True believers in the Minnesota Twins were plentiful the morning after the team clinched the American League Central Division but throughout the late summer months and right up through the closing stretch of the race skeptics were far more plentiful. The doubters were typically male, a little out of shape, and with just enough knowledge of baseball to pass themselves off as experts.
The unbelievers argued the Twins were in a tailspin. The team had lost key starters and was playing awful baseball. Even when the Detroit Tigers refused to capitalize on that team's many opportunities to win the division, the odds overwhelmingly favored the front-runner. Even when the Twins were the hottest team in baseball, winning 17 of their last 21 games, the skeptics said the Twins' valiant efforts would be eventually be in vain. It was just too high a mountain to climb.
The Twins 6-5 one-game tiebreaker victory against the Tigers Tuesday night proved the skeptics wrong. And no matter how Minnesota's boys of autumn fare against the favored Yankees their come from behind charge will long be remembered by baseball fans as a gritty display of athletic determination and resilience. And besides, it was just plain fun to watch this team of over-achievers.
Baseball analysts peg the Yankees' payroll at three times that of the Twins but Manager Ron Gardenhire's charges prove that big bucks don't guarantee success on the field. No matter the outcome of the American League Championship Series the Twins have given us a pennant race that will make baseball's last season in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome a memorable one.
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