The Minnesota Twins Latest Cinderella Story
The only professional sport I've ever had any real interest in is baseball, of which I've been a casual fan since I was a boy. My fandom always becomes more than casual in the years where the Minnesota Twins are doing well. The majority of the Minnesota Twins' appeal is obviously that they are my home team, having spent most of my life in Minnesota, but there's more to it than just that. The Minnesota Twins are a team of very limited means, as professional baseball franchises go, and are the subject of the ridicule of know-it-all sports commentators every spring before they take the field. Yet in the past 20 years, the team has participated in five post-seasons (this year being the sixth) with two World Series titles behind their belts. And they do this with limited budgets and team rosters that often suffer widespread player turnover year to year. It's hard to put a finger on what triggers these rosters of scrappy underdogs to exceed expectations so many times, but it's breathtaking to watch unfold.
Their first Cinderella story came in 1987, when they were the laughingstock of the four postseason teams, finishing with a weak 85-77 record and facing a Detroit Tigers team considered vastly superior. They made quick business of the Tigers and then lay the hurt on the St. Louis Cardinals in an exciting seven-game World Series, essentially with a two-man starting rotation.
Four years later, the Twins rallied from worst to first in their division, winning more than 90 games and going on to face the Atlanta Braves in the 1991 World Series, which was the best World Series of my lifetime and would cement my lifetime love for the game of baseball.
The ten years that followed were dismal, with the Twins' fielding mostly losing teams, under constant threat of relocation by the team owner attempting to blackmail a new stadium out of taxpayers, and heading into the 2002 season facing the very real possibility of their team being "contracted" by the Major League Baseball commissioner, who as the owner of the nearly Milwaukee Brewers, had a vested interest in taking down the Minnesota Twins. The team rose to the challenge and threw a monkey wrench in the Commissioner's plan by making it to the second round of the post-season in 2002.
The Twins followed that up with two more division titles in 2003 and 2004, bouncing back from below .500 to win the division in '03. As for 2006, here we go again....
A team counted out in June by its hometown newspaper had the best record in baseball from mid-June to early October and ended up with another division title on the final day of the season after being more than 10 games behind division leaders Detroit and Chicago for much of the year. No matter how they fare in this fall's postseason, the Minnesota Twins are the baseball equivalent to Seabiscuit.
Listening to their final game of the regular season while in Minnesota today, it was nonetheless bittersweet as it was revealed that WCCO radio is severing its ties with Twins baseball after 45 years. I'm not sure of the details on the contractual divorce, but it also sounded as though the team's decades-long radio commentator Herb Carneal may be throwing in the towel. I remember many a summer evening when I was a boy listening to Carneal announcing Twins games on WCCO. Even if another radio station picks up the slack, it's always sad to see one more thing in life that you've always counted on go away.
The other bittersweet aspect of the day for me was to see the Detroit Tigers suffer a setback. For the same reason I like the Minnesota Twins (scrappy underdogs), I've also been cheering for division competitor Detroit this year, simply because both the team and the city that hosts them have been on the losing end of recent history. The city of Detroit's economy is in such shambles right now that I would love to see it invigorated with postseason success this fall...and to give its long-suffering locals something to stand up and be proud of. I'm still pulling for the Twins to be the American League torchbearer in this year's World Series, but if it happens to be the Detroit Tigers, I'll be happy with that outcome as well.
Their first Cinderella story came in 1987, when they were the laughingstock of the four postseason teams, finishing with a weak 85-77 record and facing a Detroit Tigers team considered vastly superior. They made quick business of the Tigers and then lay the hurt on the St. Louis Cardinals in an exciting seven-game World Series, essentially with a two-man starting rotation.
Four years later, the Twins rallied from worst to first in their division, winning more than 90 games and going on to face the Atlanta Braves in the 1991 World Series, which was the best World Series of my lifetime and would cement my lifetime love for the game of baseball.
The ten years that followed were dismal, with the Twins' fielding mostly losing teams, under constant threat of relocation by the team owner attempting to blackmail a new stadium out of taxpayers, and heading into the 2002 season facing the very real possibility of their team being "contracted" by the Major League Baseball commissioner, who as the owner of the nearly Milwaukee Brewers, had a vested interest in taking down the Minnesota Twins. The team rose to the challenge and threw a monkey wrench in the Commissioner's plan by making it to the second round of the post-season in 2002.
The Twins followed that up with two more division titles in 2003 and 2004, bouncing back from below .500 to win the division in '03. As for 2006, here we go again....
A team counted out in June by its hometown newspaper had the best record in baseball from mid-June to early October and ended up with another division title on the final day of the season after being more than 10 games behind division leaders Detroit and Chicago for much of the year. No matter how they fare in this fall's postseason, the Minnesota Twins are the baseball equivalent to Seabiscuit.
Listening to their final game of the regular season while in Minnesota today, it was nonetheless bittersweet as it was revealed that WCCO radio is severing its ties with Twins baseball after 45 years. I'm not sure of the details on the contractual divorce, but it also sounded as though the team's decades-long radio commentator Herb Carneal may be throwing in the towel. I remember many a summer evening when I was a boy listening to Carneal announcing Twins games on WCCO. Even if another radio station picks up the slack, it's always sad to see one more thing in life that you've always counted on go away.
The other bittersweet aspect of the day for me was to see the Detroit Tigers suffer a setback. For the same reason I like the Minnesota Twins (scrappy underdogs), I've also been cheering for division competitor Detroit this year, simply because both the team and the city that hosts them have been on the losing end of recent history. The city of Detroit's economy is in such shambles right now that I would love to see it invigorated with postseason success this fall...and to give its long-suffering locals something to stand up and be proud of. I'm still pulling for the Twins to be the American League torchbearer in this year's World Series, but if it happens to be the Detroit Tigers, I'll be happy with that outcome as well.
posted by Mark at 10:12 PM
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