The people of Minneapolis-St. Paul got major league baseball in 1960 when the first iteration of the Washington Senators moved west and renamed themselves the Twins. It only took five years to reach the World Series, in 1965. When the franchise slipped under .500 in 1968, they made a managerial change—Billy Martin got his first […]
The advent of divisional play had been good for Minnesota. When the American League split into an East and West in 1969, the Twins captured the inaugural AL West crown. That was under the guidance of Billy Martin. After a falling out with the front office, Martin was fired. Bill Rigney stepped in as the […]
It isn’t often that a team coming off the first World Series title in franchise history has something to prove. It’s even less frequent that this team could finish a distant second place and still manage to prove that intangible “something.” But that’s exactly how the 1988 Minnesota Twins can be described. The Twins came […]
The Twins were in the fourth year of a rebuilding program under manager Billy Gardner. The franchise, after some moderately successful teams in the late 1970s, let their star players—including Hall of Fame first baseman Rod Carew—go elsewhere. The Twins lost over 100 games in 1980. They were on a pace to do the same […]
The state of Minnesota had been electrified in 1991 when their beloved Twins completed a magical worst-to-first turnaround by winning a dramatic World Series, their second title in five years. The 1992 Minnesota Twins didn’t achieve those same heights—but even though they lost some key performers from that ’91 team, this ’92 edition of the […]
The Minnesota Twins had won a World Series in 1987, but the ensuing years saw them fall badly off the pace. The Toronto Blue Jays were as consistent a contender as there was in baseball in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From these different starting points, the Twins and Blue Jays each won their […]
The 1991 Minnesota Twins were like a skilled presidential candidate that knew how to peak every four years and at the time where their advantage would be at its max. They won the World Series in 1987. They were overtaken by the powerful Oakland A’s for the next three years and slid to last place […]
The Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals were teams built for their homefield. The Twins had power, well-suited to the hitter-friendly atmosphere at the Metrodome. The Cardinals, playing in what was then an artificial turf-covered Busch Stadium with deep dimensions, were constructed on speed. It’s appropriate that when these contrasting teams met in the 1987 […]
The Minnesota Twins were an 85-win team, one of the worst to ever reach the League Championship Series round in 1987. The Detroit Tigers had the best record in baseball and were fresh off winning an epic divisional race against the second-best team, the Toronto Blue Jays. It’s natural that the Minnesota-Detroit matchup in the […]
It been nearly twenty years since the good people of the Twin Cities had experienced postseason baseball. It had been a little longer—22 years—since they had reached the World Series. And they had never seen their franchise win it all. The 1987 Minnesota Twins changed all of that with an improbable run to a World […]
The Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins each finished in last place during the 1990 season. Each engendered a turnaround that led to an improbable matchup in the 1991 World Series.
The 1987 World Series brought together two teams from the Midwest, and for the third straight year, the Fall Classic went seven games…