Minnesota Twins history, memorabilia in good hands with Clyde the Curator

MINNEAPOLIS — Harmon Killebrew and Clyde Doepner were good friends; the two spent plenty of time together during Killebrew’s retirement years.

Doepner flew to Arizona one time to visit the Minnesota Twins legend. When Doepner was putting his bags into a car to return to the airport, Killebrew slipped a baseball bat into his luggage.

It wasn’t just any bat. It was a bat Killebrew and every MLB player received in 1976 with a bicentennial logo burned into it.

“Harmon said, ‘Don’t forget your bat,’” Doepner recalled. “I said, ‘My bat?’ He said, ‘Well, you’re going to get it someday anyhow, you might as well have it now.’ It was that kind of love. They knew that it’s the love of the game, preserving the game.”

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Killebrew knew Doepner’s passion for baseball and his desire to tell the story of the game through past memorable items. You see, Doepner is the Minnesota Twins curator. It’s his job to get his hands on unique pieces that share the history of the Twins franchise.

That bicentennial bat that Killebrew gave to his friend? It’s now on display at Target Field.

Doepner has one of the greatest jobs in the world.

“I told them, ‘You quit paying me tomorrow, I’ll still be here at 6 every morning. Just don’t take my credentials away,’” Doepner said. “They treat me really well. They take care of me.”

Prior to becoming “Clyde the Curator,” Doepner was known to everyone within the Twins organization and in the sports memorabilia world as “Clyde the Collector.” Let’s tell that story first.

Doepner’s baseball career started out promising, helping North St. Paul High School (Minn.) win the 1961 state title. He went to Winona State University on a baseball scholarship, but got hurt off the field as a freshman. The kid with MLB aspirations would unfortunately never play baseball again.

Doepner turned his attention to his professional career. He became a teacher and head baseball coach at tiny Pine Island High School in Minnesota. The first summer on the job, he was shuffling through his mailbox when he stumbled upon a letter from the Twins to “the baseball coach.” Doepner opened it and was shocked to see a season pass for every Twins home game in 1966. The 22-year-old was single and had free admission to his “addiction.” Life was good.

Doepner went to a game at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington with his buddies and wanted to say thank you in person to Twins owner Calvin Griffith.

“The secretary said he’s in a grumpy mood today and I wouldn’t go in there,” said Doepner, who can tell a story with the best of them. “I said, ‘Well, I want to thank him for something.’ She said, ‘Yeah, go ahead then. He’ll handle that.’

“So, the door is open and I knock on his door. He looks, ‘Yeah, what do you want?’ I said, ‘I want to thank you for something.’ He said, ‘For what?’ And I said, ‘For this season pass.’ And he looked at it and said, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I said, ‘My mother brought me up to say thank you. But she never told me it was this tough.’ He said, ‘I’ve been handing those blankety-blank things out for three months and you’re the first guy that’s ever thanked me. What’s wrong with you?’ I said, ‘I just wanted to thank you. This is cool.’

“He said, ‘No, come here now.’ Down the hall to the left and we were out in the field. He said, ‘There are 24 seats which are the Griffith seats. When you come to a game, you don’t have to sit out in the cheap seats with those thankless SOBs, you sit in here with my family.’ Since Aug. 17 of 1966, I’ve never needed a ticket to a game.”

And so, Doepner’s “in” with the Twins had been established.

Fast forward 15 years to 1981 — Doepner was by that point as tight as ever with Griffith — when the Twins were moving from Met Stadium to the newly-built Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. The Twins had amassed thousands of items in their years at the Met, but to store all that at the Metrodome was going to cost the Griffith family too much money per square foot. Griffith told his brothers to toss everything. But the brothers offered an alternative plan.

“They said, ‘Clyde loves that stuff,’” Doepner recalled. “‘Then give it all to Clyde. It’s Clyde’s problem.’”

So, for 33 straight nights, Doepner went to Met Stadium with three or four friends and picked up boxes of stuff that staffers put together during the day. Sometimes it was five boxes, others 35 boxes.

Doepner, who ended up with about 2,000 items, started sifting through some boxes and was astonished by what he found. Autographs from iconic figures such as Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman. There were presidential letters and telegrams.

“I’m a history teacher, so can you imagine having 18-19 letters from presidents, 13 letters from wives of presidents?” said Doepner, whose personal collection features autographs from every president to ever be in the Oval Office.

If Doepner wouldn’t have taken all the items out of the old Twins’ stadium, they would have ended up in a dumpster.

