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 the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome from 1982 to 2009, and will move to the new Target Field in 2010.
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.
Team history
Main article: History of the Minnesota TwinsWashington Nationals/Senators: 1901–1960
For a time, from 1911 to 1933, the Washington Senators were one of the more successful franchises in major-league baseball. The team's rosters included Hall of Famers Goose Goslin, Sam Rice, Joe Cronin, Bucky Harris, Heinie Manush and one of the greatest pitchers of all time, Walter Johnson.
In the 1924 World Series, the Senators defeated the New York Giants in seven games. The following season, they repeated as American League champions the next year but ultimately lost the 1925 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. After Walter Johnson’s retirement in 1927, he was hired as manager of the Senators. After enduring a few losing seasons, the team returned to contention during the 1930 season. In the 1933 season, Senators owner Clark Griffith returned to the formula that worked for him nine years before, and 26-year-old shortstop Joe Cronin became player-manager. The Senators posted a 99–53 record and cruised to the pennant seven games ahead of the New York Yankees, but in the 1933 World Series the Giants exacted their revenge on the Senators, winning in five games. Following the loss, the Senators sank all the way to seventh place in 1934 as attendance began to fall. Despite the return of Harris as manager in 1935–42 and 1950–54, Washington remained mostly a losing ball club for the next 25 years, contending for the pennant only during World War II. Washington came to be known as "first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League", with their hard luck being crucial to the plot of the musical and film Damn Yankees . In 1954, the Senators signed future Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew. By 1959, he was the Senators’ regular third baseman, leading the league with 42 home runs and earning a starting spot on the American League All-Star team.
After Griffith's death in 1955, his nephew and adopted son Calvin took over the team presidency. He sold Griffith Stadium to the city of Washington and leased it back, leading to speculation that the team was planning to move, as the Boston Braves, St. Louis Browns and Philadelphia Athletics had all done in the early 1950s. By 1957, after an early flirtation with San Francisco, Griffith began courting Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, a prolonged process that resulted in his rejecting the Twin Cities' first offer before agreeing to relocate. The American League opposed the move at first, but in 1960 a deal was reached: The Senators would move and would be replaced with an expansion Senators team for 1961. Thus, the old Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins.
Minnesota Twins: 1961 to present
The name "Twins" was derived from the popular name of the region, the Twin Cities. The NBA's Minneapolis Lakers had re-located to Los Angeles in 1960 due to poor attendance which was perceived to have been caused in part by the reluctance of fans in St. Paul to support the team. Griffith was determined not to alienate fans in either city by naming the team after one city or the other, so the team became known as the Minnesota Twins . However, the original "Twin Cities Twins" TC logo was kept, and the team logo showed two men, one in a Minneapolis Millers uniform and one in a St. Paul Saints uniform, shaking hands across the Mississippi River. This remained the team's primary logo until 1987, when the team felt it was established enough to put an "M" on its cap without having St. Paul fans think it stood for Minneapolis.
The Twins were eagerly greeted in Minnesota when they arrived in 1961. They brought a nucleus of talented players: Killebrew, Bob Allison, Camilo Pascual, Zoilo Versalles, Jim Kaat, Earl Battey, and Lenny Green. The Twins won 91 games in 1962, the most by the franchise since 1933. The Twins won 102 games and the American League pennant in 1965, but were defeated in the 1965 World Series by the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. Heading into the final weekend of the 1967 season, the Twins, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and Detroit Tigers all had a shot at clinching the American League championship. The Twins and the Red Sox started the weekend tied for 1st place and played against each other in Boston for the final three games of the season. The Sox won two out of the three games, clinching their first pennant since 1946 with a 92–70 record. The Twins and Tigers both finished a game behind, at 91–71, while the White Sox were three games out, at 89–73. In 1969, new manager Billy Martin pushed aggressive base running, with Rod Carew stealing home seven times; the Twins won the American League West, but lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the first American League Championship Series. After a pennant win in 1970, the team entered an eight-year dry spell, finishing around the .500 mark. Killebrew departed after 1974. Owner Calvin Griffith faced financial difficulty with the start of free agency. Because of this, Lyman Bostock and Larry Hisle left as free agents after the 1977 season and prompted a trade of Carew after the 1978 season.
In the early 1980s, the Twins moved into the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which they shared with the Minnesota Vikings, while the team continued to struggle. In 1984, Griffith sold the Twins to Carl Pohlad. The Twins' new home hosted the 1985 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. After several losing seasons, the teams led by Kent Hrbek, Bert Blyleven, and rising star Kirby Puckett combined to return the team to the World Series, defeating the Tigers in the ALCS. Tom Kelly led the team to World Series victories in 1987 and 1991. In the latter, the Twins defeated the Atlanta Braves, 4–3, to win the 1991 World Series. 1991 was the first season that any team that ended in last place the previous year advanced to the World Series. After a winning season in 1992, the Twins fell into an extended slump, posting a losing record each year for the next eight years: 71–91 in 1993, 50–63 in 1994, 56–88 in 1995, 78–84 in 1996, 68–94 in 1997, 70–92 in 1998, 63–97 in 1999 and 69–93 in 2000. From 1994 to 1997, a long sequence of retirements and injuries hurt the team badly, and Tom Kelly spent the remainder of his managerial career attempting to rebuild the Twins.
In 1997, owner Carl Pohlad almost sold the Twins to North Carolina businessman Don Beaver, who would have moved the team to the Piedmont Triad area. From 2001 to 2006, the Twins compiled the longest streak of consecutive winning seasons since moving to Minnesota. Threatened with closure by league contraction in 2002, the team battled back to reach the American League Championship Series before being eliminated 4–1 by that year's eventual World Series champion Anaheim Angels. In 2006, the Twins won the division on the last day of the regular season without ever having had sole possession of fi
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