The 2019 Minnesota Twins will be remembered by most fans as the team to break the home run record by hitting a staggering 307 home runs in a single season. For us Twins fans, however, we will remember them for making history in a different way; when the Twins lost to the New York Yankees in the American League Divisional Series, it marked the 16th straight playoff loss since 2004, which ties the record of most consecutive playoff losses in all professional sports.

One might think the pain gets numb after a while for the Twins’ faithful fans. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. With each loss comes another wave of agony, anger, and embarrassment. Even the Twins fans who have seen it all, who know not to get their hopes up when reaching the playoffs, still suffer just like the rest of us fans.

What makes the pain even worse is that the Twins remarkably find a new way to lose every single time. Take the most recent series for example: The Yankees managed to beat us in the first two games because of poor pitching. However, in the third and final game, both pitchers pitched very well, but of course, the Yankees came out on top. Our offense, which was known to be lethal for pitchers, left 11 people on base. Again, for the non-baseball fans out there, this means that we had a chance to capitalize and score 11 times, and instead of scoring, we fell flat on our faces.

This past series versus the Yankees sums up the Twins’ performance in the playoffs. In fact, it sums up all major Minnesota sports teams in the playoffs. Amazingly, the Twins are actually the most successful team out of all mainstream sports teams in Minnesota with two championships. The Timberwolves and Wild have never made it to their leagues’ championship series, and have always been disappointments excluding a handful of playoff runs. The Vikings, and it pains me to write this, are disputably the unluckiest team of all time. I will not go into detail in consideration of my mental stability, but just know we don’t have the brightest history.

Rooting for a Minnesota team is a health hazard. Honestly, the heartbreak and suffering we have to go through is comparable to destroying your heart with a sledgehammer every single day. From the Vikings missing field goals, to the Twins not being able to win a playoff game, to the Wild and Timberwolves being irrelevant, Minnesota fans have suffered through decades of agony. This recent Twins playoff defeat only adds to unbearable suffering.

This leads me to wonder; why us? Why do our teams lead us on, give us hope, and hype us up only to let us down time and time again? It’s even more remarkable that this is the case for all of our teams. You look at other states, who maybe have one or two teams each that just can’t win when it matters. For some reason, however, the sports gods decided it would be fun to see Minnesotans suffer the most, and put some sort of curse on all of our teams. 

In the meantime, us Twins fans will find a way to cope; we always do. While our coping styles may vary, we all do have one thing in common. We all remind ourselves of a saying that is all too familiar to us: “There’s always next year.”