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| Harmon Killebrew was one of five Minnesota Twins who homered in the seventh inning of a 9-4 victory over the Kansas City Athletics on June 19, 1966. The Twins tied a record set five other times for most homers in an inning. Killebrew also had hit a two-run homer one inning earlier. |
By Phil Ellenbecker
Jim "Catfish" Hunter, in his second year pitching for the Kansas City Athletics after arriving straight out of Perquimans County High School in North Carolina, was fairly sailing along the night of Thursday, June 19, 1966.
The A's had staked him to a 4-0 lead on the Minnesota Twins after one inning, and with two outs in the sixth Kansas City was seemingly comfortably ahead at 4-1.
Then Harmon Killebrew clubbed a two-run homer, and then all hell broke loose the next inning at Metropolitan Stadium as "The Killer" and his teammates teed off on Hunter and two other A's pitchers for five homers en route to a 9-4 victory. A crowd of 9,621 was on hand to watch the defending American League champions in Bloomington.
The Twins tied a record for most homers in an inning and became the first American League team to do so. They remain the only AL team among the six in that group, the most recent being the Washington Nationals on July 27, 2017.
The A's put themselves in "distinguished" company by becoming the only team to surrender both five homers in an inning and four straight homers in an inning. They'd managed the latter feat against the very same Twins on May 2, 1964, which ties a record set on eight other occasions.
Rich Rollins got the ball sailing toward the fences in the Twins' record-setting inning in 1966 when he came off the bench to hit for pitcher Pete Cimino with one out. He put the Twins in front 5-4 with a two-run homer, Earl Battey being aboard via a walk.
Leadoff hitter Zoilo Zersalles, the 1965 AL MVP, followed with another round tripper, and A's manager Al Dark came out to relieve Hunter with Paul Lindblad.
Lindblad stopped the bleeding somewhat by retiring Sandy Valdespino on a ground out to short. But Tony Oliva started the parade again with a solo circuit clout, and Don Mincher swatted another, and it was goodbye Lindblad, hello John Wyatt.
And hello again to Killebrew, who provided an encore to what he had started the inning before with his 11th homer of the year, making the score 9-4.
Killebrew and Oliva also took part in the record-tying four-straight homer binge in 1964, joined by Jimmy Hall and Bob Allison.
Hall didn't quite get in on this record. He kept it in the park with a double following Killebrew's second homer, and Battey walked for the second time of the inning.
Wyatt finally got out of the inning when catcher Phil Roof, picking up a grounder Bernie Allen topped in front of the plate, went to first for the third out. Allen had led off the inning by going out unassisted to Dick Green at second base.
All that carnage made a winner of Cimino, who improved to 2-0 with two innings of one-hit, shutout relief. Al Worthington took over with hitless, scoreless relief in the eighth and ninth and earned his second save.
But the real pitching hero of the day, with nothing on his record to show for it, was Dwight Siebler. He relieved Camilo Pascual in the first and held the A's off the scoreboard for 4 1/3 innings, allowing three hits. Pascual, a curveball master who was one of the top pitchers in the AL in the early part of the '60s, was now battling arm problems and would finish this season at 8-6 with a 4.89 ERA.
Siebler was summoned after Larry Stahl unloaded a three-run triple with two out in the first. Bert Campaneris and Joe Nossek, who'd been sold by the Twins to the A's in May, had back-to-back singles leading off the game, "Campy" advancing to third on Nossek's hit. Mike Hershberger tapped back to the mound and Campaneris was out after Pascual went to Killebrew at third, who threw to Battey at home for the tag.
Danny Cater walked to load the bases, and Ken "Hawk" Harrelson then provided some early fireworks when he was ejected by home-plate umpire Red Flaherty after getting called out on strikes. Stahl followed with his triple to left to make it 3-0.
(More homer record-setting trivia involving the Twins and A's: When Minnesota hit four straight on May 2, 1964, Flaherty also tossed out an Athletic for arguing a called third strike. This one was Jim Gentile).
Green kept it going in the first against the new pitcher Siebler with a single to score Stahl. But Roof flied out to left, and that was pretty much it as the roof caved in on A's opportunities for the remainder of the game -- only one runner in scoring position the final eight innings.
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| Jim "Catfish" Hunter surrendered the first two of Minnesota's record-tying five homers in the seventh inning of the Twins' 9-4 win over Hunter and the Kansas City Athletics on June 19, 1966. The future Hall of Famer, shown on his 1966 Topps baseball card, was in his second year after arriving in Kansas City straight out of high school. |
Meanwhile, Hunter blanked the Twins until the fifth, when Allen, the old maid in the Twins' bursting popcorn bowl of a seventh inning, scored on a double by Allison after singling with one out. Allison pinch hit for Siebler.
Mincher, who'd grounded into second-to shortstop-to-first double plays his first two times up, singled with two out in the sixth and scored on Killebrew's first homer, drawing the Twins within 4-3. Then the seventh-inning salvo.
Killebrew continued on a strong rebound from an injury-plagued 1965 in which he had 25 homers, 75 RBIs and a .269 batting average in 113 games. He would play the full 162 games this year and finish second in the AL in homers with 39 and RBIs with 110 while batting .281. This was the Killebrew who two years before hit 49 homers, four times was the league homer champ and 12th all time with 573.
The other players who stepped up in the record-setting seventh each had power capabilities. Oliva, although off the pace he set in winning the AL batting title his first two years in 1964 and '65, hit .307 with 25 homers and 87 RBIs in '66. Mincher only had 14 homers in '66 but 22 the year before and had five 20-homer seasons in his career.
Versalles had hit 20 and 19 homers the previous two years, but he slumped to seven and a .249 average in '66, part of a downward slide that saw him out of the major leagues by 1971. Rollins hit 10 homers in 269 at-bats in '66.
That seventh-inning explosion wasn't part of a seasonlong trend by either team. The Twins were sixth in the AL in homers with 144 while the A's were ninth in homers allowed with 106.
The Twins improved to 23-26 with the win, in sixth place and nine behind league-leading Baltimore. The A's were in ninth at 19-30.
Minnesota was still nine behind Baltimore at the end of the season but had risen to second place at 89-73. Kansas City rose to seventh at 74-86, 23 back of the Orioles. That was the most wins the A's achieved in a season the time they were in K.C. from 1955 to 1967.
As for Catfish Hunter, he was still experiencing some growing pains and had a final 9-11 record with a 4.02 ERA. In the 1970s he became one of the game's premier pitchers with five straight 20-win seasons. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987.
But as a control pitcher who'd leave the ball over the plate from time to time, those gopher balls never really left him. Ten times he finished in the league's top 10 in homers allowed, twice leading the league. He ranks 21st all time with 374 homers surrendered in 15 years.
And he and his moundmates were somewhat helpless against the onslaught of the Twins on June 16, 1966.
Sources:
Play-by-play: https://www.
Homer records: https://www.baseball-
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.
5 homers in one inning
6-6-39: Giants
(Whitehead, Salvo, Moore, Danning, Demaree), fourth inning
6-2-49:
Phillies (Ennis, Seminick, Jones, Rowe, Seminick), fourth inning
8-23-61:
Giants (Cepeda, Alou, Davenport, Mays, Orsino), ninth inning
6-9-66:
Twins (Rollins, Versalles, Oliva, Mincher, Killebrew), seventh inning
4-22-2006:
Brewers (Hall, Miller, Clark, Hardy, Fielder), fourth inning
7-27-2017:
Nationals (Goodwin, Difo, Harper, Zimmerman, Rendon), third inning
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