We are in the midst of the 34th anniversary of the Twins’ 1987 World Series championship run.
The seven-game series went from October 17-25. On Oct. 24, 1987, the Twins won Game 6 to even the series at 3-3 and set up a decisive Game 7, which, of course, the Twins won.
Bert Blyleven was a big part of that championship season and went 1-1 in the World Series. It was his second world championship. He also won a World Series in 1979 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
After a Hall of Fame career that spanned 22 seasons and included a wicked curveball that helped make him one of baseball’s most accomplished strikeout pitchers, Blyleven spent a quarter of a century as a broadcast analyst for Twins games.
This past season was the first since 1996 that Blyleven did not do a Twins broadcast.
He has seen plenty of major league baseball since his rookie season in 1970 and also was a player during seven strikes and lockouts.
The Pioneer Press chatted with Blyleven about his career, his World Series wins and baseball today.
It’s kind of cool to look back and kind of reminisce (about winning the 1987 World Series). Good, good memories. It’s very positive.
It doesn’t seem like it’s been 34 years. It seems like maybe a year ago. Those positive moments in those times that you played to get to a World Series, yeah, they’re stuck in your mind like it was yesterday.
Well, I think if you ask anybody what they remember about that run it’s, of course, after we beat Detroit (in the ALCS), we come home at 11 o’clock at night and there’s 55,000 people there (in the Metrodome) to wish us good luck.
In the World Series, it didn’t matter who we played. We didn’t know if we were going to play the Giants or the Cardinals. It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter to anybody. It was the way the fans were. The 10th (player) on the field. I think it really portrayed how fans are so important in a team’s success. Definitely, the fans in Minnesota for Game 1, 2 and 6 and 7, they were our 10th player.
Winning the World Series (in 1979 with the Pirates and 1987 with the Twins) is right there at the top, as far as my baseball career. The Hall of Fame is nice, all that other stuff is nice, everything else that you do on the field. But as a team, those two, in ’79 and ’87, will always be right at the top because you do it as a team and that’s what you want to play for. It’s a team game, and when you can celebrate that final win of a World Series, that’s the ultimate.
I miss baseball, but I don’t particularly care for the way the game is being played today. I’m glad I did the broadcasting for 25 years. It’s just different now. Launch angles, all the different shifts, starters getting a standing ovation after they pitch five innings. It’s a completely different game. And I hope one day, and I think Ted Simmons said it very well at the Hall of Fame that, “Fans, be patient, hopefully the game will get back the way it was.”
I do miss broadcasting. I miss watching a game and being the analyst for a baseball game. But as you get older, you realize that, “Hey, I enjoyed my time in the booth. Now it’s time to give that baton to someone else.” I was given a baton when Jim Perry and Jim Kaat taught me about pitching, and all my pitching coaches and everybody. And you take that baton as you get more mature and get deeper into your career, you give it to a Frank Viola or Johan Santana and so on. So even in the broadcast booth, I had that baton for many years and now I’ve passed it on.
I watched the Twins as much as I could, and it’s a little different this year because of the pitching and all that. Sometimes, I actually turned it off. It’s too frustrating to watch. There’s all the injuries, they put that seven-day injury listed there. Used to be, what, 15 days? And it’s just like every night somebody else is on a disabled list for a week because they have a little tightness in their calf.
You kind of feel bad for the coaching staff, Rocco (Baldelli) or any other manager that every night there’s, “Who’s in my lineup tonight, what happened?”
I hope the Twins do (get better). They need pitching. I thought Joe Ryan came up and threw some good ball games. I was disappointed the Twins let (Jose) Berrios go. But I kind of went through that in ’76. I got traded, so good for Jose to go somewhere that, hopefully, if he becomes a free agent, he’ll go where he wants to go.
My first strike was in 1972 as a player. I was a player rep for some of them, and it’s a battle. You have to keep everybody posted on what’s going on. Of course, we had Marvin Miller (running the players union) during that time, and he was awesome as far as communicating, and then Donald Fehr came in. When we first started back in the 1960s, before I came up in ’70, the union was just starting to get strong. A lot of players didn’t want to get into the union, but I think they saw the strength of what eventually happened with Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, and free agency, the Curt Flood case. There’s a lot of things that happened. And I don’t know if the players today appreciate what the players in our era did to get them to where they are today, as far as the salary structure.
And I don’t know, maybe they don’t (all) know the history of the game, but I think the biggest thing as a retired player that went through the battles of the strikes and lockouts is when somebody does come up and say, “Thank you. Thank you for going through what you did for so many years to get us to where we are today.”
What the fans and the players had to go through in 1994, I hope and pray that there will never be another lockout or a strike. There’s too much money to be made for both clubs and players and, tell you what, as a fan, that’s the last thing you want to see. It’s greedy people striking with greedy people.
I’ll be at spring training for three weeks with the pitchers. I signed a five-year contract with the Twins last year and then a three-year option with that. I do personal appearances for the Twins throughout the summer. It’s just this summer was hard because of COVID and all that stuff.
I’ll always be a Minnesota Twin. I went into the Hall of Fame as a Minnesota Twin, and I love the people up there, the fans, and the organization. Hopefully, they can get back to being where they were, say, back when they were under Gardy (Ron Gardenhire) and where they were a couple years ago under Rocco.
Can I still throw the curve? In my dreams, yes.
