Major League Baseball releases its official 1964 batting averages that confirms Twins’ outfielder Tony Oliva, who finished the season hitting .323, is the first rookie to win a batting title. The recently crowned American League Rookie of the Year finished ahead of Orioles’ third baseman Brooks Robinson (.317), who copped the circuit’s Most Valuable Player Award.
Twins freshman outfielder Tony Olivia, named on 19 of the 20 ballots cast by a special committee of the BBWAA, is overwhelmingly selected as the American League’s Rookie of the Year, with the lone dissenting vote going to 19 year-old Oriole right-hander Wally Bunker (19-5, 2.69). The Cuban native from Pinar del Rio won the AL’s batting crown with a .323 average while hitting 32 home runs and driving in 94 runs for the sixth-place club.
Baltimore edges the Twins, 6 – 5, scoring two runs in the 9th for the victory. Twins reliever Gerry Arrigo allows a two-out home run to Sam Bowens, his second home run of the game, then throws three balls to John Orsino before being lifted for Bill Fischer. Fischer throws a strike to Orsino who then hits his next pitch for the winning home run. It is Fischer’s last major league game: on the 24th he is placed on the voluntarily retired list.
On May 2, 1964, At Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, the visiting Minnesota Twins hit four consecutive home runs in one inning. Tony Oliva (his second of the game), Bob Allison, Jimmie Hall, and Harmon Killebrew (his second of the game, he hit a go-ahead home run in 9th) go deep in the 11th inning…
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