The year 1960 marked a turning point for professional sports in Minnesota. With the Minneapolis Lakers’ last game in 1960 came the end of city branding in our state. Out were the names Minneapolis and St. Paul, and in came teams with a statewide moniker: the Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, and Wild. Other than the rogue St. Paul Saints – until recently an independent club – there aren’t any major sports teams that use city names.
In the grand scheme, it’s not a big deal, but in an era where the scapegoating of “Minneapolis” forms a toxic urban-rural divide, it’s always bothered me that our sports franchises do so little to embrace their home cities. Sports serve as another part of a general Minnesotan allergy toward city branding: how come Iowa has a license plate with a skyline on it but we don’t?
[image_credit]Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society[/image_credit][image_caption]Members of the 1950 Minneapolis Lakers.[/image_caption]
The origins of urban erasure
The end of city branding began in a 1950s Bloomington cornfield, when the Metropolitan Sports Area Commission, a partnership between Minneapolis and Bloomington, built a speculative baseball diamond meant to lure an east coast franchise to the then fast-growing Twin Cities metro area. It worked, and Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith brought his baseball team to Minnesota in 1961, soon joined by the brand-new Minnesota Vikings franchise. The arrival of the Twins signaled the end for both the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints, who had been rivals in the American Association since the early 20th century.
With the annexation of the Millers and Saints, the branding of the Minnesota Twins required a delicate subsumption of city identities into a larger geography. Thus the appearance of the two oversized ballplayers, Minnie and Paul, shaking hands across the river, who until very recently stood high atop center field scoreboard. Similarly, though never spelled out, the distinctive “TC” hat implicitly stood for “Twin Cities.” According to the indispensable uniform history blog, MLBCollectors.com, putting an ‘M’ on their hat would have been read as saying ‘Minneapolis’, and needed to be avoided to maintain geographic neutrality.
When the team finally moved back to Minneapolis at its indoor metrodome location, it might as well have been Elk River for all the views of the city skyline you could see. It wasn’t until the 1987 rebrand that the franchise felt comfortable enough to add an ‘M’ logo. Only with the construction of Target Field in 2010, did the actual city of Minneapolis make an appearance, with the west side of the skyline and and stadium entrances seamlessly integrated into the North Loop and Warehouse District neighborhoods.
[image_credit]Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society[/image_credit][image_caption]Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, circa 1956.[/image_caption]
For the next two seasons, the sign stood out like a sore thumb in a state where regional branding has long been the default mode. A sign like that would have been commonplace in cities like Chicago or Boston — see David Ortiz’s famous “Our city” speech — the sentiment ran against the broader anti-urban currents that are common in Minnesota.
Where’s the “city” in city edition?
Another example: the Minnesota Timberwolves have been committing years-long malpractice with their “city edition” uniforms. Since 2017, in partnership with Nike, each NBA team has released a collectible alternative jersey that they wear a few times per season. According to the original launch, the city editions “represent insights and emotion from the court to … the cities’ streets”.
In practice, this means that NBA teams amp up their city branding. New Orleans becomes NOLA; streets like MLK (Atlanta); nicknames like The Land (Cleveland) or Cream City (Milwaukee); and even state-branded teams like Golden State become Oakland or The Bay. Most notably, the Brooklyn Nets, already named after a New York City borough, released a “Bed-Stuy” jersey, diving down into the specific Brooklyn neighborhood where the stadium is located.
With their annual release of a new “city edition” designs, each year the Timberwolves miss another golden opportunity to, you know, mention their city in any way. The Wolves have put MINN and MSP on their jersey, but made no mention of Minneapolis. Across the entire league, it’s rare that a city edition avoids so neglects its city; only Utah and Indiana have kept their state names, and your guess is as good as mine about those teams.
Hope for the Twin Cities
Still there’s hope. On Friday at the Mall of America, just a few feet from the original Metropolitan Stadium home plate, the Minnesota Twins released an ambitious rebranding that kept the retro TC logo (returning to the flat, sans-serif ‘T’ of yore) along with an all-new M hat. (My short take is that I like them, and am glad to see the end of the odious Kasota Gold trim.)
[image_credit]Courtesy of David Brauer[/image_credit][image_caption]An image from Target Field depicting the “Mpls: This is our city” sign in right field.[/image_caption]
It’s a start. Maybe the Twins will rub off on their neighbors in nextdoor Target Center. I’m holding out hope that, one day, the Timberwolves release a city edition that is actually contented to the city they play in, Minneapolis Minnesota, the largest city in the state. MPLS fits perfectly on an NBA jersey. If they do, I guarantee that it’ll sell like hotcakes.
