When Harmon Killebrew stroked the two longest home runs ever hit at Metropolitan Stadium on consecutive days in early June, he provided the last memorable moments of Sam Mele’s managerial career. With the Twins at 25-25 on June 9, 1967—50 years ago today—Twins owner Calvin Griffith fired Mele, less than two years after he directed a young, injury-riddled Minnesota club to the American League pennant.
A former player who became close friends with Ted Williams during a 10-year career with Boston, Griffith’s Senators and four other teams, Mele was a players’ manager, someone who didn’t have a lot of rules and didn’t criticize his players in the press. That upset Griffith when the team stumbled, and he pushed Mele to get tougher on players during the team’s slow start in 1967.
The Twins struggled to score runs, and in a late-April stretch that carried into May, Mele watched his club commit 21 errors in 16 games. Fed up with his team’s play, he held a brief team meeting during a seventh-inning rain delay at Tiger Stadium on April 21, and another after Detroit had completed a 12-4 romp over the Twins. Nothing seemed to work for the frustrated manager, as his club lost five of its next eight.
Griffith was itching to make a change after the Twins followed up their 1965 pennant run with a disappointing performance in 1966—and their mediocre start in 1967 intensified the itch. He relieved it after Cleveland staged a four-run, ninth-inning rally to defeat the Twins on June 8. Griffith used the perceived managerial oversight of four straight lefthanded pinch-hitters igniting Cleveland's rally against righthanded reliever Al Worthington to shake up the team.
The firing caught most of the players by surprise, and certainly Mele himself. The Massachusetts native still lived in the Boston area, and his family would stay behind and join him for the summer at the end of the school year. Mele’s wife and five children had just arrived in Minnesota the day after the team’s ninth-inning implosion, and when Griffith summoned Mele, one of the manager’s sons, 13-year-old Steve, was with him in the manager’s office. He returned to his son without a job.
Griffith replaced Mele with Cal Ermer, who had gone 0-for-3 in his only major league game for Griffith's Senators in 1947 and spent two decades playing or managing in the minors as a Griffith employee. Ermer had been bypassed when Mele was hired six years earlier, but now his dedication to the Griffith family was rewarded.
Mele had taken the reins from Cookie Lavagetto midway through the 1961 season, the team’s first in Minnesota. Mele was 524-436 in parts of seven seasons—good for a solid .546 winning percentage—and his club won more than 90 games in three of his five full seasons at the helm.
Despite his success with the club, Mele never managed again. He received two job offers following his firing, including one from Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley. But Mele had no interest in working for the volatile owner, who in his day might have been the ideal host for a Donald Trump-style “You’re Fired” reality show. Instead, Mele spent more than two decades scouting for the Boston Red Sox as a special assistant until his retirement.
The mild-mannered Mele was 45 years old when gave up managing. He lived another 50 years before passing away on May 1, three months after his 95th birthday.
I will post about the 1967 Twins and the wild AL pennant race all summer long, using material from my upcoming book, which I’ve 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.
A former player who became close friends with Ted Williams during a 10-year career with Boston, Griffith’s Senators and four other teams, Mele was a players’ manager, someone who didn’t have a lot of rules and didn’t criticize his players in the press. That upset Griffith when the team stumbled, and he pushed Mele to get tougher on players during the team’s slow start in 1967.
The Twins struggled to score runs, and in a late-April stretch that carried into May, Mele watched his club commit 21 errors in 16 games. Fed up with his team’s play, he held a brief team meeting during a seventh-inning rain delay at Tiger Stadium on April 21, and another after Detroit had completed a 12-4 romp over the Twins. Nothing seemed to work for the frustrated manager, as his club lost five of its next eight.
Griffith was itching to make a change after the Twins followed up their 1965 pennant run with a disappointing performance in 1966—and their mediocre start in 1967 intensified the itch. He relieved it after Cleveland staged a four-run, ninth-inning rally to defeat the Twins on June 8. Griffith used the perceived managerial oversight of four straight lefthanded pinch-hitters igniting Cleveland's rally against righthanded reliever Al Worthington to shake up the team.
The firing caught most of the players by surprise, and certainly Mele himself. The Massachusetts native still lived in the Boston area, and his family would stay behind and join him for the summer at the end of the school year. Mele’s wife and five children had just arrived in Minnesota the day after the team’s ninth-inning implosion, and when Griffith summoned Mele, one of the manager’s sons, 13-year-old Steve, was with him in the manager’s office. He returned to his son without a job.
Griffith replaced Mele with Cal Ermer, who had gone 0-for-3 in his only major league game for Griffith's Senators in 1947 and spent two decades playing or managing in the minors as a Griffith employee. Ermer had been bypassed when Mele was hired six years earlier, but now his dedication to the Griffith family was rewarded.
Mele had taken the reins from Cookie Lavagetto midway through the 1961 season, the team’s first in Minnesota. Mele was 524-436 in parts of seven seasons—good for a solid .546 winning percentage—and his club won more than 90 games in three of his five full seasons at the helm.
Despite his success with the club, Mele never managed again. He received two job offers following his firing, including one from Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley. But Mele had no interest in working for the volatile owner, who in his day might have been the ideal host for a Donald Trump-style “You’re Fired” reality show. Instead, Mele spent more than two decades scouting for the Boston Red Sox as a special assistant until his retirement.
The mild-mannered Mele was 45 years old when gave up managing. He lived another 50 years before passing away on May 1, three months after his 95th birthday.
I will post about the 1967 Twins and the wild AL pennant race all summer long, using material from my upcoming book, which I’ve 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.