Tuesday October 8, 1991
Jeff Lenihan set the stage in the Star Tribune:
After the longest dress rehearsal in baseball history, the Twins and Blue Jays will take center stage tonight for a scheduled nine-day, seven-act, all-indoors drama that will send one team on to the sport’s ultimate showcase.
Having squared off for six relatively meaningless games over the past 10 days, the teams went through their final tuneups at the Metrodome yesterday, with players and coaches in both dugouts eager to begin playing games that matter once again. The first pitch is scheduled for 7:39 tonight, with Toronto knuckleballer Tom Candiotti facing Jack Morris, a native of St. Paul starting his first playoff game for the Twins.
Cliches were contagious at the Dome yesterday as the two best teams the American League has to offer talked reverently about “showtime,” “the big dance” and, of course, all of those marbles. The 1991 ALCS is the first postseason series in baseball history to be contested entirely in domed stadiums.
A quick scan of the regular season statistics shows the reconstructed Blue Jays won eight of 12 games with the worst-to-first Twins, but no one was putting much stock in those numbers yesterday.
“Those numbers don’t mean much to me,” Twins catcher Brian Harper said. “And they won’t mean anything to anyone beginning (tonight).”
But if one vital piece of information was to be gleaned from the dozen head-to-head matchups – the six that mattered and the six that did not – it is that these teams are prone to playing well-pitched, closely contested, low-scoring games.
“The games we’ve played aren’t an indication of much,” said Twins manager Tom Kelly. “But all six of the games we played (since Sept. 27) have been real good ballgames, and that’s the way I feel the next six or seven games will be. I think the trend will continue that same way, but I hope the trend evens out and we get a chance to (win four games).”
Most of the pre-series analysis suggested that, in order to have a chance to win, the Twins would have to keep Devon White and Roberto Alomar off the basepaths. As it turned out, the Twins’ 1-2 punch was the key in Game 1. From Curt Brown’s story in the Star Tribune:
All you had to do was look at the big gash ripped into the right thigh of Chuck Knoblauch’s uniform to know the experts were wrong.
“It’s a good sign, and I hope I keep ripping ‘em because it means I’m getting on base and making things happen,” said Knoblauch, the Twins’ rookie second baseman who had two hits, two stolen bases, an RBI and a run Tuesday night.
So much for the notion that the 1-2 punch in the Toronto Blue Jays’ batting order – Devon White and Roberto Alomar – had an edge over Twins leadoff man Dan Gladden and No. 2 hitter Knoblauch.
“What experts? Where are the experts?” said Gladden, who had two hits and a run. “I don’t care what the experts think. I just care about what the guys in this room think.”
And those teammates voted Gladden the Twins player of the game.
After all, in the first inning, Gladden and Knoblauch hit identically sharp singles past Toronto shortstop Manuel Lee. Knoblauch hustled into second with his first stolen base, and both scored on Chili Davis’ single, giving the the Twins a 2-0 lead. Both Gladden and Knoblauch singled again in the second, with Knoblauch knocking home the Twins’ fourth run. Gladden, after going 2-for-5 last night, is hitting .333 (14-for-42) during a nine-game postseason hitting streak.
“Gladden and Knobbie really did a great job setting the table for us and giving us an early lead,” first baseman Kent Hrbek said.
By the end of the third inning, the home team held a 5-0 lead. The fifth run was of interest to Jeff Lenihan, and ended up being a necessary run given the final score:
The Twins’ aggressiveness entered the realm of the ridiculous in the third, when Chili Davis swiped second on a failed hit-and-run as Brian Harper, flailing at a Candiotti pitch, threw his bat all the way to the pitcher’s mound. Davis scored one batter later on Shane Mack’s double, staking Morris, who was pitching with an upper respiratory infection, to a 5-0 lead.
From there, it was a matter of the Twins holding on to the lead.
“It was important to get to Candiotti early so we wouldn’t have to come back against their bullpen,” said rookie Chuck Knoblauch, who had two hits and two steals in the first two innings. “We were able to keep their first two guys off base, and you saw what happened when we were able to get our first two guys on and start running.”
After the Jays used an ALCS record-tying five straight singles to score three times and get within 5-4 in the sixth, Willis got Morris out of a two-on and one-out jam.
Willis, a 30-year-old minor league free agent signee, retired seven of the eight batters he faced, and Aguilera got the final four outs, the first two on strikeouts.
Toronto produced its final baserunner with two outs in the eighth, when John Olerud greeted Aguilera with a line drive into the gap in left-center. Dan Gladden cut off the ball and held Olerud to a single, and Aguilera struck out Kelly Gruber with a high fastball to end the inning.
With the way the pitching rotations set up, the win was a huge one for the Twins.
The Jays now have to count on rookie Juan Guzman, who was pitching for Class AAA Syracuse as recently as June, to keep them from falling into an 0-2 hole in this best-of-seven series.
The Twins, on the other hand, will send Kevin Tapani to the mound for Game 2 tomorrow.
