Surprise, Surprise

The owner wants to sell the team. The team qualifies for the playoffs. The community rallies around the team. The team stuns the baseball world with an upset in the first round in the playoffs, advancing within four victories of the World Series. And, yes, the owner jumps on the bandwagon, drenched in champagne.

This is a team of destiny.

This team is not the Angels.

Any other October, the team founded by a singing cowboy, the team with that mischievous monkey mascot, the team that cast aside four decades of frustration by winning a postseason series for the first time in franchise history, the team that knocked the big, bad Yankee bullies out of the playoffs, would be America’s sweethearts.

This October, however, the Minnesota Twins are the sentimental favorites, for one simple reason: Their owner, and his fellow owners, conspired to kill the team last winter. “We proved to a lot of people that you couldn’t get rid of us,” Minnesota closer Eddie Guardado said.

As the Angels and Twins open a most improbable American League championship series tonight, fans can argue for either team as a team of destiny. On that basis, Anaheim pitcher Scott Schoeneweis suggested his team should prevail.

“We’re named the Angels. That gives us the edge,” he said.

The Angels weren’t supposed to be here, not after finishing 41 games out of first place last year.

But, said Minnesota center fielder Torii Hunter, “We weren’t supposed to be here, literally.”

And so, 11 months after Minnesota owner Carl Pohlad volunteered his team for elimination, sending Twin fans scurrying to collect 2002 pocket schedules as souvenirs in case the team really did fold, the Twins are alive and well. All but one of their American League rivals have gone into hibernation for the winter, and the Angels are the lone remaining obstacle between the Twins and the World Series.

“If it wasn’t us here,” Angel pitcher Jarrod Washburn said, “I’d probably be pulling for them.”

Washburn grew up watching the Twins play, a two-hour drive from the family home in Wisconsin. Angel center fielder Darin Erstad piled into the car to catch the Twins, too, a six-hour drive from his home in North Dakota.

The Twins could use a new ballpark, sure. The attendance isn’t the greatest. But the team belongs to the people of the Upper Midwest, a point driven home in a corny jingle played before each game that encourages fans to “shout out hip, hooray, cheer for your Minnesota Twins today.”

So Pohlad, who put his hand up when Selig asked for volunteers for the so-called contraction plan, became a villain here. So did Selig, who announced the plan to kill the Twins and then asked why anyone would consider it a sad day.

But the good folks here discovered heroes too--Terry Ryan, the general manager who vowed to go down with the ship rather than interview for other jobs; Harry Crump, the judge who ruled that the Metrodome lease required the Twins to field a team rather than just write a rent check; Gov. Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler whose oratory in the halls of Congress embarrassed Selig.

Contraction failed, and the Twins lived to play another day. They won the AL Central by 13 1/2 games. They beat the supposedly invincible Oakland Athletics in the first round of the playoffs--Pohlad joined in the clubhouse celebration, somewhat awkwardly--and their team plane was greeted here by 1,500 fans, screaming outside in 38-degree weather.

“We pretty much showed the world the last thing they need to do is contract,” said Kirby Puckett, Minnesota’s Hall of Fame outfielder.

“And Oakland had 31,000 people for two games. We had 56,000. Who are you going to contract?”

Selig insisted Monday that he is happy for the Twins, for their survival and prosperity.

“It’s a great story,” he said. “It adds to the excitement of the playoffs. I give all the credit in the world to the Twins. As it turned out, the story had a happy ending.”

The Twins are not so willing to forgive and forget, not with the delicious possibility that they could win the World Series and Selig would have to walk into their clubhouse to present the championship trophy.

“That,” infielder Denny Hocking said, “is something everybody in here has talked about.

“It’s not going to be rated G.”

If the Twins do not advance to the World Series, they promise to cheer for the Angels. While the owners approach getting rid of the team in different ways--Disney never considered taking the money and folding the team--the Minnesota players appreciate the Angels and their special season.

“It’s phenomenal for baseball, the fact that us and the Angels are the last two teams standing in the American League,” Hocking said.

“Whoever wins, it’s going to be a good story--contraction to champions, or the end of all those years of frustration.”

Said first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz: “As much a feel-good story as we are, they are too. Regardless of who goes, it’s awesome that one of us will represent our league in the World Series.

“Someone’s destiny is going to be ended. We just hope it’s not ours. But, whoever wins the series, you’ve got to feel great about it.

“If it’s not us, I’m glad it’s not the Yankees.”