This World Series brought back a few memories.
The very first Minnesota Twins game I attended was Aug 30th, 1966. My dad pulled out of his shirt pocket box seat tickets for the Twins-Senators game.
The Twins were originally the Washington Senators before they moved to Minnesota, but now we were playing the expansion Senators which had on it’s roster one of the biggest men I had ever seen in my young life.
At 6′ 7″ weighting 255 lbs to 275 lbs, depending on which years baseball card you had in your hand. Frank Howard played his career with the Dodgers, Washington, Texas, and wrapping up his career with Detroit.
He was a powerful home run hitter. He led the league with 44 homers in 1968 and 1970, but in 1969 it was a homer chase I’ll never forget as he finished one behind Harmon Killebrew of the Twins. Harmon with 49, Frank with 48.
For that 1966 game we had seats on the 3rd base side between the dugout and home plate. I watched all my heroes that day, Killebrew, Oliva, Rollins, Alison, Jimmie Hall was in center field and pitching that day was Jim Merritt for the Twins.
How big is Frank Howard? His stance in the batter’s box was almost from stripe to stripe. He hit right handed, and that back right foot was on the back chalk, with the left foot coming awfully close to stepping out of the batter’s box when he made his stride into the pitch.
Watching my Twins was the highlight of the day…a close 2nd was watching Frank Howard (who probably could of held his own on the basketball court too) come to the plate with what looked like a twig in his hands.
It was great to see a giant of my youth on the TV screen this World Series!
By the way the Twins won that day 3-1!
Did I keep the ticket stubs? Take a look!
Parking stub too (no butter knife steaks though)
