Tag: Minnesota Twins

Little Big League

June 26, 2023

Little Big League

I never watched Little Big League while I was growing up, and this weekend, I decided it was time to rectify this. Little Big League is a 1994 film that tells the story of Billy Heywood, a twelve-year-old baseball fan who inherits the Minnesota Twins from his grandfather, Thomas Heywood. Thomas’s will states that Billy is the sole owner of the team and that the team executives are to help him until he is old enough to run the team by himself. Billy loves baseball and knows a lot about the game and the players, but he soon realizes that being an owner is not as straightforward as he thought it might be. He clashes with the team manager, George O’Farrell, who tells Billy off, refusing to take orders from a kid. Billy fires O’Farrell, but he can’t find any other manager who is willing to work for someone so young. Seeing no other options, he appoints himself as the new manager, with the approval of his mother and the Commissioner of Baseball.

Unsurprisingly, things are not easy for Billy, especially in the beginning. He has to deal with the skepticism and resentment of the players, the media, and the fans. After a rough first week, Billy finds his stride and encourages the Twins players to have fun, which results in the team starting to win some ballgames. The excitement wears off as the season drags on, however.

Throughout the season, Billy finds himself facing tough decisions, such as trading or releasing players, setting lineups and strategies, and handling conflicts and injuries. He also has to balance his personal life, including his schoolwork and his friends, and he is more troubled than he is willing to admit by his mother’s romance with star first baseman, Lou Collins, who is also his idol and mentor. Billy feels jealous and betrayed by Lou, and he benches him for a minor batting slump. The team, feeling the effects of Billy’s moods, start to lose games and fall behind in the division race.

As things start to fall apart, Billy becomes increasingly agitated, resentful, and anxious. After some heart-to-heart talks with his mother, Billy realizes that he can’t do everything by himself and that he needs to trust and respect his players and coaches. He also realizes that he can’t control his mother’s love life and he decides instead to be happy for her and Lou. He reconciles with Lou and reinstates him as a starter. He also apologizes to his friends for neglecting them and invites them to join him in the dugout for the final game of the season.

The final game is against the Seattle Mariners, who are led by Ken Griffey Jr. (played by himself). The game is very close and exciting, with both teams scoring runs and making great plays. In extra innings, with two outs and two runners on base, Lou comes up to bat against Randy Johnson (also played by himself). Lou hits a deep fly ball to center field, where Griffey makes a spectacular catch at the wall, robbing Lou of a home run and ending the game. The Twins lose 6-5 and miss the playoffs by one game.

Billy is disappointed but proud of his team’s performance. He thanks his players and coaches for their hard work and dedication, but he also announces that he is quitting as manager after the season and that pitching coach Mac MacNally will take his place. He says that he wants to enjoy being a kid again and that he hopes to see them all again someday. The film ends with Billy getting called back out to the field by an appreciative crowd.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. The plot was enjoyable, and Luke Edwards, who plays Billy, did an impressive job in the role. Even though the film as a whole is, of course, on the cheesy, sentimental side (it is a kids movie, after all), it also does a good job of showing how the pressures of adulthood can mount on a kid, especially a kid who takes on the responsibilities of running a Major League Baseball team. Definitely a worthwhile family movie.

Major League: Back to the Minors

May 1, 2023

major league back to the minors

Released in 1998, Major League: Back to the Minors is the third installment of the Major League series, and last night, I sat down to take in the show. I haven’t yet seen Major League II, so that’s on the list for future viewing, but Back to the Minors is a standalone installment, so it didn’t impact my understanding of things to skip to this one.

The movie stars Scott Bakula as Gus Cantrell, a veteran pitcher for a minor league team, the Fort Myers Miracle. After Gus gets ejected from a game for pulling the “frozen ball trick,” Roger Dorn, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, recruits Gus to be the manager of the Buzz, the Twins’ AAA minor league affiliate.

