Team and Franchise Traditions
Fans wave a Homer Hanky to rally the team during play-offs and other crucial games. The Homer Hanky was created by Terrie Robbins of the Star Tribune newspaper in the Twin Cities in 1987. It was her idea to originally give away 60,000 inaugural Homer Hankies. That year, over 2.3 million Homer Hankies were distributed.
The party atmosphere of the Twins clubhouse after a win is well-known, the team's players unwinding with loud rock music (usually the choice of the winning pitcher) and video games.
The club has several hazing rituals, such as requiring the most junior relief pitcher on the team to carry water and snacks to the bullpen in a brightly colored small child's backpack (Barbie in 2005, SpongeBob SquarePants in 2006, Hello Kitty in 2007, Disney Princess and Tinkerbell in 2009, Chewbacca and Darth Vader in 2010), and many of its players, both past and present, are notorious pranksters. For example, Bert Blyleven earned the nickname "The Frying Dutchman" for his ability to pull the "hotfoot" – which entails crawling under the bench in the dugout and lighting a teammate's shoelaces on fire.
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Famous quotes containing the words team and, team, franchise and/or traditions:
“Imagination is a valuable asset in business and she has a sister, Understanding, who also serves. Together they make a splendid team and business problems dissolve and the impossible is accomplished by their ministrations.... Imagination concerning the world’s wants and the individual’s needs should be the Alpha and Omega of self-education.”
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“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
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