Whirlwind conditions swept Sam Mele into role as Twins manager

PROLOGUE: Sam Mele died on Tuesday at age 95. He managed the Twins to the 1965 World Series and had a .548 winning percentage in seven seasons. He also was in the middle of the first odd circumstance of Calvin Griffith's strange and wonderful odyssey as Twins owner.

We were naive in the ways of major league baseball when the American League gave Calvin Griffith permission to move the original Washington Senators to the Bloomington prairie on Oct. 26, 1960.

Five-and-a-half months later, the Minnesota Twins played their first game in Yankee Stadium, and Pedro Ramos (we already knew him as Pistol Pete) shut out the Yankees 6-0 on three hits.

The Twins were 5-1 when they came home to play the new Senators at Met Stadium, and they were 9-3 and in first place in the 10-team AL after the games of April 27.

Clearly, this was a heroic ballclub that we had been delivered, led by the wise and decisive Mr. Griffith. We were fortunate not only to have Calvin as an owner but also as the general manager.

The Twins still were making us proud three weeks later, when Camilo Pascual shut out the Athletics 2-0 to put the record at 18-14. Oddly, that game was played in Kansas City on a Saturday, and the Twins were in Cleveland for a doubleheader on Sunday.

May 21, 1961.

The losing streak reached nine when the Twins returned to New York on June 5, and then they were swept in another doubleheader by the Yankees, losing 6-2 and 6-1.

And that's when Calvin made the first move that left even teenage Twins fans wondering, "Does this make any sense?''

Griffith announced on Tuesday morning that manager Cookie Lavagetto would be given a week's "furlough" and third base coach Sam Mele would take over as interim manager.

Calvin insisted that he was not contemplating firing Lavagetto, explaining thusly:

"I just put myself in Cookie's place and figured he'd like to get some rest. I figured that bringing him to the Twin Cities and talking to him about why things have gone so badly would do some good."

These quotes appeared on the first sports page of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune under Tom Briere's byline. On the next page came even more curious quotes that Calvin provided to Sid Hartman.

Even then, Sid was wily, asking Griffith why he hadn't gone to New York to inform Lavagetto of this rest, rather than phoning him. What followed was what we came to understand as classic Calvin logic during his quarter-century of running the Twins.

"I'll tell you why I didn't go the New York," Griffith told Sid. "I did this in 1957 and wound up firing Chuck Dressen when I never planned to do that.

"The papers broke some stories about Dressen being fired when I took off for Detroit. When I got there, Charlie was unhappy about the stories and practically fired himself. Cookie replaced him.

"I didn't want to take a chance on this happening again, so I called Cookie back to Minnesota."

June 6, 1961.

That's the day the Twins had three managers: Lavagetto in the morning, Mele to start the game, and Lopat to finish it.

The losing streak reached 13 games when the Yankees' Ralph Terry pitched a two-hitter the next night. That remained the Twins' longest losing streak until 1982, when a collection of rookies lost 14 in a row.

Mele went 2-5 as the interim and Lavagetto was restored as manager when the Twins returned home on June 13. He was fired 10 days later and replaced by Mele.

"The club is lacking leadership," said Calvin, the silver-tongued son of a gun. "The team is disorganized, down in spirit and generally upset."

In late April, we were going to the World Series, and in late June, we were wondering if Calvin might not be the steady rock of decisionmaking that we had anticipated.