This Date In Royals History--1985 Edition: June 21
Why did this game even start? The Royals and Mariners are rained out after three batters.
The Royals and Mariners got three batters into their scheduled game on Friday night before the rains started. Over an hour and a half later, the game was postponed. The teams would have to wait until Seattle returned to Kansas City in September to make up the game.
1985 baseball news: A win in Kansas City the previous night wasn’t enough to save Twins manager Billy Gardner’s job. In his fifth year of leading Minnesota, Gardner had not had a winning record; the Twins finished 81-81 in 1984 and lost six in a row in the last week of that season, allowing the Royals to win the division. Minnesota was in sixth place in the AL West and 7.5 games out of first when they fired Gardner. New manager Ray Miller, the highly-regarded pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles, replaced Gardner and picked up a win in his first game, as the Twins scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth for a 3-2 win over Texas.
1985 baseball news: The Chicago Cubs dropped their 10th straight game in a 7-5 loss to St. Louis. That tied the Twins for the longest losing streak in the majors to this point in the season. The Cubs, who won the division in 1984, held a four-game lead in the division after their last win, on June 11. But now they were in fourth place, although they were only two games out of first.
1985 baseball news: Commissioner Peter Ueberroth promised to veto any sale of the Pittsburgh Pirates that would result in the team moving. The Galbreath family, franchise owners since 1950, had put the team up for sale in November 1984 but were not finding any local buyers; with the Pittsburgh economy suffering as steel production declined in the U.S. and the team mired in last place in the NL East, attendance had nosedived. Ueberroth urged the mayor and leaders of major companies headquartered in Pittsburgh to put together an ownership group.
Today’s birthdays: None