Minneapolis – Jim Kaat had walked the halls of Target Field’s Thrivent Club many times, but the trophy cases were always interchangeable with the collective history of Minnesota Twins memorabilia. As he stopped to look at a case on the first base side, he saw one of his 16 Gold Gloves encased in it. Then a familiar voice roared down the hallway calling out, “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.’ Just like if someone were asking their cat to come back inside.
It was his former teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, Bert Blyleven, who has notoriously called Kaat by his animal-like nickname. The two stood together looking at the case, wondering how the Twins ended up with one of the 16 Gold Gloves he had auctioned off after his career for the Twins Community Fund. The answer was an easy one. It came into Minnesota’s possession via curator Clyde Doepner.
This particular Gold Glove was from Kaat’s 1967 season, but he was not back at Target Field in remembrance of that year. On Saturday, the Twins invited Kaat and a few of his teammates from the 1965 season, honoring the first pennant-winning team since the team relocated from Washington, D.C., to Minnesota.
Kaat was one of the four Twins from that team who were present for the pre-game ceremony, along with Jim Perry, Dick Stigman, and fellow Hall of Famer Tony Oliva. There are still 17 members of the 1965 team alive today. But the youngest among those still living is 81-year-old Jim Merritt, who was a standout rookie on the ’65 team.
It was a sign of how much time had passed for those present that their second-youngest teammate from the ‘65 season was already in his 80s. It added up as to why there were so few of the 17 present, and why fan favorites such as Al Worthington (96) and Rich Reese (83) had help from their families to send video messages to the fans for the pre-game ceremony honoring the team.
“It’s amazing to think that that much time has gone by,” Kaat said. “But I think what is special about the ’65 team is that the Yankees had won five pennants in a row. And we were mostly a second division club coming out of Washington, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we won 102 games and won the pennant. So, it was a special feeling for me to be a part of a team like that.”
The Twins had a few good runs catching up to the Yankees before 1965, finishing second in the American League in 1962 with a 91-71 record and third in 1963 at 91-70. However, it was the youth that drove the ‘65 team forward as pennant winners, and what separated them from the Yankees.
The Yankees stars from their years of tormenting baseball as kings were aging out; Elston Howard and Whitey Ford were 36, Roger Maris was 30, and played in only 46 games due to a broken right hand. The face of the franchise, Mickey Mantle, was 33, with years of aches and pains from various injuries catching up to him.
On the other hand, the Twins had only three players above age 30. Veteran pitcher Johnny Klippstein, Worthington, and Twins Hall of Famer Camilo Pascual. While Kaat, Perry, and Mudcat Grant had been around for several seasons each, Pascual was the veteran force that led them behind pitching coach Johnny Sain and separated their pitching staff from all but one team’s in all of Major League Baseball.
“[Sain] just had a knack for making you believe in your stuff,” said Kaat. “He taught us a little; we called it a control-breaking ball. Mudcat picked it up right away, won 21 games.
“So, Johnny was a big asset to all the pitchers, and I think that all of us, myself, for example. I pitched with some shoulder issues that year, so I didn’t have a lot of complete games, but I think we were all just maturing as pitchers. Then Jim Perry stepped in and did a good job, Jim Merritt came up, so a combination of all of us improving a little bit, it ended up being a good pitching staff.”
But 1965 was not the best year of Kaat’s career by his own standards. It was still a time when pitchers were fixated on mounting wins and complete games over all other stat lines. Grant led the team with 14 complete games that season, and Kaat was second with just seven. He had 13 the year before, but Kaat didn’t go as deep into starts as he wanted to during the ‘65 season, because he was battling shoulder strains all year.
“Well, I think it was a combination of that year, it was my fifth full year, so I was pretty confident in my ability to perform at that level,” he said.
“But I think I found out with the shoulder issue I had to alter the way I pitched a little bit, and I figured that out pretty early in the season that pitching, as any Big League pitcher would tell you, is a game of adjustments every year. You just don’t stand pat, so that was the year I thought I made a lot of improvement from the year before.”
The improvements came at the right time for Kaat, as the team was catching fire down the stretch. They finished with an 18-10 record over their last 28 games that season. With the help of Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Earl Battey, and Jimmie Hall at the plate, they secured the American League Pennant before the last week of the season. And it was that pennant-clinching game that became the most memorable game of the season for Kaat before the Twins were in the World Series.
“The thrill for me that year was that I pitched the pennant-clinching game in Washington on Sept. 26,” he said. “Like I said, I really hadn’t pitched that many complete games. That year, I pitched six or seven innings, and my shoulder would kind of tighten up on me. So to go nine innings in that one and get the win, a 2-1 win, and the last out of the game was a man who was a really good friend of mine, Don Zimmer. So to strike out Zim to end the game, and that was the pennant winner, was special for me.”
The Twins had all the momentum in their favor going into the 1965 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, so much so that there was only one player who could stop them.
The Twins had the upper hand with their lineup over the Dodgers. The Twins led the American League with a .254 batting average and 711 RBI, and were second with a .722 OPS, and fourth with 150 home runs that year. LA’s lineup was dead last in home runs in all of baseball that year, with just 78. They had a .647 OPS to complement it, only ahead of the National League’s two newest teams, the Houston Astros and New York Mets.
On paper, the Twins looked to have the advantage, and their true test was to see if Grant, Kaat, and Pascaul could outduel Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Claude Osteen. Grant and the Twins offense got the better of Drysdale in Game 1, winning 8-2. Still, it was going to be a tougher match-up in Game 2 with Kaat going up against Koufax.
“I think when I warmed up next to Sandy, near Sandy in the bullpen, I’d never seen him in person,” Kaat said. “I knew after three innings, I told Johnny Sain, ‘If I give up a run, the game is probably over.’ Because he looked so dominant. We got one unearned run off him, but that’s the only run we could record.”
The Twins got two runs off Koufax, who pitched six innings in Game 2, which they won 5-1 over the Dodgers. As was the case in 1987 and 1991, the Twins couldn’t manage a victory on the road at Dodger Stadium. They got the better of Osteen in Game 6 back at home, with Grant leading the way to another 5-1 win. But Game 7 was all Koufax and remains the only World Series game the Twins have lost at home.
“We hit Drysdale, but Sandy single-handedly kind of won that World Series for them,” said Kaat. “He really stood out, and you know, we had a good hitting team. But he made us look pretty ordinary in that series.”
During the on-field ceremony, the Twins recapped each of the 1965 World Series games for everyone in the ballpark. While Kaat and the others would have liked for Game 7 to have gone differently, even 60 years later, they still tip their cap to Koufax’s efforts in that game. He showed the world what separated him from all the league’s other pitchers.
Before the Twins brought them all down to the field for the ceremony, Kaat was waiting for his old teammates to arrive at the Thrivent Financial Club for a photo shoot with fans. Perry was the first to arrive, and soon after, Oliva, but before he joined them, Kaat went to catch up with Doepner, who manned a table showing off one of Kaat’s old jerseys from that season.
Despite all the changes through the years, the day brought back some of the best memories of Kaat’s long and well-respected baseball career. Though he’d eventually win a World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982, that ’65 season will always stand out from the rest.
“Tony and I have been friends for a long time, teammates for a while. So we’re in our 60-something year together, and Dick Stigman will be here,” Kaat said. “And probably just the memories of seeing the video they put together and thinking of the guys that aren’t here but had a big part in winning that year, that’ll be very satisfying.”