Photo above courtesy of Rollins family 

Voice of former Minnesota Twins third basemen Rich Rollins

By Greg Echlin

In 1964, the Minnesota Twins had three different players lead the American League in three different key hitting categories—hits, home runs and triples.  In 2019, the Kansas City Royals became the first team since ’64 to accomplish that.

So if you trace history, it could mean something big next year for the Royals, a year after losing 103 games.

First, let’s go back to that ’64 Twins team.  Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew was the A.L.’s leader in homers (49), Tony Oliva had a fabulous rookie year with a league-leading 217 hits and infielders Rich Rollins and Zoilo Versalles shared the triples lead with ten.

Rich Rollins, now 81 and living in the Cleveland, Ohio, may have been the least known of that Twins foursome, but had his own distinction in 1962 of becoming the first American League rookie third baseman to make the All-Star team (Kevin Seitzer of the Royals was the second in 1987).

“I had a lot of confidence in hitting.  I could hit the curveball,” said Rollins. “I could always hit the ball pretty good and I never tried to hit home runs.”

In 1964, Rollins batted .270 with 12 homers in addition to his ten triples.  But he didn’t need to produce huge numbers offensively because of the other hitters in the Twins lineup.

“We had a whole lot of players that could hit the long ball,” said Rollins.

In addition to Oliva’s hit total in ’64, he batted .323 average with 32 homers and 94 RBI. Also contributing from the power standpoint besides Oliva and Killebrew was Bob Allison (32 homers),  a Raytown, Mo., native and arguably the greatest baseball player ever to come from the University of Kansas.

In Kansas City against the Athletics on May 2, 1964, four Twins (Oliva, Allison, Jimmie Hall and Killebrew) hit homers in the eleventh inning to break a 3-3 tie.  Three of the homers came off Dan Pfister and the fourth one off Vern Handrahan.  Pfister was in his last major league season.

“That’s a game that I was having some problems.  My arm was bothering me,” said Pfister, who made only his second appearance a month into the season.

But with all that hitting, the Twins in ’64 finished in sixth place with a 79-83 record.  It’s not as bad as the Royals record this year, but the Royals don’t think they’re far from turning things around.

“We know the talent’s here to compete,” said Whit Merrifield, of the Royals who led the A.L. in hits (206) and shared the league lead in triples (10) with Adalberto Mondesi and Hunter Dozier.  “We don’t really care what other people think because we see what we have day in and day out.  We know it’s just a matter of coming together.”

In 1965, the year after the Twins’ sub-.500 record, they won the American League pennant.  Versalles, the shortstop, became the A.L. Most Valuable Player in ’65.  The Royals have a shortstop, too, with MVP potential.

The key in the off-season will be how the Royals improve their pitching.  That’s what the Twins did in ’65.