What is it about attending Target Field that makes us forgive our differences?

So here we are again, gorgeous and perspiring, bobbing against each other in the crowded flow of the concrete concourses of Target Field.

Children on shoulders, arms hooked with parents and grandparents, ballpark lifers carrying today's scorecard through the crowd with steely-eyed purpose, and the never subsiding, rapturous return to the alfresco joy of friends gathering at the Budweiser Roof Deck, Minnie & Paul's and the Gray Duck Deck.

The Twins have nine games in a row in downtown Minneapolis, starting Monday. After attending a week of games during their most recent homestand in late July, the collective beauty of all these souls being squeezed together again was more than enough to make your heart break at everything we have lost and make your heart swell at what a gift it is to have it all back.

How much we all need this.

How hungry we are for each other.

And also, just how hungry we are.

Take your fine dining and proper etiquette and go talk to a wall. We are celebrating. We are stopping mid-step amid hundreds of bodies to extend tacos into each other's mouths in the bottom of the first inning. We are standing in the sliver of light next to the left-field foul pole on the third deck to just absorb ice cream. We are striding away from the 35-deep line at Red Cow to devour tiny burgers. And we are grabbing weird paper cups of French fries and, forgoing all rationale, tossing ketchup on top of them like dollops of paint.

We are alive.

And we are eating every sausage.

If there is some question about whether the record of the team on the field matters, let the record show, it mostly does not. Wins and losses are concerns for another time. Communal joy has been in short supply, and we will take every instance of it.

During the most recent homestand the Twins traded Nelson Cruz, were nearly no-hit and lost a game with a combined 31 runs scored, and in the midst of it all were ecstatic moments of revelry, legitimate euphoric screaming, and shrugged "who could possibly care" shoulders under hospital-gown-blue skies.

And while the perception might be that to come downtown right now is perilous or terrifying, after a week spent traveling to and from Target Field on public transit in the middle of sweltering afternoons and sweltering nights, it felt like being here was actually to be reminded of what we all care about.

Elderly couples with toes right up against the shade line created from an upper deck overhang. Senior veterans wearing caps of their Navy boats and infantries. Toddlers bounding about with T.C. Bear at T.C. Bear's Den while parents try haphazardly to corral them. The 20- and 30-somethings at the bars, not even paying attention to the game. The autograph hawks waiting for the gates to open to rush the dugouts.

And, best of all, the milling nomads and the wandering hordes, looking for their seat, their friends, their next bite of food or next drink. Looking for a hat, a shirt, a baseball. Or just on the plaza, leaning back from the railings, in love with no longer being confined.

To come to Target Field for a week last month, to walk among thousands of Minnesotans, to see their families and friends and hear their laughter, to watch them start the wave seemingly always in the eighth inning, was to remember how achingly beautiful it is to share this life with complete and utter strangers.

And to wonder why this feels so easy.

• • •

A note on the Twins ballpark in late summer 2021: it is multifaceted. It is slightly paternalistic, pro-military, anti-racist, proudly patriotic and believes in science.

About 15 minutes before first pitch the team airs a public service announcement in which they let it be known that everyone is welcome at the stadium and that when it comes to the Twins relationship to diverse peoples: "We see you. We hear you. We are you."

The entire right field wall has become a reminder on racial injustice in Minnesota. There is a sign at field level commemorating George Floyd's year of birth and the year he was murdered by Derek Chauvin. Standing slightly off to the side of the right-field overhang is a sign that simply says, "End Racism" with the Twins logo beneath it.

Toward left-center field near the bullpen, a strip sign advises, "Roll up your sleeves, Twins territory," in a push to increase COVID-19 vaccinations around the state.

Also before the first pitch, the team holds an earnest military celebration where they invite citizens of Minnesota who have served to be honored and raise the American flag before the national anthem.

On Sundays, the Twins have a singer perform "God Bless America."

And tucked away in the concourses there is the Target Field Code of Conduct, which prohibits certain types of clothes, certain types of language, any attempts to harm others, inappropriate displays of public affection, overt intoxication, running on the field, and no guns are allowed.

And everyone there is OK with all of it.

If, in our personal lives, we did not agree with one strand or another of the Target Field message, that disagreement does not get in the way of the common good.

We let each other live. Give each other space. Step aside in a crowded area. Hold open doors. Make room for wheelchairs, for elderly folks, for children, all while maintaining a kind of aloof happiness.

An annoyingly cynical part of the brain might think, so what? It's a game.

But it's also, over the course of these long homestands, well over 100,000 people in total attendance. Most of them citizens of this state.

So after spending so much joyous time at Target Field I could not help but wonder:

Why is it so easy, at something as trivial as a sporting event, to exhibit such effortless human decency toward one another despite our differences?

And if the answer is simply that it's because we are all rooting for the same thing inside Target Field, then I have to ask, what is it exactly that we are all rooting for outside of it?

• • •

Every Friday night from June to August, the Twins host fireworks. Or well, Securian Financial hosts fireworks and reminds you that #EveryMomentCounts.

The promotion worked after the Twins beat the Angels on July 23, because the rolling mass of fans that was heading toward Gate 34 mostly hit the brakes when the stadium lights dimmed and the infield was orbed by fluorescent, futuristic lighting.

We stood there and looked up as banal, gorgeous fireworks exploded above our heads. The smoke clouding the sky, for once, was of no concern.

Fingers pointed aloft, kids faces aglow; even teenagers didn't seem to mind taking a few more minutes with their parents.

Why not linger, for a moment, in this feeling?

And then it ended and we headed for the plaza where the bucket drummers were rattling, and the darkened mauve of the night summer sky settled above us, as we went back out into our home, together.