On the day Doepner was given all the old Twins’ “garbage,” he unofficially became the Twins’ curator. A position like that with an MLB franchise was, frankly, not around in 1981.

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It also ramped up Doepner’s personal collection as Clyde the Collector.

That year, Doepner started giving talks to groups such as Rotarians. The man can spew out facts like no one else. He became “Clyde the Guide.”

“If I’ve got one gift, when I hear a fact, I remember it,” Doepner said. “It doesn’t carry over to things not related to baseball, unfortunately.”

In 2019, Doepner gave 248 talks at Target Field to season ticket holders as well as at off-site events.

For all the big Twins’ events the last 40 years, Doepner has been front and center.

During Game 7 of the 1987 World Series, Doepner was in the owner’s box at the Dome with a bunch of cigar smokers. The Twins ended up winning the first of two World Series titles in a span of five years.

Doepner was still a high school teacher while working his part-time curator gig. He retired from teaching as the Twins prepared to move into Target Field. The club offered Doepner a full-time role in 2009, which he accepted. Target Field opened the following year.

Doepner, now 78 years old, said it’s really special to be a full-time curator for a great MLB franchise.

“I think it’s special because it shows the faith they have in me,” Doepner said. “Informally, when I became full-time curator, [Twins President] Dave St. Peter said, ‘Whatever you did as Clyde the Collector, keep doing it for us.’ And that’s about as big a trust as you can have.

“And I think the question they had — and I totally understand their question — is, would I have any problem going from Clyde the Collector to Clyde the Curator? When it’s Clyde the Collector, I own it. When it’s Clyde the Curator, the Twins own it. I have absolutely no problem doing that, because I’m never selling it. It’s not a money motivation. In fact, if I give talks, if people ask, ‘What’s this worth? What’s that worth?’ I would just simply say to them, ‘I know what everything’s worth, because I have to appraise the Twins’ stuff every year for insurance reasons.’ I really keep on top of what stuff is worth.”

Doepner has been a valuable asset to the Twins for decades. He’s also been a big aid to Dustin Morse, the Twins senior director of communications.

“I head up the PR department and I know what a resource he is on behalf of the club as an ambassador and sharing Twins’ history, guest speaking events, ballpark tours and really just showcasing the history of our ballpark – nobody better,” Morse said. “He’s kind of a walking Twins encyclopedia and a very good presenter at the same time.”

When the club was building Target Field, Doepner didn’t ask Twins owner Carl Pohlad — who bought the franchise in 1984 — about money for display cases to show off the prized possessions. The man in charge wanted the best of the best.

The cases are ultra-violet ray protected and almost bulletproof — they can be hit with a baseball bat and not break.

There are more than 80 displays in the stadium, including 52 permanent cases at the Bat & Barrel, which is formerly the Metropolitan Club, located at club level at Target Field. There are display cases in the Delta Sky360° club and another four cases — highlighting the decades of the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — near Doepner’s bosses office, team president St. Peter. In a hallway, there is a display case featuring players who are next to be inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame for that year.

“Every year I rotate them or certainly every other year — Puckett, he’ll always be in Puckett; Killebrew will be Killebrew; Carew will be there; but the ones I take away from them and share with other people, they rotate all the time,” Doepner said.

Jim Pohlad, the son of Carl, is a hands-off owner and allows Doepner to do his thing when it comes to arranging the display cases.

Legendary center fielder Kirby Puckett has four display cases that showcase his amazing 12-year career with the Twins.

“He kept everything,” Doepner said. “Kirby was a 100 percent keeper of everything.”

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Some phenomenal items include Puckett’s plaque from when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001; a 1987 World Series trophy; a baseball from when he went 6-for-6 in a game in 1987; his 1993 All-Star Game jersey and diamond ring and trophy he received for being named the game’s MVP.

The best piece for any Twins fan is the ball Puckett hit for the game-winning home run in the 11^th inning of Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. The fan who retrieved the ball in center field after the homer delivered it to Puckett right after the game. The Twins also have the seat the ball hit.

“The guy that caught it had no stringers attached,” Doepner said. “They took him down to the locker room and he said, ‘You deserve this.’”

There are a couple of amazing cases that feature the team’s World Series trophies from 1987 and ’91. There is also the pitching rubber from the ’91 World Series in which Jack Morris threw a phenomenal 10-inning outing to help his hometown team win Game 7. Morris’ game-used jersey from that game is in a case, too. There is also first base from the ’87 World Series in which Kent Hrbek caught the throw from third baseman Gary Gaetti for the final out to secure the Twins’ first title.