Previously we had Minneapolis or St. Paul teams. Rather than change to Twin Cities the change was to Minnesota, to bury the rivalry. Not just sports but also arts (Minnesota Orchestra) and journalism (MinnPost). Greater Minnesota Republicans are putting the hate on Minneapolis and St. Paul, but so are some from the suburbs. Walz is right with One Minnesota. Put the pettiness aside. Many teams use state name – it just expands the fan base.
Also the Twins originally played ball at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington.
Given the size of the Twin Cities, they have a relatively limited national profile. Part of it is our out-of-the-way location, but the sports team names also are a factor. You could also mention The Minnesota Orchestra supplanting the Minneapolis Symphony as another example.
I agree the Timberwolves especially should be embracing MPLS, though I suspect that will need to wait until the ownership transfer is complete. Personally, I would like to see the Twins offer a Hennepin alternate, but I’m petty.
Bloomington and Richfield?
The Minneapolis Symphony to Minnesota Orchestra name change was part of the ’60s sentiment of minimizing the rivalry between the two cities and broadening the donor base, as well as the prevailing notion of naming sports teams after the state.
Shortly after the orchestra changed it’s name in 1968 it went on tour – one of the stops was Mexico City. The orchestra arrived to find the marquee outside the theater advertising the “University of Minnesota Orchestra”. It was only after some scrambling that the word was spread that this was in fact the Minneapolis Symphony, whose reputation was widely known because of its prolific number of recordings .
To this day when the orchestra tours internationally there is a line in the program with the description, “formerly the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra”
It’s one thing to choose the name of a newly formed sports team but quite another to turn your back on what was then 65 years of distinguished history. When I joined the orchestra in 1987 I felt the bitterness and disenfranchisement by the musicians who went through this, almost 20 years after it happened.
And there has never been any move to change the name of the orchestra across the river to the “Minnesota Chamber Orchestra”; nor should there be…
Great column, Bill. For gosh sakes even the Los Angeles Lakers have worn a throwback MPLS jersey on a few occasions. Though that brings up the question if the Lakers might possibly own the rights to putting “MPLS” in block letters on an NBA jersey.
Looking back on the contentious 7-6 City Council vote to approve a massive subsidy to build the Vikings a new stadium, one wonders if the city could’ve played hardball on getting the team name changed to the Minneapolis Vikings. Would the Wilfs have even resisted that? I’d put up a wager that no one even asked. Every rival team in our division is named after a city, not a state, so what’s stopping us? Considering the sum of taxpayer dollars the Vikings and Timberwolves stadiums have gotten from the City of Minneapolis in the past decade, we ought to have strongly lobbied the teams to change their name as a way of saying thanks. Now that would be a true Minneapolis Miracle.
I have made notice of the prevalence of “Minnesota” in our professional sports teams (add Minnesota Lynx and Minnesota United-FC to the Twins, Vikings, Wild and Timberwolves)… but it has never bothered me. I like the fact that they feel it important to reach out to the entire state. With our “Twin Cities” being one metro area, it even makes more sense to go with the state name rather than choose cities. There are many other state names… Colorado Rockies and Avalanche, Florida Panthers, Golden State Warriors, Indiana Pacers, Tennessee Titans, Texas Rangers, Arizona Cardinals and Diamondbacks, Utah Jazz, Carolina Panthers and Hurricanes, and New Jersey Devils. Tampa Bay and New England Patriots reflect an area or region, not a city. The “New York” teams are not “New York City”. And it’s the Houston “Texans”.
Besides… isn’t the “Twin Cities Twins” rather redundant??
It’s important to remember that when the Lakers were here and Met Stadium was built, some 80% of the population of the metro was in the core cities. Now, it’s like 25%. Minneapolis and St. Paul mattered a whole lot more back in the day. Nobody remembers this now, but core city high school sports used to matter a lot. Look at the sports section from a local newspaper from the 1940s and you’d think the coverage for HS sports was like covering the Vikings. The core cities just don’t figure into the equation like they used to. They were always pretty small entities by themselves – as Hubert Humphrey observed (and is often misquoted), “Each without the other would be a cold Omaha” – but as part of a now much larger metro they’re even smaller. I’d be interested to learn where the in-person fan base for the Twins comes from. Somehow, I think it’s more likely to be Elk River, Woodbury, or Hutchinson, than Harrison or Seward. I think “Minnesota” is perfectly appropriate for prefacing sports team names. Sticking “Twin Cities” on the uniform is mainly an exercise in nostalgia.