnesota Gophers. He played for Michigan—he caught a touchdown pass—in the Gophers 7-6 win to clinch the 1940 national title. Now, he was in his ninth year as coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes, where he was 52-27-4 with Big 10 titles in 1956 and 1958. The Gophers were 2-6 against Evashevski with five straight defeats. Iowa came to Minnesota on November 5, 1960, unbeaten and ranked #1, but a little bit banged up. They were in the middle of perhaps the toughest schedule in college football history, having beaten the #10, 6, 13, 12, 10 and 19-ranked teams. Now came the #3 Gophers, then a trip to #5 Ohio State.

The Gophers outgained Iowa 299-198 as each team turned it over four times. The Gophers scored two touchdowns after getting the ball on the 14 on downs after a bad snap on an Iowa punt, and again after recovering an Iowa fumble on the 19. Fullback Roger Hagberg caught a key 30-yard pass and later scored on a 42-yard run. The 27-10 Minnesota win moved the Gophers into the #1 spot in the AP poll.

Still, led by the baseball team with four Big 10 titles and a pair of national championships—and with football contributing its last two titles to this day—the Gophers got back into double digits with a total of eleven conference titles in the ‘60s. This would prove to be a trend. Baseball coach Dick Siebert was hired in 1948 by athletic director Frank McCormick (1932-1950). But, despite Siebert’s success, the McCormick era was not otherwise “good times” for Gopher sports. Setting aside just the football titles, in the 1930s and 1940s the Gophers had won just 14 Big 10 titles out of a possible 191.

And, so, as success for Minnesota Gopher football and basketball teams became more elusive, fan loyalty shifted to the new professional teams, and it never looked back. That meant that Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva and Fran Tarkenton and Alan Page are remembered as the superstars of Minnesota sports in the 1960s while Bell, Stephens and Hudson are but vague memories.

Hoops and Hockey

Early in the decade, the high school basketball tournament was still the toughest ticket in town but here, too, decline set in. By the end of the decade, attendance at the basketball tournament had declined for the first time ever after more than 50 years of steady growth.

It was due, at least in part, to the professional competition. It was due to the dominance of the Lake Conference, located in the western suburbs of Minneapolis, and to the notion that the small towns could no longer compete. But, more than that, it was due to the obvious decline in the caliber of play. A quarter-century earlier, the NCAA had resisted the move to deemphasize sports, but the MSHSL had been moved to implement stringent restrictions on the amount of basketball that Minnesotans could play. As a result, during the 1960s, no more than one or two boys won Division 1 basketball scholarships in a typical year. This was also the underlying reason for the Gophers’ continuing lack of success.

And, so, by the end of the decade, the high school hockey tournament had surpassed basketball in popularity. The small towns, especially those “up north,” could still compete in hockey. From 1957 to 1968, International Falls won five state titles, Roseau three and Coleraine Greenway two, and many of those boys grew up to play Division 1 hockey in college—many more than could do that anymore in the world of basketball.

#9 (tie) Event #19 Season “Cinderella” Edgerton Edges Richfield 63-60 in OT En Route to State Basketball Championship Metro schools had begun to dominate the state high school basketball tourney a little too much. From 1913 to 1939, they had won just six of 27 championships. In the 1940s, it was four; in the 1950s, six. From 1943 to 1959, it was 10-of-17. So, in 1960, Richfield of Region 5 was a heavy favorite, and they thrashed North St. Paul 60-51 in the first round, after leading by as many as 14. Austin was also favored and beat Thief River Falls 55-41. Meanwhile, tiny Edgerton came into the tournament unbeaten but largely unsung. Sure, they had beaten perennial power Mankato 73-44 in Region 2, but…. But, Edgerton played well in the first round, beating Chisholm 65-54. That set up a classic David vs. Goliath semi, Richfield vs. Edgerton, and the first-ever state tournament meeting of two players who had scored 1,000 career points—Bill Davis for Richfield, and Dean Veenhof for Edgerton. Things looked bleak for the Dutchmen when Veenhof fouled out with five minutes left and Edgerton up 50-46. Davis tied it at 56 and the game went into overtime. In the end, Edgerton scored just one field goal in the fourth quarter plus overtime but made free throw after free throw to pull out a 63-60 thriller.  Edgerton then defeated Austin 72-61 as more than 19,000 fans watched at Williams Arena. Edgerton was the smallest school from the smallest town ever to win a single class state title.