Much like the Cleveland Indians of Major League, the minor league Buzz is a team filled with dysfunctional players, including Lance “The Dance” Pere (a ballet dancer turned ballplayer), pitcher Hog Ellis, and pitcher Carlton “Doc” Windgate, a medical school graduate who throws a fastball so slow, it doesn’t even register on the radar gun. Even Pedro Cerrano, of Major League fame, now plays for the Buzz. The star of the team is home run hitter Billy “Downtown” Anderson, who suffers from supreme arrogance due to his success at the plate. Gus makes it his mission to help Downtown become a more well-rounded, and humbler, ballplayer.

Gus also has a rivalry with Leonard Huff, the arrogant manager of the Minnesota Twins. Huff challenges Gus to a game between the Buzz and the Twins, which ends in a tie after Huff turns off the stadium lights to prevent potential embarrassment. Huff then invites Downtown Anderson to play with the major league team, but Downtown fails against major league pitching and returns to the Buzz, admitting to Gus that he should’ve listened to him more.

Gus leads the Buzz to a division title and challenges Huff again, this time with his job on the line. The Buzz manage to defeat the Twins, and Gus is offered the opportunity to become manager of the Twins. Gus declines, however, opting to stay with the Buzz.

All in all, I enjoyed this flick. It’s not as good as the original Major League, but no sequel is ever as good as the original. It’s definitely not high art, but I didn’t expect it to be, and it makes for an amusing and relaxing evening.

Quote of the day

November 1, 2021

I was told I would never make it because I’m too short. Well, I’m still too short, but I’ve got 10 All-Star games, two World Series championships, and I’m a very happy and contented guy. It doesn’t matter what your height is, it’s what’s in your heart.

~Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett - Brittanica
Brittanica.com

R.I.P. Jim “Mudcat” Grant

June 13, 2021

James Timothy “Mudcat” Grant was born on August 13, 1935 in Lacoochee, Florida. He was one of seven children of James Sr. and Viola Grant.

Grant was signed as an amateur free agent by the Cleveland Indians prior to the 1954 season. After four seasons in the minor leagues, from 1954 to 1957, he made his MLB debut on April 17, 1958, at the age of 22, winning a complete game against the Kansas City Athletics. In June 1964, he was traded to the Minnesota Twins, then in 1965, he went 21–7 for the Twins, helping to lead the team to the 1965 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Unfortunately, the Twins lost the series in seven games.

During the 1965 season, Grant became the first black pitcher in the American League to win 20 games, leading the American League in victories with a 21-7 record, also posting a 3.30 ERA in 270 1/3 innings, and starting 39 games. He started three World Series games, winning two. In Game 6 at Metropolitan Stadium, he gave up only one run in a complete game, and even hit a three-run homer en route to a 5-1 victory.

Grant pitched for seven teams during his 14-year big league career and was with the Twins for four of those seasons. Over the course of that career, he had a 145–119 record in 571 games, while starting in 293 of them and throwing 89 complete games. His resumé also includes 18 shutouts, 53 saves, with 2,442 innings pitched on a 3.63 ERA.

Grant was named to the All-Star team in 1963 and 1965. He received his catfish-inspired nickname when a minor league teammate thought he was from Mississippi.

Mudcat Grant died on June 12, 2021 at the age of 85.

Rest in peace.

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This day in baseball: Garbey’s debut

April 3, 2021

On Opening Day in 1984, Tiger rookie Barbaro Garbey became the first Cuban refugee to play in Major League Baseball, having played in the Serie Nacional prior to defecting to the United States. Garbey grounded out in the seventh inning as a pinch-hitter for Dave Bergman, then would stay in the game. Garbey played first base in Detroit’s 8-1 defeat of Minnesota in the Metrodome.

Barbaro Garbey - sabr.org
sabr.org

How Hans Became an American, by Elinor Nauen

October 14, 2020

This poem by Elinor Nauen is a bit longer, but well worth the read. It demonstrates how closely baseball gets associated with Americanism, even to those outside the nation’s borders. I especially love the line, “He goes home because he has nowhere else to go.”

