You love baseball. Tim Kurkjian loves baseball. So while we await its return, every day we’ll provide you with a story or two tied to this date in baseball history.
ON THIS DATE IN 2010, Herbie The Love Bug said goodbye to an old home and Minnesota gave him a new one.
No player better personifies baseball in Minnesota over the past 60 years than first baseman Kent Hrbek. He was born in the shadows of Metropolitan Stadium, where the Twins played until 1982. He played in all the biggest games at the Metrodome — and there were many. In the 1987 World Series, his grand slam over the Hardware Hank sign in right-center field off the Cardinals’ Ken Dayley was unforgettable. And Hrbek has been a great advocate for the team and for gorgeous Target Field since it opened on this date in 2010.
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Hrbek is as human and as genuine as any major league player I have ever met. When teams would host an enormous party the night before the World Series — even the media was invited — Hrbek was one of the only players who would attend because, we guessed, the beer was free. Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke said he went on a camping trip with major league players and “Herbie brought along a tape recording of his favorite farts.”
Hrbek, who was 6-foot-4 and roughly 225 pounds, hit 293 home runs, he was nimble around the bag for someone so big and he used to joke that when he retired he was going to be a pro wrestler. He wore No. 14. In 1991, young White Sox infielder Craig Grebeck, who was 5-7, 145, also wore No. 14, and Hrbek approached Grebeck on the field at the Metrodome, and told him, “You should put a slash between the 1 and the 4, and you’d be 1/4th!”
Hrbek drove in three runs on Aug. 10, 1994, the final game he ever played. His career was cut short by the players’ strike that canceled the season.
“I had announced my retirement earlier that season, so instead of playing my last game at the end of September, it was the middle of August,” Hrbek said. “There wasn’t sadness for me. When the season was canceled, I just took the [protective] cup that I wore all those years, grabbed a hammer and nailed it to the wall in my garage. My cup is still nailed to that wall.”
Other baseball notes for April 12
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In 1960, the Tigers acquired first baseman Norm Cash from the Indians. In 1961, Cash hit .361 with 41 home runs and 132 RBIs — the only season he ever hit .300, or hit 40 homers, or drove in 100 runs. He has the most career home runs (377) without a walk-off homer. He once carried the leg of a piano when he went to the plate against Nolan Ryan in his prime as a joke because, Cash figured, he had as good a chance of hitting Ryan with a piano leg as a bat.
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In 1960, Candlestick Park in San Francisco opened. Twenty-four years later, the Rangers’ Buddy Bell told me the coldest he has ever been in a ballpark was the 1984 All-Star Game at Candlestick.
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In 1992, the Red Sox’s Matt Young threw an eight-inning no-hitter against the Indians but lost 2-1 in the first game of the doubleheader. In the second game, Roger Clemens beat the Indians on a two-hitter. The Indians set a record for fewest hits (two) in a doubleheader. When Joe Cowley threw a no-hitter with seven walks for the White Sox in 1986, Doug Rader, a White Sox coach, said Cowley was so bad, “I didn’t even shake his hand after the game.”
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In 1982, lovable Rangers center fielder Mickey Rivers asked me if he could borrow $1,000. I was making $14,000 a year. He was making $400,000. I had to tell him, “Mick, I’m a baseball writer, I’m 25 years old, I don’t have any money.”