Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson was a promising shortstop prospect in the 1970s who was drafted in the first round by two teams. Unfortunately, his baseball career never reached its full potential as he was afflicted with a deadly disease and passed away in what should have been the prime of his career. 

Danny Leon Thompson was born February 1, 1947, in Wichita, Kansas, and grew up down the road in Capron, Oklahoma.

Thompson was a star at Capron High School. So much so that the New York Yankees drafted him in the second round of the 1965 Major League Baseball June Amateur Draft following his senior year. Instead of becoming professional, he attended Oklahoma State University, playing two seasons with the Cowboys. He was all-Big Eight both seasons and led the team to the College World Series.

Thompson was later drafted in the fourth round of the 1967 draft by Cincinnati, then the first round of the January phase of the 1968 draft by the second incarnation of the Washington Senators, and finally by the Twins in the first round of the June 1968 draft. He signed with the Twins and immediately went to Class-A, St. Cloud, where he produced a solid hitting line of .282/.359/.461. He played the 1969 season for Double-A Charlotte and hit over .300; then in 1970, he advanced to Triple-A Evansville where he started well enough to earn a call-up to the Twins on June 25 to replace injured second baseman Rod Carew. 

Thompson collected his first two hits in his third career game. In the sixth inning, he singled to center and came around to score. He would collect another hit and his first RBI in the ninth inning in the Twins 9-1 win over the White Sox. Thompson was not a power hitter; he did not collect his first home run until two seasons later – the opener of the 1972 season – his 145th career game. It came in the first inning against Ken Holtzman of the Oakland A’s. By this point, the right-handed hitter was the Twins’ primary shortstop. He played every game of the strike-shortened 1972 season. That season proved to be the best season of Danny’s career, as he batted .276/.318/.674, achieved a WAR of 2.9 and finished 23rd in Most Valuable Player voting. The Twins finished in third place. Little did Thompson know, his world would soon change.

During a standard preseason physical in 1973, Danny Thompson was found to have leukemia. Sid Hartman’s Minneapolis Tribune column on February 14, 1973, reported that Thompson’s doctors figured he would not feel the effects of the disease for five years. Thompson said, “I’m going to put the whole thing out of my mind and just think about baseball.” I don’t know how you do that, but true to his word, Thompson forged ahead, continuing as a Twins shortstop from 1973 to 1976. After the 1974 season, he was selected as Major League Baseball’s Hutch Award winner, which is given annually to an active MLB player who best exemplifies the fighting spirit and competitive desire of Fred Hutchinson by persevering through adversity. Hutchinson was a former MLB pitcher and manager who died of lung cancer in 1964. Danny Thompson continued in 1975 with a decent season with a batting average of .270. On June 1, 1976, Thompson was traded to Texas along with pitching ace Bert Blyleven for shortstop Roy Smalley, third baseman Mike Cubbage, and pitchers Jim Gideon and Bill Singer.

After the trade, Sid Hartman reported in the Minneapolis Tribune that Thompson was elated. Since his diagnosis, team owner Calvin Griffith seemed to mumble a lot that the Twins needed a shortstop. Thompson, who never needed treatment for his ailment while playing with the Twins, said he was their guy – the Twins had a shortstop. And as always with Griffith, there was a salary question. Immediately after the trade, Texas signed Thompson to a salary increase to $38,000. Thompson called the trade “The biggest break of my baseball career.” It was a winning team, closer to his family in Oklahoma, and they wanted him to play. Thompson reported that it had been a struggle to play for the Twins since his diagnosis – that the Twins “Held it over his head.” Thompson had thought he might have been on his way out of professional baseball, stating, “The way Calvin put it to me is that nobody wanted me.” It’s easy to see why Thompson was eager and excited for a fresh start. Unfortunately, that fresh start was nowhere near long enough. 

I remember Bert Blyleven and Jim Kaat speaking highly of Danny Thompson in their broadcasting careers. Blyleven said of Thompson’s last at bat, a pinch-hitting appearance in the final game of the 1976 season, more than three and a half years after his leukemia diagnosis, “Shows the guts and determination he had to finish the season in 1976. He just wanted to keep playing. That was Danny, though. He was a battler.” Kaat added, “Always on an even keel. He never got emotionally high or low. Growing up the way I did in the Midwest, that's the way we expected people to conduct themselves. That's what Danny was.” In addition, local sports writing legend Patrick Reusse, who is not known to be liberal or effusive with praise or admiration, called Thompson “One of the greatest guys ever” in his book Tales from the Minnesota Sports Beat. Anecdotes such as those tell me Danny Thompson was a good and fine man.

After the 1976 season, Thompson’s health turned for the worse. Forty-five days after that pinch-hitting appearance in the season finale, Thompson was admitted to the Mayo Clinic. He succumbed to the disease on December 10, 1976, at the early age of 29. Thompson was survived by his wife and two young daughters.

In 1977, Harmon Killebrew founded the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament, played in Harmon’s home state of Idaho. That first year, President Gerald Ford and Yankees legend Mickey Mantle played. As a fundraiser for the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, the event became a tremendous success and is still going strong. The tournament is now known as the Killebrew-Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament (Killebrew died of esophageal cancer) and is held in both Maple Grove, Minnesota, and Sun Valley, Idaho. It is now considered one of the leading cancer research fundraisers of its kind.