I’ve loved the Twins ever since Calvin Griffith moved the Washington Senators franchise to Minnesota in 1961. The Griffith family cultivated an organization devoted to scouting baseball talent, developing an excellent farm system, inculcating baseball fundamentals, preaching team play, and signing local heroes such as Kent Hrbek and Joe Mauer.

Game 6 of the 1991 World Series, with the Twins playing the Atlanta Braves and trailing three games to two, provides one of the team’s emblematic moments. Before the game, Twins great Kirby Puckett called the team to attention: “I just have one announcement to make: You guys should jump on my back tonight. I’m going to carry us.” Kirby carried the team until the bottom of the eleventh, when he hit the walk-off home run that made the seventh game an anticlimax. If you saw that game, you remember it, and you understand how the team might elicit a fan’s love. — Scott W. Johnson is a Minneapolis attorney and contributor to Power Line.

For more from this opening-day weekend, see NRO’s baseball symposium. There are Angels and Rangers and Braves and teams in between, above, and below. And, of course, the Yankees. Thanks to John Miller for doing the leg and diamond work. — KJL