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Two cases highlight when the Twins hosted the 1965 and ’85 All-Star Games. The team also has plenty of items from the 2014 All-Star Game.

Killebrew has two cases stuffed with his items. There are varsity letters from his magnificent high school career in which he was a standout baseball and football player. Killebrew — who out of high school had six football scholarship offers and zero for baseball — was actually chosen the starting quarterback for a high school All-American game. There is Killebrew’s Hall of Fame plaque from his induction in 1984, the ball from Killebrew’s final home run of his career, No. 573, and the bicentennial bat he presented to Doepner.

When Killebrew died in May 2011, the Twins buried a picture of Killebrew underneath home plate at Target Field. At the end of the season in mid-September, that photo was dug up by the grounds crew and is on display.

There is a square pillar across from Killebrew’s display cases that St. Peter asked Doepner to do something creative with it. Doepner came up with the idea that on one side would be Killebrew’s American League MVP plaque from 1969 as the centerpiece and have his lifetime batting statistics each of his seasons underneath. The stats from Killebrew’s MVP season are highlighted in red. Another side of the pillar runs down all 573 of his home runs with the date, team and pitcher they were hit off.

There are two cases dedicated to Joe Mauer. Doepner collected some great pieces from the Minnesota native when he retired in 2018. There is the jersey Mauer wore when he signed his first professional contract after being drafted No. 1 overall in 2001; a bat used in his rookie season; game-used bats from his 1,500^th, 2,000^th, 2,086^th (second all-time for the Twins) hits and his team-record 415^th career double; his catcher’s mitt, chest protector, mask and first baseman’s glove from the final game of his career.

“We were able to secure a lot of cool items, unique items from Mauer as he kind of became obviously the new face of the organization,” Morse said. “Whether it was his bats from his 1,500^th hit or 2,000^th hit or record-setter double or his last official appearance as a catcher, Joe was very generous in donating that stuff. Clyde did a great job in showcasing it in one of the newest cases at Target Field.”

Mauer’s M&M brother and fellow Twins Hall of Famer Justin Morneau has a nice display case. It features game-used jerseys, batting helmets and bats from his 11-year Twins stint.

A display that features items linked to longtime Twins manager Tom Kelly has some unique pieces. One is the last out ball and champagne bottle from when Scott Erickson pitched a no-hitter on April 27, 1994. Late in the game, Kelly was thinking about pulling Erickson, who had a pitch count of just 78, but the young pitcher had other ideas.

“He said, ‘Skip, this is my only chance. Until I give up a hit,’” Doepner said. “He said, ‘Well, go get ’em.’ Fourteen pitches later, he had his no-hitter.”

When the Twins had their first game at Target Field, Doepner collected 112 items. One of his biggest nemeses, Doepner joked, is battling with the Baseball Hall of Fame for items when a game turns into a national event.

Former Baseball Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson was in attendance for the inaugural game.

“He said, ‘I want the first hit of the game,’” Doepner recalled. “I said, ‘Ok.’ Then I prayed to the baseball gods that a Boston player would get it in the top of the inning. [Marco] Scutaro got a hit. I was clapping, just because if it would have been a Twin getting the first hit, I would have felt bad.”

Doepner secured the first pitch of the game, first hit by a Twins player, first RBI, first home run and many more keepsakes.

Another amazing sight at Target Field is the Twins’ main archive room. It is a humidity- and light-controlled room with top-of-the-line cabinets for storage. In all, the Twins have a collection of about 30,000-35,000 pieces of memorabilia.

Located just down from Doepner’s office, the archive room is packed with boxes full of memorable jerseys, bats, balls, stadium seats, you name it.

“There’s things from Rod Carew, Earl Battey and Bob Allison and Harmon Killebrew and Kent Hrbek, all the greats that we don’t even have room to showcase everything,” Morse said. “Clyde’s done a great job of telling stories of just the evolution of the Twins organization from 1961 as well, whether it’s ticket stubs or game notes or giveaways, Dairy Queen Twins hats over the years. It’s pretty cool when you see just how the collection grows and tells kind of the story of our organization.”

Doepner said the key to being a good, dependable curator is dependent on three things.

“Number one, you get an object and you at least maintain its condition, if you can’t improve it,” Doepner said. “Number two, you learn all you can about it. Number three, when your time is no more, you have to find somebody that has the same passion you do and will carry it on.

“I’ve been blessed.”

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