Raising the Flag of the Minnesota Twins Nation

(If your name is Jonathan you might want to stop reading now)

I was born in Manhattan close to the end of 1989. From there I proceeded to live on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (2nd St and Avenue A) and in the Bronx (off of the Henry Hudson Parkway around 236th st) until August of 1997, when my Dad decided to close his law practice and attend Princeton Theological Seminary. Both my parents were from New York, which would give us an inherent imperative to support all New York teams. Although my mom is rather nonchalant when it comes to sports, it might be fair to say that my Dad's first love was baseball. He was raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and used to shine shoes outside of Yankees stadium so that he could get enough money to buy a ticket to get inside the stadium and watch a game. My dad is a Yankees fan for life. And it was these experiences that defined my life as a sports fan and my identity as a Yankees fan. Until Michael Drost.

Mike is a die-hard Minnesota Twins fan. Issue: Mike was born in Vermont and raised in Connecticut.
Vermont

Connecticut

Both places are a ways away from the twin cities (rougly a 23 hour trip driving according to Google Maps. (see image below for reference)

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How do we reconcile this issue with the fact of the matter? Well, Mike is an identical twin and with his twin he formulated this cute idea that as twins what better team would there be to support besides the Twins? And so two Twins fans were born. From then on they made an oath to switch as many people over to be Twins fans as much as possible. And at this point I would like to say that Mike has succeeded in switching me over.

It really began a couple of weeks ago when the Twins were playing the Nationals in DC. Because Mike and I go to school in DC and he had cable he was very excited about being able to watch the games live instead of on MLB Gameday. Being the obliging girlfriend I watched all of the games with him. I was raised as a Yankees fan, but since I come from a baseball family watching the game was exciting in itself, but I didn't want to admit this. Since then I've gone from mocking every Twins loss to watching MLB Gameday on my own with MLB Network on TV in the background, getting offended by every bad call and upset with every bad Twins at bat or fielding error. Then today I was at Bank of America opening a checking account and when you get a check card they let you personalize it with anything you want. And one of the options was MLB teams. They also had Georgetown and that was tempting as well. It came down to deciding between a Minnesota Twins vanity card or a Georgetown University vanity card. When the woman helping me told me that with the Keep the Change process the bank offers I would get more money matched by the bank with the Twins card it was a done deal.

While there was the added incentive of the Twins card being able to get me more money, I think it speaks volumes about how my opinion of this team has changed since Mike first made me even consider their existence back in freshman year. And I think that I can honestly say that I am a Twins fan now.

The Second Coming of Baby Jesus?

Here's an interesting interview on Baseball Today with Joe Mauer, also known as Baby Jesus, of the Minnesota Twins. He's a phenomenal catcher and hitter and has really caught my attention after coming into the season a month after the rest of the team and hitting a home run at his first at bat (that's right, Mike, even I'm impressed).

For more Twins related news and knowledgeable insight check out Twins on Twins.

As far as race relations goes, there is nothing more inquisitive than a young, impressionable child (though I bet Mike could give one a run for his/her money). Here's an article about how a mother "learned" about race relations when her child visited her at work and asked why one of her coworker's face was brown. It's not so much an issue of a child asking an honest question than some unfortunate situation on the part of the parents that allowed the child to only be exposed to other fair-skinned people like himself rather than being exposed to a diverse group of people. Or maybe I should just put my race card back into my wallet?