About Minnesota Twins
The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis. The Twins compete in Major League Baseball as a member club of the American League Central Division. The team is named after the Twin Cities moniker for the two adjacent cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
The franchise was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1901 as the Washington Senators. The team moved to Minnesota and was renamed the Minnesota Twins for the start of the 1961 season. The Twins played in Metropolitan Stadium from 1961 to 1981 and in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome from 1982 to 2009. The team has played at Target Field since 2010.
The franchise won the World Series in 1924 as the Senators, and in 1987 and 1991 as the Twins. From 1901 to 2023, the Senators/Twins franchise's overall regular-season win–loss–tie record is 9,177–9,875–109 ; as the Twins , it is 4,954–5,011–8 .
The team was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1901 as one of the eight original teams of the American League. It was named the Washington Senators from 1901 to 1904, the Washington Nationals from 1905 to 1955, and the Senators again from 1956 to 1960. But the team was commonly referred to as the Senators throughout its history . The name "Nationals" appeared on uniforms for only two seasons, and then was replaced with the "W" logo. The media often shortened the nickname to "Nats" — even for the 1961 expansion team. The names "Nationals" and "Nats" were revived in 2005, when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington to become the Nationals.
The Washington Senators spent the first decade of their existence finishing near the bottom of the American League standings. The team's long bouts of mediocrity were immortalized in the 1955 Broadway musical Damn Yankees. Their fortunes began to improve with the arrival of 19-year-old pitcher, Walter Johnson, in 1907. Johnson blossomed in 1911 with 25 victories, although the team still finished the season in seventh place. In 1912, the Senators improved dramatically, as their pitching staff led the league in team earned run average and in strikeouts. Johnson won 33 games while teammate Bob Groom added another 24 wins to help the Senators finish the season in second place. Griffith joined the team in 1912 and became the team's owner in 1920. ) The Senators continued to perform respectably in 1913 with Johnson posting a career-high 35 victories, as the team once again finished in second place. The Senators then fell into another decline for the next decade.
The team had a period of prolonged success in the 1920s and 1930s, led by Walter Johnson, as well as fellow Hall-of-Famers Bucky Harris, Goose Goslin, Sam Rice, Heinie Manush, and Joe Cronin. In particular, a rejuvenated Johnson rebounded in 1924 to win 23 games with the help of his catcher, Muddy Ruel, as the Senators won the American League pennant for the first time in its history. The Senators then faced John McGraw's heavily favored New York Giants in the 1924 World Series. The two teams traded wins back and forth with three games of the first six being decided by one run. In the deciding 7th game, the Senators were trailing the Giants 3–1 in the 8th inning when Bucky Harris hit a routine ground ball to third that hit a pebble and took a bad hop over Giants third baseman Freddie Lindstrom. Two runners scored on the play, tying the score at three. An aging Walter Johnson came in to pitch the ninth inning and held the Giants scoreless into extra innings. In the bottom of the twelfth inning, Ruel hit a high, foul ball directly over home plate. The Giants' catcher, Hank Gowdy, dropped his protective mask to field the ball but, failing to toss the mask aside, stumbled over it and dropped the ball, thus giving Ruel another chance to bat. On the next pitch, Ruel hit a double; he proceeded to score the winning run when Earl McNeely hit a ground ball that took another bad hop over Lindstrom's head. This would mark the only World Series triumph for the franchise during their 60-year tenure in Washington.
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