5 Shocking Facts About the Minnesota Twins' World Series History

The Minnesota Twins have played in three World Series and won two of them, in 1987 and 1991. Most fans know that much. What they don't usually know is how strange the history around those Series is. It involves a team that almost moved to Minneapolis instead, a ballpark that turned into a shopping mall, two champions nobody saw coming, a stadium record that will probably never be matched, and a road losing streak that started when Calvin Coolidge was president.

Here are five facts, counting down to the most shocking one.

5. Minnesota was supposed to get the New York Giants

In the 1950s, the New York Giants owned the Minneapolis Millers, the city's Triple-A team. Under the rules of the day, that gave them the major-league territorial rights to Minneapolis, and Giants owner Horace Stoneham told the Millers' general manager in 1954 that he planned to move there. All he needed was a stadium.

Minnesota built him one. Metropolitan Stadium went up in a cornfield in Bloomington and opened on April 24, 1956, with a Millers game.

Then Walter O'Malley got involved. The Dodgers owner was taking his team to Los Angeles and wanted a rival on the West Coast with him. In May 1957, O'Malley sat in on a meeting between Stoneham and San Francisco Mayor George Christopher. On Aug. 19, 1957, the Giants' board voted 8-1 to move to San Francisco. The Giants announced their move before the Dodgers made Los Angeles official that October.

Minnesota had to wait four more years. The Washington Senators moved to Bloomington for the 1961 season and became the Twins.

4. The Twins lost their first World Series where the Mall of America stands

Metropolitan Stadium hosted exactly one World Series, in 1965. The Twins split the first six games with the Dodgers, then lost Game 7 at home on Oct. 14, 1965, when Sandy Koufax threw a 3-hit shutout on two days' rest. It was the Twins' only home loss in World Series history. (We told that story in full here: Sandy Koufax sits out Game 1 for Yom Kippur, then wins Game 7.)

The Twins moved to the Metrodome after the 1981 season, and the wrecking balls went to work on the Met in January 1985. On Aug. 11, 1992, the Mall of America opened on the same land.

The ballpark didn't vanish completely. In the floor of Nickelodeon Universe, the mall's indoor amusement park, a brass plaque marks exactly where home plate used to be. High on a wall, a single red seat marks where Harmon Killebrew's 520-foot home run landed in 1967.

3. The 1987 champions shouldn't have been there, and the 1991 champions came from last place

The 1987 Twins went 85-77. At the time, that was the worst regular-season record a World Series champion had ever had over a full 162-game season. (The 2006 Cardinals, at 83-78, later took the title.) It gets worse: the 1987 Twins were outscored over the season, 806 runs allowed to 786 scored, and they went 29-52 on the road. They still beat the Cardinals in seven games.

Four years later, they did something stranger. The 1990 Twins finished last in the American League West at 74-88. The 1991 Twins won 95 games and the World Series. And the team they beat, the Atlanta Braves, had finished last in the National League West in 1990, at 65-97. Before 1991, no team had ever reached the World Series a year after finishing last. That October, both teams did.

The Series that followed is still one of the best ever played: five one-run games, three extra-inning games, Kirby Puckett's walk-off home run in Game 6, and Jack Morris' 10-inning, 1-0 shutout in Game 7.

2. The Metrodome hosted something no stadium ever will again

In October 1991, the Metrodome hosted the World Series. In January 1992, it hosted Super Bowl XXVI, Washington's 37-24 win over Buffalo. In April 1992, it hosted the Final Four, where Duke won its second straight national title. All three happened in less than six months.

The Metrodome is the only stadium ever to host a World Series, a Super Bowl and a Final Four. A few others came close. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was the first to host both a World Series (1959) and a Super Bowl (Super Bowl I, 1967), and San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium and Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium later did both, but none of them ever hosted a Final Four. Tropicana Field hosted a Final Four and a World Series but never a Super Bowl.

Baseball and football teams don't share stadiums anymore, and the Metrodome came down in 2014. Its record is probably safe forever.

1. The Twins have never won a World Series game outside Minnesota

In three World Series, the Minnesota Twins are 11-1 at home and 0-9 on the road. The only home loss was Koufax in Game 7 in 1965. At the Metrodome, they were a perfect 8-0. In 1987 and 1991, the home team won every single game of the Series, something that had never happened before 1987.

After the 1987 Series, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog called it an amazing series, because the home team won every game.

The streak is older than the Twins. The franchise's last World Series road win came on Oct. 7, 1925, when it was still the Washington Senators and Walter Johnson won Game 1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Since then, it has lost 14 straight World Series road games: three in 1925, two in 1933 and all nine as the Twins.

So if the Twins ever make it back to the World Series, the plan is simple: get home-field advantage.

Which of these surprised you most? Let us know in the comments.