October always brings with it postseason baseball and Halloween. Therefore, it’s worth looking into the deeper superstitions that tie the game and Halloween together when they collide. The Minnesota Twins are arguably fighting another postseason curse after snapping their 0-18 streak two years ago.
Minnesota’s collapse last season will take a long time for Twins fans to forget. It’s the worst collapse for playoff contention the team has ever had in the franchise’s history, but it is far from the first time it’s happened to the Twins.
They suffered a sudden-death elimination in 2008 and another slow-burn collapse in 1992. For whatever reason, the Twins have established a pattern every 16 years since winning it all in 1991: They’ll contend for the postseason but heartbreakingly miss out.
The latest came in 2015 when the Twins had an unexpected chance to make the playoffs and were only a game out of the final AL Wild Card spot with three games left in the season. However, Minnesota’s last heartbreaking elimination in the regular season came 16 years ago in Game 163 against the Chicago White Sox.
Everyone remembers the thrilling back-and-forth game 163 against the Detroit Tigers in 2009. However, in their Game 163 against the Chicago White Sox in 2008, all Twins fans recall is how helpful it would have been to have replay challenges six years earlier. It was one of the few times in their careers that Nick Blackburn and John Danks were locked into a pitcher’s duel; the Twins and White Sox combined for seven hits the whole game.
The Twins ended up on the worst end, combining for only two hits from Michael Cuddyer and Brendan Harris. Fortunately, Cuddyer gave the Twins a chance to get a run in the top of the fifth as he led off with a double and advanced to third on a sac fly from Delmon Young. Harris hit a fly ball out to shallow center where Ken Griffey Jr. stood, and he threw a ball directly to A.J. Pierzynski as Cuddyer charged into him.
Maybe if MLB had implemented replay sooner, Cuddyer could have been called safe because his old teammate committed catcher interference.
It was not as close as the play at the plate a year before in 2007’s Game 163 between the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres, where Matt Holliday scored the game-winning run on what the Padres saw as a clear out at home. But the Twins never got a runner in scoring position after that, so they missed out on the postseason on a bad tag from third.
It was the first time in 16 years that the Twins had collapsed that hard. 1992 wasn’t a sudden death elimination as 2008 was for the Twins, but it was more of a slow-burn collapse than 2024. Minnesota was in a close race with the Oakland Athletics for first place in the AL West all season. They had the upper hand on the A’s in the first half of the season, going 5-2 against them in their first two series.
But a three-game series at the Metrodome in late July changed everything. The Twins were up three games on Oakland when it started on July 27. However, the A’s swept the Twins to tie for the division lead. They regained a lead over the next week. However, after a 19-11 loss to the White Sox at Comiskey on August 3, the Twins permanently fell out of first place and slowly collapsed.
The Twins had a good chance to repeat as division champions for the first time since 1969-70 in 1992. Still, solid pitching from John Smiley, Kevin Tapani, and Scott Erickson was not enough to carry a slumping offense that felt Kent Hrbek’s absence, who missed 50 games due to injury.
The 1992 team was much healthier than the Twins were last year. Still, even when players are healthy, having only 104 home runs combined made it nearly impossible to keep up with an A’s lineup featuring Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, and Harold Baines.
While all three iterations of these Twins teams experienced their postseason chances slip away differently, the most common thread they share in their collapse is the lineup falling apart. The 1992 Twins had a solid .265/.333/.363 triple slash in their 1992 collapse, but they had a .695 OPS and hit only 28 home runs over their final 57 games. The ‘08 Twins barely mustered together hits in Game 163, and they saw Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau go a combined 0-for-6 when Minnesota needed them the most.
Last year was the worst collapse, though. The Twins had a .228/.292/.354 triple slash as a team in their 12-27 collapse. However, they at least showed more power than the 1992 team, hitting 31 home runs in their final 39 games.
The No. 16 has no curse connotations in mythological literature. Still, it has become a bit of a curse for Minnesota’s playoff chances since 1992. Fortunately, the Twins won’t have to test this curse theory for another 16 years in 2040. Until then, fans can rest assured they will not repeat such a terrible decline next season.
