The great Minnesota Twins teams of the mid-1960’s were favorites of mine as epic opponents of the Red Sox. Tony Oliva, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, Earl Battey, Camilo Pascual, Bob Allison, Don Mincher, Zoilo Versalles, Jim Kaat, Cesar Tovar, Ted Uhlaender, Jim Perry, Rich Rollins, and the rest. Rod Carew joined this crew in 1967.

Harmon Killebrew was like a battleship in the middle of the line-up, always ready to pound the opposing pitchers. To my kid’s ear, his name reminded me of Killer Kowalski, the hulking professional wrestler. I saw him hit a lot of home runs on TV.

In the hey-day of  the Twins of this era, my father took me to a Red Sox-Twins Sunday double-header at Fenway Park. I was about 12 years old. The game was sold out, so we had standing-room tickets. We stayed for both games, standing in the rear of the homeplate grandstand. Late in the second game, we finally got seats. I remember the experience as pure baseball joy.