Why Target Field Matters

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The quick read

The Twins did not start as the Twins. The franchise began in 1901 as the Washington Senators, a charter American League club, and did not move to Minnesota until 1961. Both World Series titles, 1987 and 1991, were won indoors at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, not at Target Field. Target Field didn’t open until 2010, when the Twins traded the dome for an open-air park on a tight downtown block. It has its own postseason mark too: a 2023 series win over the Toronto Blue Jays that snapped an 18-game postseason losing streak.

From Washington to Minnesota

The team that plays at Target Field has been in the American League since the league’s first season. The Washington Senators were a charter AL club in 1901, and for six decades they were a Washington, D.C. institution built around one of the best pitchers the sport has produced. Walter Johnson threw for the Senators from 1907 to 1927, and the franchise’s only Washington-era World Series title came in 1924.

The Senators stayed mostly bad for the rest of that stretch, and by the late 1950s the owner was looking for a new home. Calvin Griffith moved the franchise to Minnesota for the 1961 season, and the team took a name built for where it landed: the Twins, short for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. A second Washington Senators franchise was created as an expansion team that same year, which is why baseball has two separate “Senators” chapters and only one of them ends up in Minnesota.

Two titles under a roof

Both Twins World Series titles came at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the enclosed dome the team played in from 1982 through 2009. Target Field did not exist yet for either one.

1987: the Homer Hankies

The 1987 Twins beat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games for the franchise’s first championship in Minnesota. The Metrodome crowd waved white hankies that postseason, nicknamed Homer Hankies, and the noise inside the dome became part of the story of the series. It was the first World Series title the state of Minnesota had ever seen.

1991: one of the best World Series ever played

Four years later the Twins beat the Atlanta Braves in another seven-game series, one of the greatest World Series ever played. Five of the seven games were decided by one run, and three went to extra innings. Kirby Puckett forced Game 7 by himself in Game 6, hitting a walk-off home run. Game 7 belonged to Jack Morris, who threw all ten innings of a scoreless shutout, still one of the signature single-game pitching performances in World Series history.

The streak Target Field snapped

The two titles belong to the Metrodome, but Target Field has its own postseason chapter. The Twins beat the Toronto Blue Jays 2 games to 0 in the 2023 American League Wild Card Series, and both games were played at Target Field. The sweep snapped an 18-game postseason losing streak.

The franchise’s greats

The Twins have sent multiple players to Cooperstown, and the list spans the Metrodome era all the way to today’s Target Field crowd. Harmon Killebrew, one of the most feared power hitters of his generation, hit 573 home runs in a Twins/Senators career and has a statue on Target Plaza. Rod Carew won seven American League batting titles and remains one of the best pure hitters the franchise has had. Tony Oliva won a batting title in his Rookie of the Year season, 1964, and finished his career a three-time batting champion. Then he waited decades for the Hall of Fame call, which finally came in 2022. Kent Hrbek, a Bloomington native, anchored first base for both the 1987 and 1991 championship teams, a homegrown player on a homegrown title run.

The newest name on that list is Joe Mauer, born and raised in St. Paul, who won the American League MVP in 2009 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2024. A statue of Mauer was unveiled on Target Plaza in April 2025, joining the others in bronze outside the gates. A hometown kid becoming a Hall of Famer for the team he grew up watching is a rare thing in baseball, and Minnesota got to watch the whole arc happen.

The park that opened in 2010

For 28 seasons the Twins played all of their home games indoors. The Metrodome was a domed, fully enclosed building, and by the 2000s it read as a relic. Target Field was the correction. It opened on April 12, 2010, and the Twins beat the Boston Red Sox 5-2 in the debut.

The new park had no roof at all, a deliberate contrast with the building it replaced. It was built on a compact downtown site, one of the smallest ballpark footprints in the majors, faced in Minnesota limestone quarried from Mankato and Kasota, with the Minneapolis skyline sitting beyond the outfield instead of a parking lot or a highway. The building earned LEED Silver certification when it opened, the second major professional sports stadium in the country to earn any LEED rating, and was recertified LEED Gold in 2017, the first U.S. sports venue to reach that level.

The statues that tell the story

The short version of this franchise’s history stands outside the gates on Target Plaza. Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Kirby Puckett all have statues that were unveiled when the park opened in 2010, along with one of Carl Pohlad, who bought the team in 1984, and his wife Eloise. Tony Oliva’s statue followed in 2011, and Kent Hrbek’s in 2012, adding the 1987-91 core to the plaza one player at a time. Tom Kelly, who managed both championship teams, joined them in 2017, on the weekend the club marked 30 years since the first one. Joe Mauer’s statue, unveiled in April 2025, is the newest addition and brings the plaza up through the present day.

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