I wrote this book for the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Minnesota Twins’ championship season. Here it is now, for the 60th anniversary.
This isn’t a frantic, “this deal will never come your way again” pitch. It’s just fact: The book is out of print.
When what remains of these fresh editions are gone, that’s it, other than resellers on Amazon.
I couldn’t write this book today.
Many who helped me shape this story through candid recollections are gone, including Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew, 21-game winner Jim “Mudcat” Grant, and manager Sam Mele.
Their careers had ended before I became a sports writer, but I knew some through my work.
I had no idea what I was getting into with the rest of them. As it turned out, their camaraderie was alive.
“They told me you were going to call,” was something I heard often when one answered the phone.
Baseball defined life for Hall of Famers Killebrew, Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat,
But there were others, like personable and successful John Sevcik, a scholastic All-American in high school, who played in 12 games as the third-string catcher.
John became a business executive. Not one percent of his life’s net worth came from being a Minnesota Twin. This was true of most. Those men went on to lives outside the game.
The coaching staff featured Billy Martin and John Sain, two talented former players who set off sparks and wouldn’t back down from each other.
“The players were not caught up in all of this,” third baseman Rich Rollins recalled.
“We just decided to throw all that stuff out the window. We knew we had a lot of talent and decided to just go out and keep playing.”
That focus brought the first World Series to Minnesota.
They are men worth knowing.
Jim Thielman