At the start of August 1967, the Chicago White Sox led the American League. They’d been in front since early June, and when they closed July with a 4-2 win over Cleveland, the White Sox were two games up on the surging Boston Red Sox. The Detroit Tigers trailed by 3.5, and the Minnesota Twins had stumbled to five games behind Chicago.
Chicago had some breathing room, but that would quickly change. The White Sox opened August by losing four of five, setting up one of the great pennant races in MLB history.
The Twins made their move with a 13-3 run that began on August 4, when lefty Jim Merritt shut out the second-place Red Sox, 3-0, on five hits. The 23-year-old control specialist improved to 8-3 with a league-leading 2.06 ERA. He was in the midst of a remarkable month-long stretch in which he allowed just one walk in 59.1 innings. The Twins won seven of his eight August starts.
The pitching staff played a key role in the August upturn. Jim Perry stepped into the rotation and worked consecutive shutouts against Washington and California. Dean Chance also blanked the Red Sox—on August 6 to complete a three-game sweep of Boston—and held them hitless as well.
On a rainy Monday night, the 26-year-old righthander worked five perfect innings before the game was called with the Twins in front 2-0. The teams had sat through a 25-minute rain delay in the fourth inning, but the weather won out an inning later. When the game was called with one out in the bottom of the fifth, Chance called his no-hit effort a “cheapie.”
“I had good stuff, particularly my curveball,” Chance said after the game, “but who can honestly tell whether you’ve got no-hit stuff or not? I doubt I could have thrown a no-hitter.”
If anyone was a good judge of whether he had the stuff, Chance was the guy. He had thrown 18 no-hitters in high school, four of them perfect games. On this night, he allowed only two hard-hit balls, both in the third inning. One was a liner off the bat of Boston catcher Elston Howard to Tony Oliva in right; the other was a long drive by losing pitcher Jim Lonborg, which backed Bob Allison to the warning track in left.
Chance’s gem doesn’t appear in the record books as a no-hitter. Major League Baseball ruled in 1991 that a hitless start must go at least nine innings to be recognized.
Prior to his five no-hit frames, the closest Chance had come to a big league no-no was a one-hitter he threw at Metropolitan Stadium in September 1962—as an Angels rookie. He held the Twins hitless into the eighth inning before Zoilo Versalles ended his bid with an infield single. Official or not, Chance’s five perfect innings on that rainy night completed a sweep of a red-hot Boston club.
During Minnesota’s 13-3 run, the first-place White Sox paid a visit to the Met. It was just the second weekend in August, but with the Twins inching closer to the frontrunner, a wave of pennant fever surged through the Twin Cities.
The Twins weren't the only club closing in on the White Sox, and the race was about to get interesting.
I will post about the 1967 Twins and the wild AL pennant race all summer long, culled from the upcoming and tentatively titled The Glory Years of the Minnesota Twins: Rock ‘n’ Roll, War and Peace, the Civil Rights Movement and Baseball in the 1960s. I also post on my author page on Facebook.
Chicago had some breathing room, but that would quickly change. The White Sox opened August by losing four of five, setting up one of the great pennant races in MLB history.
The Twins made their move with a 13-3 run that began on August 4, when lefty Jim Merritt shut out the second-place Red Sox, 3-0, on five hits. The 23-year-old control specialist improved to 8-3 with a league-leading 2.06 ERA. He was in the midst of a remarkable month-long stretch in which he allowed just one walk in 59.1 innings. The Twins won seven of his eight August starts.
The pitching staff played a key role in the August upturn. Jim Perry stepped into the rotation and worked consecutive shutouts against Washington and California. Dean Chance also blanked the Red Sox—on August 6 to complete a three-game sweep of Boston—and held them hitless as well.
On a rainy Monday night, the 26-year-old righthander worked five perfect innings before the game was called with the Twins in front 2-0. The teams had sat through a 25-minute rain delay in the fourth inning, but the weather won out an inning later. When the game was called with one out in the bottom of the fifth, Chance called his no-hit effort a “cheapie.”
“I had good stuff, particularly my curveball,” Chance said after the game, “but who can honestly tell whether you’ve got no-hit stuff or not? I doubt I could have thrown a no-hitter.”
If anyone was a good judge of whether he had the stuff, Chance was the guy. He had thrown 18 no-hitters in high school, four of them perfect games. On this night, he allowed only two hard-hit balls, both in the third inning. One was a liner off the bat of Boston catcher Elston Howard to Tony Oliva in right; the other was a long drive by losing pitcher Jim Lonborg, which backed Bob Allison to the warning track in left.
Chance’s gem doesn’t appear in the record books as a no-hitter. Major League Baseball ruled in 1991 that a hitless start must go at least nine innings to be recognized.
Prior to his five no-hit frames, the closest Chance had come to a big league no-no was a one-hitter he threw at Metropolitan Stadium in September 1962—as an Angels rookie. He held the Twins hitless into the eighth inning before Zoilo Versalles ended his bid with an infield single. Official or not, Chance’s five perfect innings on that rainy night completed a sweep of a red-hot Boston club.
During Minnesota’s 13-3 run, the first-place White Sox paid a visit to the Met. It was just the second weekend in August, but with the Twins inching closer to the frontrunner, a wave of pennant fever surged through the Twin Cities.
The Twins weren't the only club closing in on the White Sox, and the race was about to get interesting.
I will post about the 1967 Twins and the wild AL pennant race all summer long, culled from the upcoming and tentatively titled The Glory Years of the Minnesota Twins: Rock ‘n’ Roll, War and Peace, the Civil Rights Movement and Baseball in the 1960s. I also post on my author page on Facebook.