June 12, 1977 – Twins 6, Yankees 1
- Sal Maiorana
- Jun 12, 2017
- 2 min read
NEW YORK – At the end of the Yankees’ 11-game road trip, when Catfish Hunter and Don Gullett both turned in pretty decent performances, Billy Martin had said, “This is the high point of the trip, having Gullett and Hunter in the rotation again. Now if we can just get Figueroa straightened out, we’ll be all right.”
Well, that didn’t happen in the series finale against the Twins, played before a crowd of 52,821 on bat day at Yankee Stadium. Figueroa was beaten up for six runs on seven hits and three walks over seven innings, his third straight sub-par outing. Over his first 10 starts, Figueroa had pitched eight complete games and allowed only 15 earned runs. In his last three games, he had given up 15 earned runs, failed to get past the seventh inning, and lost two of three. His ERA had gone from 1.22 to 2.99.
After the game, Figueroa said he’d been bothered by a sore back and that he would be going for x-rays. “I don’t like to give excuses, but I am not feeling good the last three times I pitched. Every time I try to throw harder, I feel a muscle pull in my back behind my right shoulder. I try to throw harder, but no way I can do it.”
Rod Carew had a season for the ages in 1977. Here's an ABC News feature:
And this was not the lineup to be facing in that scenario, not with Rod Carew lurking. Carew followed Larry Hisle’s leadoff single in the first with a two-run homer; Hisle hit a two-run homer in the fifth; and Roy Smalley hit a sacrifice fly that made it 5-0 in the top of the sixth and the Yankees still hadn’t gotten a hit off Minnesota starter Paul Thormodsgard.
That changed in the bottom of the sixth when singles my Mickey Rivers, Willie Randolph, and Chris Chambliss plated the only run New York would score. Carew then closed the scoring with an RBI triple in the seventh, leaving him just a double shy of a cycle as he raised his season average to .388. For the season, Carew was 12-for-21 against Yankee pitching, a .571 average.
“The Yankee pitchers challenge me more,” Carew said. “That’s the way I like to hit rather than go out and have pitchers mess around with the corners. If a guy challenges me and gets me out, I respect him, but I don’t respect him if he goes out and fools around with me.”
Respect or not, it stood to reason that the Yankees should have stopped challenging Carew because they weren’t succeeding with him.
“He’s the best hitter in baseball, the best hitter in the world including the people in Japan,” said Carew’s future teammate, Reggie Jackson. “I’d like to see him hit .400. I’d like to see them win so he could be the most valuable player. He’s been one of the best players for a long time, but he hasn’t gotten the recognition. The man is a bona fide Hall of Famer.”
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