*

I’ve been sitting at my desk a lot
staring at my father.
It’s a picture taken in summer
a few months before he died.
He’s looking at me
with a wry and knowing
–did he know?–
expression. He looks like a man
who needs a private joke
to get a proper snapshot.
He’s looking straight at me, even as I sit
in a cold May, a little too tired,
the Yanks getting beat 4-1 in the 5th
by Oakland out on the coast,
a lackluster they’ll-never-catch-up game
Rasmussen not getting shellacked
just doesn’t have anything
and neither do the hitters.
Gone native in his Arizona retirement
Dad is wearing a bolo tie and looks shrunken, frail.
I liked to kiss him on the top of his bony head
in the desert mornings.

He took all of us to a game only once, my first, I was ten,
Charlie was eight, Lindsay was twelve
and the baby was left home.
We drove all the way from South Dakota
up to Minneapolis
to see the Twins play the Yankees
(my team).
Daddy was a refugee from Nazi Germany
and Mom was English.
They were grownups
who’d never seen a game either. They went
because he was the father of Americans
and I was a little baseball fanatic.

Mom sat quietly for about twenty minutes
fanning herself with a straw sunhat and beaming
then asked, when does the game begin?
Look down there, we said.
It was already the second inning
but I still don’t think she spotted it.
I think she was waiting for the play by play.
The familiar radio sounds
so different in the ballpark.

Daddy wore plaid shorts over his white skinny legs
and puffed a cigar.
He began to like baseball
when he found someone
who knew less about it than he did.
He explained it all to Mom
mostly according to his own logic–
He had an accountant’s sense of symmetry
and the diamond pleased him–
the implication of infinity.
The profusion of numbers and their richness
impressed him…
and it was a damn nice summer day.
I think now of those bleachers
old Metropolitan stadium full of stolid Scandinavians
who never corrected him–
that would have spoiled their fun.
Mom would ask: Where’s that chap running off to now?
And Dad would explain:
He goes home because he has nowhere else to go…

My brother and I spent most of the time under the stands
scrapping with baby Twinkies–
Twins fans who didn’t take to our rooting for the enemy.
Charlie thinks he remembers a game-winning
Bobby Richardson grand slam.
I only recall the Yanks winning in the 10th
and the incredibly intense luxury of that lagniappe inning.

Daddy stuck with baseball too.
Like the voting
that made him proudest as a naturalized citizen
he quietly exulted
at being able to talk to his kids
about what they liked to talk about
which was sports. What pleasure
it gave him
to be able to call
(those Sunday calls!–this later
after we’d all left home)
and say, “So, Mattingly’s still leading the league”
or “I see where the Yankees aren’t doing to well.” …

But tonight there’s an amazing comeback
another 10th-inning heroic to call home about
(“I see where the Yankees are going great guns”)
thought it’s a few second basemen later
and the serene and splendid Willie Randolph
who pulls it out for the team.

“Spring Training,” by Lynn Rigney Schott

April 22, 2020

I’m still holding out hope that Spring Training won’t be the only baseball we get this year.  In the meantime, we look for other ways to stay engaged with baseball.  This piece by Lynn Rigney Schott was first published in The New Yorker on March 26, 1984.  The author’s father, Bill Rigney, had played Major League Baseball with the New York Giants from 1946 to 1953.  He then went on to serve as the manager for the Giants, making him their last manager in New York as well as the team’s first manager when they moved to San Francisco.  Rigney would also manage the Los Angeles/California Angels and the Minnesota Twins.

*

The last of the birds has returned —
the bluebird, shy and flashy.
The bees carry fat baskets of pollen
from the alders around the pond.
The wasps in the attic venture downstairs,
where they congregate on warm windowpanes.
Every few days it rains.

This is my thirty-fifth spring;
still I am a novice at my work,
confused and frightened and angry.
Unlike me, the buds do not hesitate,
the hills are confident they will be
perfectly reflected
in the glass of the river.

I oiled my glove yesterday.
Half the season is over.
When will I be ready?

On my desk sits a black-and-white postcard picture
of my father — skinny, determined,
in a New York Giants uniform —
ears protruding, eyes riveted.
Handsome, single-minded, he looks ready.

Thirty-five years of warmups.
Like glancing down at the scorecard
in your lap for half a second
and when you look up it’s done —
a long fly ball, moonlike,
into the night
over the fence,
way out of reach.

Bill_Rigney_1953
Bill Rigney, 1953 (Wikipedia)