- March 29, 2010
- Minnesota Twins
Minnesota Twins Should Be Proud
The Minnesota Twins had one of the greatest division comebacks in baseball history - down 3 games with 4 to play and overtaking the Detroit Tigers. The Minnesota twins beat the Detroit Tigers in a one game playoff in game 163 in thrilling fashion. The Minnesota twins played in their second consecutive one game playoff - but last year suffered a different fate losing to the Chicago White Sox for division supremacy.
Target Field: The New Home of the Minnesota Twins
After 37 years of sterile, indoor baseball the Minnesota Twins are preparing to move into their new outdoor baseball home, Target Field. As a long time Twins fan and a long time dome sufferer (except when it is cold and rainy, then I love the dome), I am counting the days until baseball is outdoors again in Minnesota. It has been a long, torturous journey to get to this point.
The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and play in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. The team is named after the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. They played in Metropolitan Stadium from 1961 to 1981, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome from 1982 to 2009, and moved into Target Field on December 22, 2009.
One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1901 as the Washington Senators. In 1905, the team changed its official name to the Washington Nationals. The name "Nationals" appeared on uniforms for only 2 seasons, and was then replaced with the "W" logo for the next 52 years. The media often shortened the nickname to "Nats". Many fans and newspapers (especially out-of-town papers) persisted in using the "Senators" nickname. Over time, "Nationals" faded as a nickname, and "Senators" became dominant. Baseball guides listed the club's nickname as "Nationals or Senators", acknowledging the dual-nickname situation.
The team name was officially changed to Washington Senators around the time that long-time team president Clark Griffith died and his son Calvin took over the team. It was not until 1959 that the word "Senators" first appeared on team shirts. "Nats" continued to be used by space-saving headline writers, even for the 1961 expansion team, which was never officially known as "Nationals".
In 1960, Major League Baseball granted the city of Minneapolis an expansion team. Calvin Griffith requested that he be allowed to move his team to Minneapolis and instead grant Washington the expansion team. MLB granted his request, and the team moved to Bloomington, Minnesota after the 1960 season, setting up shop in Metropolitan Stadium, while Washington fielded a brand new "Washington Senators" that would also end up moving—to Arlington, Texas to become the Texas Rangers prior to the 1972 season.
Through the 2009 season, the franchise has won 3 World Series Championships (1924, 1987, and 1991) and has fielded 17 American League Batting Champions.