What did Twins fans wear to the playoff games? New jerseys and old friends

The Twins' 2023 postseason is over, ultimately with the same result as every other Twins postseason this century: no World Series title, no American League pennant.

But this year's Twins did seem to reenergize a fan base that had endured an unfathomable 18 consecutive playoff losses over 19 seasons. People showed up in force at Target Field, providing a postseason energy for the franchise that hadn't been felt since its championship seasons at the Metrodome.

Those fans arrived dressed in Twins gear, of course, with many wearing jerseys (or shirseys, T-shirts with uniform numbers) of their favorite players past and present. Sure, there were your old standbys — No. 7 Mauer, No. 34 Puckett, No. 25 Buxton and (somewhat surprisingly?) No. 26 Kepler appeared to be the most popular choices — but there were also some very deep cuts in Twins history.

Having attended three of the Twins' four home postseason games, we surreptitiously attempted to take photos of as many fans' jerseys as possible while wandering through the stadium.

If you recognize your back here, I apologize for my sneakiness — I was attempting to capture a slice of the fandom without actually bothering anyone while they were trying to enjoy the game. Here's a thread of some of the threads fans showed up in:

You can never go wrong with some of the all-time greats, can you? The players from the 1965 American League champions — Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat — will resonate with the franchise forever, and throw in Rod Carew, who joined those three in 1967.

Outside of the old Minneapolis Lakers, the 1987 and 1991 Twins remain the only two major men's teams from Minnesota to win a championship, and the late Kirby Puckett's No. 34 remains popular with fans nearly 30 years after his retirement.

After some lean years in the 1990s and the threat of franchise elimination in 2001, the Twins emerged to win six division championships over nine seasons from 2002 to 2010, a stretch that saw Target Field approved, built and opened. Yes, we can point out that the Twins lost almost every playoff game they played over that time, but let's not quibble.

After 2010, the Twins seemed to drop off the face of the baseball earth, losing at least 90 games in five of the next six seasons, including a franchise-worst 103 in 2016. A uniform switch in 2015, adding Kasota gold to the color mix, didn't really help much. At least the new stadium was nice, though.

We're including the Bomba Squad here just because the team marked such a change for the franchise and the start of Rocco Baldelli's tenure as manager. Most of the players who helped the 2019 Twins set a major league record with 307 home runs have departed, as have many of their successors. But the record still stands!

Fans appear to have taken to the Twins' 2023 wholesale redesign, with a new wordmark, new home and road caps and an especially popular new "Twin Cities" home alternate. Then the team went out and won the AL Central by nine games, won its first playoff game since 2004 and won its first playoff series since 2002. The Twins have something to build on for 2024, and they will be wearing some pretty slick uniforms while doing it.

We're always on the lookout for variety, but bonus points if your jersey is a real rarity. Andrew Albers might be the only player in Twins history with three separate stints with the team, coming in 2013, 2016 and 2021; as random relievers go, we feel they don't get much more random than Cody Stashak, and we need to amend that previous statement because they really don't get much more random than Tony Fiore, who finished eighth in 2002 AL Rookie of the Year voting but disappeared from the majors after 2003.

But our happiest find might have been this Casey Blake jersey. An Iowa native, Blake had a long and pretty good major league career — only it came mostly after he departed the Twins (29 games over three seasons from 2000 to 2002). It wasn't quite a David Ortiz-like transformation, but he ended up playing regularly for Cleveland and the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2003 to 2011. We were so surprised to see it that this gentleman was the only person we actually inquired about their jersey. It turns out, he's Blake's uncle.

My friend Shawn spotted this man wearing a Tim Teufel shirsey sitting on the third base side at Game 1 against Toronto. We have so many questions. Like, is this from 1985? If so, they made shirseys back then? If not, how did it come into existence? Like, could I buy a No. 9 Bombo Rivera shirsey nowadays? Or a No. 16 Dan Masteller? If you are the owner of this Tim Teufel shirt, please email us at ken.chia@startribune.com because we would like to know much, much more.