Hang With the Majors: Who ARE you?

Hang with the Majors is an event put on by the Minnesota Twins Wives Organization to benefit the Military Family Foundation. Fans can pay to have dinner with players and later the event opens to the public for player bartending, autographs, photos and auctions.

So, I jokingly tweeted before the event that because I no longer recognize anyone, I was just going to approach any tall muscular men I saw at Toby Keith’s and assume they were with the Twins. This joke ended up basically being reality. There were a lot of jeans and plaid, button down shirt wearing men (I’m pretty sure Josh Willingham was the wardrobe coordinator) behind the bar that were obviously somebodies but I was at a loss. Thankfully, my friend Cindy pulled out her Twins yearbook so we could discreetly compare their faces to the photos in the yearbook. We drew the line at asking them to pretend to throw a baseball so we could better identify their pitching faces.

I decided to purchase a small wooden bat to have players sign. Last year I bought a picture of baseballs and ended up asking Anthony Swarzak to “sign my balls.” That was an awkward moment. This year one of my friends thought of inappropriate things I could say while handing my bat to players and, although I’m a super immature person, I managed to hold back. The players were so ridiculously nice that I’m kind of glad that for once I didn’t make things more embarrassing than they needed to be.

All the athletes and their wives were genuinely appreciative of the fan support and were quick to make sure everyone was having a good time. The stand-outs were Brian Dozier and Glen Perkins, who both stuck around and carried on real conversations with us beyond what is expected at a player appearance. Glen even joked about the game where he was pitching with his fly down and told us how embarrassed he was about it. He was just as funny and sarcastic as you would expect from his twitter account. Dozier was a total Southern Gentleman, and was the first to notice that we were sitting there without drinks. He definitely gained new fans that night.

The guys had just come off of their series loss to the Royals, and although they were clearly having a good time, I didn’t get the sense that they were OK with losing. A drunk guy approached Kyle Gibson, and once he finally realized he was a Twins player, which was hilarious, told him “you guys need to start winning!” Kyle responded with passion “We’re not trying to lose!” which, duh. It was good to see there still is some heart left on the team.

Overall, Hang with the Majors was another huge success. The Twins Wives Organization always does an amazing job of creating an experience that’s fun and available to all. My roommate and I were able to get Morneau and Willingham autographs for $5 apiece. How often can you say that? The auctions also raised a large amount of money with big ticket items, like game suites and autographed baseballs and guitars. Even though this baseball season has more often been painful than not, I think the Twins are one of the best professional sports organizations in keeping players accessiblle. Can’t wait until next year!