#9 (tie) Event #12 Dynasty The E-Dynasty Gathers Force as Edina Beats Warroad 5-4 for the 1969 State Hockey Title Edina was settled in the 1860s, and was a small farming and milling community as late as World War II. Edina was known as a bastion of racial exclusivity, as deed covenants sought to keep blacks and Jews out. In 1960, mayor Ken Joyce spoke out against these policies and the village voted in favor of inclusion. Edina’s population tripled to more than 30,000 during the 1950s. Edina high school was founded in 1949. Its first state titles were mythical football titles in 1952 and 1953. A boys golf title was its first official title in 1954. Its three-peat in boys basketball began in 1966 with just its fourth title.  But, after that, the titles piled up like so many sacks of flour, and today Edina leads all Minnesota schools with 186 athletic championships: 37 in girls tennis, 24 in boys tennis, 17 in girls swimming, 13 in boys hockey, twelve in girls golf, and eleven in boys swimming. Its most famous champions, of course, are its boys basketball three-peat in 1966, 1967 and 1968, and then its 1969 state hockey champions with their overtime win over Warroad and Henry Boucha. The basketball team was 79-1 over three years and won a state record 69 straight games. Meanwhile, the Edina hockey legend began in 1969. Fans loved Henry Boucha and tiny Warroad, while they were in awe of Edina. In the final, Edina led 4-2 when Boucha went down and out with blood draining out of his ear. Yet Warroad came back to tie it up and to send the game into overtime. Defenseman Skip Thomas scored at 3:09 of OT to give Edina the first of seven state titles. The tournament drew a record of more than 80,000 fans, and the hockey tournament surpassed the basketball tournament as Minnesota’s premiere high school event.

In the 1950s Minnesota’s sports heroes were Gopher gridders, high school hoopsters and Friday night fighters on the TV. In the 1970s, they were Vikings and Twins, high school pucksters and Olympians on TV. All of those changes—from the Gophers to the pros, from basketball to hockey, from boxing to the Olympics—all of them were packed into just a few years of the 1960s. Like it or not, Dylan was right.

#5 Leader

#5 Dynasty

John Gagliardi and St. John’s Win Their First of Four National Football Championships

John Gagliardi was St. John’s football coach for 60 years with a 465-132-10 record and 27 MIAC titles. His career total of 489 wins, including four years at Carroll (MT), is the most ever by any college football coach at any level. The Johnnies played in the post-season 24 times and his 1963, 1965, 1976 and 2003 teams won national championships in the NAIA or NCAA Division 3. 

Gagliardi won his first MIAC title in his first year at St. John’s in 1953, but then did not win again until 1962, when his 9-0 Johnnies die not get a post-season invitation. They repeated in 1963 and this time they got an invitation to the NAIA playoffs where, in the first round, St. John’s hammered Emporia State 54-0. They drew unbeaten Prairie View A&M, who was chosen by the Pittsburgh Courier as the black national champions and featuring future all-pros Kenny Houston and Otis Taylor, in the final. After watching their film, Gagliardi is reported to have said, “Well, they may be big, but at least they’re fast.” But, the Johnnies had outscored their opponents 29-5 and they, too, were pretty good. In fact, they defeated Prairie View 33-27 for their first national title. 

St. John’s returned to the top of the MIAC in 1965, and the NAIA could hardly exclude them, and indeed the Johnnies beat Fairmount State 28-7 and Linfield  33-0 for their second national title. The Johnnies gave up just 20 points in nine regular season games, and against Linfield they gave up just 28 yards rushing and each of their four starting defensive backs intercepted a pass. 

Still, the Johnnies were not yet the juggernaut that they would become, failing to win an MIAC title again until 1971. But, they won six conference titles in the 1970s, and won their third national title in 1976, beating Augustana, IL, 46-7, Buena Vista 61-0 and Towson State 31-28. St. John’s led Towson 28-0 before a furious Towson rallied tied the game at 28 with just 30 seconds remaining. But, Johnnies QB Jeff Norman threw a 56-yard pass to Jim Roeder, which allowed Norman to kick a 19-yard field goal on the last play of the game.

There were three more MIAC titles in the 1980s, then seven in the 1990s and seven more in the 2000s. The fourth championship came in 2003 with wins over St. Norbert, Linfield, RPI and then over perennial power Mount Union 24-6 in the final. Mount Union had won seven NCAA D3 football titles in ten years, including 2000 when the edged the Johnnies 10-7. The Johnnies led Mount Union 7-6 at the half, but pulled away in the second half as Blake Elliott gained 114 yards rushing and 51 yards receiving. His 51-yard run made it 17-6 in the fourth, then Mike Zauhar ran back in interception 100 yards for the 24-6 final.