Well. Here we go. The Twins are in the playoffs.
Too many teams make the playoffs now, as baseball tries to be like the NBA. But that’s not the Twins’ fault. And they won the worst division in history. That’s not the Twins’ fault either.
Given the ignominious streak, you can be excused if you temper your excitement about the upcoming series in Minneapolis. You could have been born the last time the Twins won a playoff game and graduated from high school.
But this year could be different. The top end of the starting rotation is very good. The bullpen has interesting pieces. The young hitters are feeling their oats.
See! See what I did right there! I was hopeful and optimistic. I was willing to throw my affections onto the bandwagon. Despite the twenty-year drought. That’s what a fan does.
If you’re a fan of a singer, that artist could have all good songs. Every song could be a winner. If you’re a fan of a sports team, half of us will be on the losing side. We engage our emotions, knowing wins will feel good and losses will sting. It’s a weird tradeoff.
Last January, I wrote about getting on board with the Vikings despite their own cursed playoff past. The 2022 Vikings won a gaggle of games in the last minute and had all sorts of momentum. I am a fair-weather football fan, and last year’s Vikings season was 70 degrees with a pleasant breeze. Then came their playoff game, and a cold rain fell.
I’m an all-weather baseball fan. As such, you ride the waves up and down. Sometimes it makes you woozy. Being a baseball fan is not unlike a marriage. It’s every day with that person/team. They drive you nuts some days, and others you love the heck out of them. The marriage analogy fails when you go from year to year. Every season, the Twins’ roster is different. Every year, Pam is Pam with some minor adjustments.
This Twins’ team is really like no other in my lifetime of fanning. They’ve had consistently good starting pitching this year. Outside of a couple months of Johann Santana and Franciso Liriano in 2006, the Twins have historically been a team that hits well and pitches not so good. The hitting has been above average on a sixty-year arc that goes from Killebrew and Oliva, through Carew and Puckett, past Mauer and Morneau, right up to Buxton and Sano.
OK, it’s not a perfect arc.
The bullpen has been at times a pock-marked minefield and other times a blossom-filled meadow. The evolution of Jhoan Duran to high end closer has been enjoyable. His fastball averages one hundred miles per hour. Couple that with the “entrance” the Twins’ hype machine put together, and it’s just plain fun. Maybe his arm will fall off someday, but we’ll live in the present.
The 2023 Twins found ways to score runs, more as the season wore on, and young players brought energy to the lineup. They also set the all-time record for strikeouts. Baseball has existed for a century and a half, so that’s something.
If you follow baseball, you know that an increasing number of strikeouts has been a trend. It goes back to some weird analytical notion that homeruns and walks are worth pursuing at all costs. Even if that cost is walking back to the dugout with your bat in your hand.
Old guys like me remember when striking out was embarrassing. I can still picture the scowl from my Leavenworth Bi-County coach, the irascible Billy Groebner, when I struck out. Billy had been a good player a generation before that. Billy would have quit baseball to shovel pig manure if he struck out as often as Joey Gallo.
Long before the playoff losses of this century, there was the disappointment of losing the 1965 World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was nine and in the fourth grade at Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s. World Series games were played in the afternoon back then under God’s bright sun and on God’s green grass.
Sr. Ducshesne was our teacher. She was a young Franciscan nun, and looking back I can only imagine how difficult it was to face that room full of little Catholic kids every day. I remember her as kind. Dear Sr. Ducshesne let us bring transistor radios to school to listen to the World Series during breaks.
That led to me standing in the parking lot after school with my radio pressed to my ear as Sandy Koufax struck out Bob Allison to end the seventh game. My 9-year old self was crushed. Somehow, I picked up the pieces and plowed ahead these 58 years since.
I was a teenager when the Twins got swept by the Baltimore Orioles in 1969 and 1970 in the first Division playoffs. That was an exceptional Oriole team: Buford, Blair, Frank Robinson, Powell, Brooks Robinson, Johnson, Etchebarren, Belanger. I can’t tell you what happened yesterday, but that lineup sticks in my head.
The Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991. Unfortunately, I was boycotting because they were playing in the Metrodome, where plastic and Teflon displaced God’s grass and sun. I ended my boycott when kids came along who needed to see baseball despite the tawdry environment. Missing those two World Series was like being separated from your wife while she wins a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize.
Regardless, here we are, and we need to break this eighteen-loss curse. First, someone get in touch with Tom Wheeler. Tom hosts KNUJ Radio’s Dinner Bell Hour every day from 11 to 12, as fine a radio show as can be found on the dial. Tom needs to play the Win Twins Polka as a prelude to the game. Marv Masterman and His Orchestra recorded that classic in the Sixties.
When Tom plays that this morning, it will be our own virtual musical tailgate. The collective intensity from all of us bouncing up and down to the Win Twins Polka will create an energy wave that reverberates across the state, focusing a surge at Target Field. Pablo Lopez, Max Kepler, and Matt Wallner might not understand why they feel a mysterious boost as they take the field, but they will.
We can do this.