It’s Chris Paddack to the rescue, if this is reassuring.
First pitch: 7:10 Central
Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, They Have A Roof, outside temp 90°
Opponent’s SB site: The Crawfish Boxes
TV: Twins TV. Radio: Where you love Anthony LaPanta the most
Today’s Astros starter, Colton Gordon, is sadly not Michael Bolton’s son, because then he would have an AWESOME name. He is 26 1⁄2 years old, he throws baseballs lefthanded, and he has pitched in all of five MLB games. So there’s really no sense in sharing his numbers. He’s been very good at AAA last year and this year, with a nice K/BB ratio. He throws a low 90s 4-seamer and sinker, with a slurve/sweeper and occasional curve/change. Here is his MLB.com header image, along with a pic of “Clown Prince of Baseball” Max Patkin:
I’ll let you guess who’s who.
Patkin was a minor-league pitcher before he was a baseball clown. In one game, Joe DiMaggio hit a bomb off him; Patkin followed DiMaggio around the bases, “mimicking his trot. A career in comedy was born,” per his NYT obituary. Also therein: “made more consecutive appearances on the diamond than Cal Ripken and was thrown out of more games than Earl Weaver” … “made more than 4,000 appearances, by his estimate, without missing a single scheduled pratfall. He crawled through Yogi Berra’s legs, kissed Frank Howard to inspire a home run, played himself in the movie ‘’Bull Durham’’ and was a goofy baseball fixture long before the Phillie Phanatic and the Chicken” …
“He appeared before big crowds in the majors, but there was also the time when he performed before a crowd of four, two of the spectators being the parents of one of the starting pitchers. That was in Great Falls, Mont., the night of July 20, 1969, when the rest of America was watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.”
Speaking of clowns, on today in 1996, Marge Schott was forced by MLB to give up ownership of the Reds, for being a gigantic turd. Today, no doubt, she’d be praised as a big hero. Read all about that piece of Schott in this excellent Brian O’Neill article from last year.
I lied when I said that was today in baseball history; today in baseball history was a little boring. This is all June 12th in baseball history, a much better day. We’ve got Dock Ellis throwing his no-hitter in 1970.
We’ve got the beginning of the 1981 players’ strike, which the “Today in Baseball History” site says was the first strike to cause any regular-season cancellations; that’s not correct. The 1972 strike caused a few cancellations, as owners didn’t want to pay players for the missed games. If you ever wondered why the Twins went 77-77 in 1972, it’s because of the strike; it’s also because the Twins were kinda blah in 1972.
They were worse than blah in 1981, going 41-68. An odd thing that year was, because the strike happened midseason, MLB decided to award playoff positions to the first-place division winners in each half, not for the overall season record. (I dunno why. It sounds really dumb to me.) As a result, the Reds and Cardinals — who had the two best records in the NL — both missed the playoffs!
In 2006, Joe Mauer was named the AL Player of the Week. After this odd stat sequence, beginning on D-Day (June 6); 4-4 with 0 BB, then 2-4 with 2 BB, 3-4 (1 BB), 3-5 (1 BB), and 2-3 (2 BB). Five straight games getting on base four times. Wild. (The Twins were 2-3 in that stretch.)
In 2017, the Twins batted around twice against the Mariners. Jason Castro and Kennys Vargas each had four hits. Looking at the box score, I remember exactly none of those Mariners pitchers. I remember the Twins, though! Duff Man!
However, the best history thing goes to Hee-Seop Choi, who in 2005 swatted three home runs — all off Brad Radke! (All solo shots.) After Choi’s fourth-inning solo dong, J.D. Drew immediately followed with another. The Dodgers won the game, 4-3. And Choi hit dingers off Joe Mays, Terry Mulholland, and Carlos Silva in the same series.
Hee-Seop Choi was the first Korean-born position player to play in MLB. (The first overall was Chan-Ho Park, in 1994.) Despite 2 1⁄2 solid seasons in MLB, Choi was dumped to the minors in 2006, and returned to Korea in 2007. His career OPS in MLB was .786; that would be fifth among the current Twins roster’s 2025 stats.
And the day overall goes to Max Patkin, because the Astros starter kinda looks like him, barely, from one angle in one photo. There’s a North Carolina guy, Chuck Brodsky, who’s done over 10 folk/country-style albums, and two of them had songs about baseball; he’s performed at the HOF three times. He’s got a song about Dock Ellis, and one about Max Patkin, too. I’m not as big a fan of these as I am of The Baseball Project’s songs, but they’re not bad, either! Here’s the one about Patkin:
Finally, thanks to community member jjjam for pointing out that Willi Castro wore some eye black in support of Pride month recently. As usual, 29 of 30 teams have some sort of Pride day this month (the Twins had theirs last weekend). As usual, the Rangers are the ones who won’t. Our former SB siblings at OutSports cover this same stupid Rangers story every year, and this year is no exception. Also, the Rangers’ stadium is ugly as poop. Oh well — I’m sure they’ll demand a new one in 15 years or so!
And yeah, the Astros played in “Enron Field,” once. Now it’s “Daikin Park.” Daikin is a Japanese company that owns another company based in the Houston suburbs, so that makes all the sense in the world.
