Friday May 24, 1991
Jim Caple walked through the manager’s week in the Pioneer Press:
It hasn’t been the best of weeks for Jay Thomas Kelly.
First the Minnesota manager watched Jack Morris give up seven runs in the first inning Sunday. Then he came down with a case of shingles so painful it hurt even to comb his hair. “I feel like an old, stretched-out rubber band,” he said Friday.
Then he saw his team get swept by the Texas Rangers, including a loss Thursday in which the Twins stranded 21 base runners. “How can you leave 21 men on base? It’s impossible,” Kelly said. “You tell people you left 21 men on, and they’ll think you’re crazy.”
All around him, managers were being fired. Not the best medicine when you’re in a four-game losing streak.
But Kelly found the same remedy many managers discovered earlier this season: a game against the Kansas City Royals. Morris and the Twins finally gave him something to feel good about Friday night by beating the Royals 3-2 at the Metrodome.
Morris went 8 1/3 innings and allowed two runs on five hits. Rick Aguilera, who had also been struggling, struck out the last two Royals to close out the win. The hero on offense was Chili Davis who went 4-for-4 and knocked in the first two Twins runs with a fourth inning double.
Winning, even if it is against the last place Royals, puts things in perspective:
As for the Twins’ recent troubles, Kelly said, “All I said was, we’re playing pretty good baseball and we had some funny things happen to us when we played the Rangers and left numerous runners on. If you’re in the game long enough, you’ll see things you’ll tell your grandchildren, and they’ll say, `Naah, that didn’t happen.’
“Like Brian Harper’s bunt that scored Kirby Puckett from second a couple of weeks ago. He’s hitting .380 and he shouldn’t even be bunting. But he does and we score. That was a weird thing. And Mike Pagliarulo hitting an inside-the-park home run Sunday because the left fielder falls down, thinks it’s foul and stops to talk to the fans. That was a weird thing.
“So I told them we’re a pretty good ballclub. We’re second in the league in hitting, and that’s no fluke. That’s verifiable. And we’re up above the middle in pitching; that ain’t bad. We’re a pretty good ballclub. We just have to forget the last couple of games.”
Caple also had this in his Twins notes the next day:
Tom Mee, who has served in the Twins’ public relations office since 1960, announced his retirement Friday, effective in early June.
Assistant Rob Antony will become manager of media relations.
Mee, 62, will continue to serve as a consultant as well as official scorer at each home game and backup announcer for a limited number of television broadcasts of Twins games.
“The things I would miss normally I won’t because I’ll still be in the press box each game, I’ll still have the camaraderie here,” Mee, a St. Paul native, said. “What I won’t miss is having to drive to the park to be at work by 9 in the morning after a night game. I used to say, long about August those night games catch up to you. Now I say they catch up to you in May.”
One of the best-liked and respected men in the American League, Mee has been employed in baseball for 42 years. He played minor league ball briefly, worked for a number of minor league clubs, then began working in the p.r. office for the St. Paul Saints in 1957.
When the Washington Senators’ move to Minnesota became official in late October 1960, Mee was hired as the Twins’ assistant p.r. director less than a month later. He began work the day after being hired and has been there ever since, keeping track of the daily performances of everyone from Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat to Kirby Puckett and Scott Erickson. He became the director of public relations in 1963.
Steve Rausch will take over Antony’s position as media assistant.
Team Name G W L T PCT GB RS RA Texas Rangers 36 22 14 0 .611 - 192 151 Oakland Athletics 41 24 17 0 .585 0.5 208 205 Seattle Mariners 41 23 18 0 .561 1.5 156 158 California Angels 41 22 19 0 .537 2.5 181 155 Chicago White Sox 38 19 19 0 .500 4.0 151 178 Minnesota Twins 41 20 21 0 .488 4.5 172 168 Kansas City Royals 39 16 23 0 .410 7.5 139 160
November 21, 2008 at 2:09 pm |
Awesome stories today Scot. I’d love to have video of that inside-the-parker. And goodf stuff on Tom Mee. I knew he had been with the Twins before becoming the scorer, but it’s great to see a quote from his perspective.