Minnesota Twins Team History

The Twins were eagerly greeted in Minnesota when they arrived in 1961. They brought a nucleus of talented players: Harmon 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 they were defeated in the 1965 World Series by the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games behind the World Series Most Valuable Player, Sandy Koufax, with a 2–1 record, including winning the seventh game.

In 1982, the Twins moved into the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which they shared with the Minnesota Vikings, but the team continued to struggle. The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, commonly called the Metrodome, was a domed sports stadium located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Opened in 1982, it replaced Metropolitan Stadium, which was on the current site of the Mall of America in Bloomington, and Memorial Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus.

The 1987 World Series was played by the Minnesota Twins and the St. Louis Cardinals. Minnesota was victorious in a World Series that was both the first to be played indoors, as well as the first in which the home team won every game. This happened again in 1991 (also a Twins championship) over the Atlanta Braves and in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks defeating the New York Yankees.

The 1991 World Series pitted the Minnesota Twins (95–67) of the American League against the Atlanta Braves (94–68) of the National League. The Minnesota Twins won in seven games. ESPN selected it as the “Greatest of All Time” in their “World Series 100th Anniversary” countdown, with five of its games being decided by a single run, four games decided in the final at-bat and three games going into extra innings. In addition to the suspense of the outcome of many of its games, the Series had other highlights. For example, the series-deciding seventh game was a scoreless tie (0–0) through the regular nine innings, and went into extra innings; Minnesota won the seventh game by a score of 1-0 in the 10th inning, with their starting pitcher, Jack Morris, pitching all ten innings (Morris was named Most Valuable Player for the Series). With 69 innings in total, the 1991 World Series holds the record for longest seven-game World Series ever (some of the early years had nine-game Series, extending longer).

In response to the threatened loss of the Twins, the Minnesota private and public sector negotiated and approved a financing package for a replacement stadium a baseball-only outdoor, natural turf ballpark in the Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis owned by a new entity known as the Minnesota Ballpark Authority. Target Field was constructed at a cost of $544.4 million (including site acquisition and infrastructure), utilizing the proceeds of a $392 million public bond offering based on a 0.15 percent sales tax in Hennepin County and private financing of $185 million provided by the Pohlad family. As part of the deal, the Twins also signed a 30-year lease of the new stadium, effectively guaranteeing the continuation of the team in Minnesota for a long time to come. Construction of the new field began in 2007, and was completed in December 2009, in time for the 2010 season.