![]() ![]() It was hard to imagine that in spite of it all, the A’s still salvaged a winning season at 84-78, fourth in the West. The Twins’ express elevator ride lifted them from the bottom floor to a penthouse abandoned by the Oakland Athletics, whose almighty three-year AL reign abruptly ended from age, collapsed starting pitching, spotty hitting at best and some internal turmoil. Two dramatically improved young pitchers-Scott Erickson (20-8, 3.18 ERA) and Kevin Tapani (16-9, 2.99) accompanied Morris in the starting rotation, while on offense, the veteran hitters were given something to drive in with the emergence of rookie second baseman Chuck Knoblauch (.281 average, 25 stolen bases). There was a bonus element to the Twins’ sudden success with the rise of several youngsters. ![]() Morris, a Twin Cities native, felt at home on the mound for the first time in years with an 18-12 mark, 3.43 earned run average and 10 complete games. Davis quickly proved he could slug it out amongst the best of them and finished the year with 29 homers, adding 93 runs batted in and a respectable. The performances of Davis and Morris helped unwind and relax the tightly-crossed fingers of the Twins’ front office. Catapulted into first place, the Twins stayed there for all but a day the rest of the season against an AL West so competitive, the Angels-dropped to AL West Hell as Minnesota’s replacement at the bottom-finished at 81-81, 14 games back of the Twins’ AL-best 95-67 mark. 500 mark by Memorial Day, and then startlingly began June with a 15-game win streak-the longest since the team moved from Washington in 1961. But this was the 1990s, and Morris spent the first year of the new decade at Detroit among the game’s losingest, with 18.Īfter a 2-9 start that suggested nothing had changed, the Twins scratched their way back to the. Also signed was Jack Morris, the revered Detroit Tigers pitching ace who had become well known as the winningest pitcher of the 1980s. Chili Davis was brought in as the team’s designated hitter, but he’d never been known as a power hitter and had smacked only 12 home runs the year before with the California Angels. Two major free agent signings for 1991 were met with guarded optimism from Twins fans. There was plenty of blame to go around, from an inexperienced pitching rotation to an awful defense to statistical regression from reliable All-Stars Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek and third baseman Gary Gaetti-whose recent conversion to Christianity seemed to take the fight out of his once-fiery leadership and increased tensions in a not-so-spiritual clubhouse. Yet their 1990 record of 74-88, while not one to stink up the joint, was the worst among seven teams in the AL West, so the stigma was there as the official defending chumps. ![]() The Minnesota Twins were not exactly known as perennial laughingstocks they fielded solid talent and were only three years removed from a world championship. It wasn’t merely revenge, but a flat-out assault-with two teams, not one, roaring upwards from the basement to clinch league pennants in unprecedented fashion, ultimately engaging in one of the most thrilling World Series of this or any other age. ![]() Making up for lost time, the 1991 season would mark a turnaround for the tail-enders. It didn’t matter if such cellar dwellers represented the bottom of an eight-, 10- or 12-team league, or a six- or seven-team division the historical odds of a quick rebound were zilch and growing worse with every year. Not once had any of them come back to place first the following year. In the long histories of the National and American Leagues, there had been 245 last-place teams through 1990. ![]()
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