We're Gonna Win, Twins! (est. 1961)

[Brananorama]

We’re gonna win, Twins, we’re gonna score!
We’re gonna win, Twins, watch that baseball soar!
Crack out a home run, shout a hip-hooray!
Cheer for the Minnesota Twins today!

We’re gonna win, Twins, give it our all!
We’ve got the guys who’ll knock the cover off the ball!
Let’s hear it now for the team that came to play!
Cheer for the Minnesota Twins today!

“We’re Gonna Win, Twins” is the official fight song of the Minnesota Twins, and it’s been in use since their inaugural 1961 season. The music was composed by Dick Wilson (unfortunately not of Mr. Whipple fame), an jingle-writing advertising executive. Ray Charles (unfortunately not of Jamie Foxx biopic fame) was tasked with writing Twins-centric lyrics after the team bought the rights to the song from Wilson’s agency, Campbell Mithun, for one dollar. From that moment on, the Minnesota Twins used that song: a song that could be heard in three different ballparks, during the retiring of 7 different numbers, and during the hoisting of two championship trophies.

In 1961, Major League Baseball expanded for the first time in sixty years, adding an additional two teams to the younger American League. The first team went west, joining the Dodgers and Giants near the Pacific Coast to become the Los Angeles Angels -- baseball’s third Californian team. The second expansion team was given to Minneapolis -- but wound up in Washington, D.C. instead. Calvin Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, requested to move his team up to Minnesota in favor of giving Washington the expansion team. The motion was granted, and Griffith moved his Senators -- upset winners of the 1924 World Series, their only championship in sixty seasons in the nation’s capital -- northward bound.

Just one year prior in 1960, the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers elected to move westward to Los Angeles. Despite Los Angeles having no lakes and purple and gold having been established as the colors of Minnesota sports teams, the organization was unhappy with attendance numbers -- as bitter St. Paul fans, who thought the team should have gone to their, refused to support the team in person; the Lakers moved, and Jerry West -- drafted by the team when they were still in Minneapolis -- never played a game in Minnesota. He went on to the National Basketball Association’s Hall of Fame, and to this day remains the silhouetted player in the NBA logo.

Wanting to avoid the dispute between the cities that ultimately ended the Lakers’ tenure in the North Star State, Griffith requested an unconventional moniker for the team, and submitted the “Twin Cities Twins” to the MLB as the new name, hoping to bridge the divide between Minneapolis and St. Paul. MLB objected, but later accepted Griffith’s response to simply name the team after the state -- and the Minnesota Twins were born, becoming the first team in major-league history not to be named for a given city. When the Twins’ logo sprung into existence, it featured characters “Minnie” and “Paul” -- fictionalized players of the independent Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints teams -- shaking hands over the Mississippi River, representing the unity Griffith had brought to the state. The Twins’ primary cap insignia of “TC” reflects his original desire for the team’s name.

Since they wound up a migrating franchise rather than an expansion team, the Twins didn’t have to worry about fielding a team full of bench players -- led by Harmon Killebrew, Camilo Pascual, and Jack Kralick, among a few other talented Senators carry-overs, Minnesota began their journey as a major-league ballclub.

[Brananorama]

And with a very abridged history of the team covered, that brings us to the introduction of this dynasty! I’ve never done a historical dynasty before, so we’ll see how this goes. I’ll be taking over as both the general manager and manager of the Minnesota Twins from their inception in the 1961 season, and playing just over fifty seasons until the end of the 2014 campaign -- at which point I’ll be cross-referencing my results with the true results of the Twins. Will we have more Hall of Famers? More World Championships? More playoff appearances? More wins? Less, of all of the above? We’ll have to find out.


There isn’t too much to get into in the way of settings -- I’m using the Spritze database, a reserve roster, and the 20-80 rating scale, my personal favorite. I’ll be letting the game’s development engine run its course -- we’ll see how the players develop on their own from 1961 onward, to ensure that there are enough surprises to keep things interesting. Historical transactions + lineups are, of course, off, as I look to make this team better than just a pair of World Series wins.