The Curse of Herb Stein

You're looking at Gleyber Torres, who had a terrific game last night for the Yankees, homering, doubling twice, and added pair of eye-catching defensive plays in a 5 - 1 sweep-capping victory.

That's not the only story. The resurgent Didi Gregorius and Luis Severino made themselves known, as did Aaron Judge and Gio Urshela.

But there's another name worth dropping: Herb Stein. You won't find his name in the lineup cards or even on baseball-reference.com. Trust me, he belongs in this conversation. The New York-based scout, who signed over 100 players during his 35-year career with the Senators/Twins, saw eight of the make the majors and one -- Rod Carew -- inducted into the Hall of Fame.

As noted in a 1996 New York Daily News story, "To this day, Stein speaks of his big-leaguers Carew, Frank Viola, Joe Foy, Danny Monzon, Sal Butera, Gene Larkin and Scott Leius with almost paternal pride.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota organization didn't value Stein's eyes and judgments by the mid-'90s. They let him go a year after the end of baseball's disastrous strike. In his last season, he made just $15,000. His baseball pension was a measly $184 a month.

Funny how karma works. Since letting Stein go, Minnesota has not made the World Series. Despite some strong teams and impressive talent, they have never beaten the Yankees from Herb's native New York, in any post-season series. Five Division Series losses, plus the 2017 AL Wild Card game. Six occasions, all with the same good result for New York, and bad one for Minnesota. Even more harshly, it's 13 straight post-season games that have gone the Yankees way over the Twins.

Everyone's heard of the curse of the Bambino -- co-starring 1910's Red Sox owner Harry Frazee. It took 86 years to play out. Think there's something up regarding Herb, his home town and those Twins-Yankees matchups??

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