Dan Gladden - Baseball Career

Baseball Career

Known as "The Dazzle Man", he attended California State University, Fresno and was signed by the San Francisco Giants as an amateur free agent in 1979. He made his debut with the Giants in 1983, and in 1984 he batted .351 with 31 stolen bases as the Giants' center fielder.

In 1987, Gladden was traded to the Minnesota Twins, and won a World Series championship with them in his first year. He would earn another Series ring with the Twins in 1991, when they beat the Atlanta Braves in what is sometimes called the greatest World Series ever played. In the intense and memorable Game 7 of the 1991 Series, Gladden stretched a bloop hit into a double before scoring the winning run on Gene Larkin's single off of Atlanta's Alejandro Peña, in the bottom of the 10th inning.

After the 1991 season, Gladden signed as a free agent with the Detroit Tigers, and played with them until 1993. He spent 1994 in Japan playing for the Yomiuri Giants, winning a Japan Series championship. Because of the 1994-95 MLBPA strike, Gladden's championship with the kyojin is regarded by some fans as a world championship, and he retired from the game as a player on top as a three-time world champion with the distinction of having won championships in two continents (as does teammate Hideki Matsui, who won the World Series in 2009 with the New York Yankees), and returned to the Twins as a scout (spring training, 1995), then the Colorado Rockies (advance, 1996-1998). He spent 1999 as a roving instructor for the San Francisco Giants.

Gladden was one of seven Twins to be part of both the 1987 and 1991 World Series teams. The other six were Randy Bush, Greg Gagne, Kirby Puckett, Al Newman, Gene Larkin, and Kent Hrbek.