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In the early 2000s, five baseball-lovers met in Saturday detention (sort of) and discovered that they have more in common than they thought. Driven by their love of the sport, these aficionados wanted to create a non-traditional space for the average fan. This led to the inception of Twins Daily in 2012. Over the past decade, this humble space evolved from a small group of writers and readers to a media empire. This is the origin story of how John Bonnes, Parker Hageman, Nick Nelson, Seth Stohs, and Brock Beauchamp turned their simple love of the game into Twins Daily. Starting from the basics, all five of the founders were born and raised around Minnesota. Their childhoods played an influential role in their love of the Twins. Seth: My dad played baseball and softball, and we watched games on TV together sometimes too. Kirby Puckett debuted when I was eight and I was hooked on the Twins for life. Brock: I was ten years old when the Twins made a surprise run at the postseason in 1987. It suddenly became fashionable to like the Twins and I HAD to have one of the new “M” hats the team wore that year (in retrospect, I hate that M design). Nick: My parents definitely instilled a love of the game in me. We used to frequently catch the bus on Bloomington Ave to go catch Twins games at the Metrodome. Baseball has also always been my favorite sport to play — from tee-ball through high school. John: Starting at about seven years old, I started listening to every Twins game on the radio, often while throwing a tennis ball against a garage door to pretend I was fielding it. Parker: My parents would tell me that I had some MLB sticker book as a toddler and they would trot me out as a party favor in front of their friends, and they’d quiz me on team names. Supposedly I had them down pat. Each founder also dabbled in content creation and entrepreneurship throughout their teenage years. Seth wanted to own a sports card shop (although he preferred buying them to selling them), Nick created his own newspaper called “The Daily Mouse”, which he sold door to door, and Brock was always working on a new project, mostly artistic endeavors. Most commonly, each spent innumerable hours consuming Twins coverage, which was limited to mostly newspaper and radio in the 1990s. However, baseball coverage was often a footnote to football and basketball. This lack of content availability led Nick, Seth, Parker, and John to start writing and blogging in the early 2000s. As some of the only independent Twins’ writers, meeting one another was fate waiting to happen. Seth: John and I exchanged some e-mails when I started blogging in May 2003, I believe the first time we met in person at the state fair in maybe 2005 or 2006. We had done some two-minute Twins spots with Rita Maloney on WCCO, and we were invited to their booth at the state fair. Or was it when John let me write for the Gameday magazine and help sell them outside the Metrodome? There were a lot of Twins bloggers and we often linked to each others' sites. Nick: I don’t remember exactly how I met these guys, other than that it happened kind of organically because we were all writing about the team. When John recruited me to write for the Gameday program, sold outside of the Metrodome, that was definitely an inflection point. It made me realize there was a more serious business concept behind this hobby. Parker: I think I started writing about the Twins in 2006 after my first kid was born. I had a lot of time at home and not a lot of money. I’d watch a game and chart stuff like swinging strikes and other things. At some point, I got connected with Seth and Aaron Gleeman. John’s TwinsGeek site linked to other Twins blogs, so I remember reaching out to him to have him post mine. Bonnes asked me to write an article for a GameDay program (my Mom took a copy of that article and had it framed, it felt like such a huge deal then). I know there were bloggers getting together in various capacities, but I remember pushing for us to get together to drink beer and watch games. John: I started writing about the Twins in 2002 and at the time, nobody else was really doing that locally. I remember the rest of us getting together kind of organically. Someone would start a Twins blog and we would reach out and keep in touch online. The outing that we decided to really work together was arranged by Parker in 2007. Brock: In 2005 or so, I launched the Battle Your Tail Off forum. From that forum, I met Nick Nelson and was later introduced to John, Seth, and Parker when we started talking about merging my forum into Twins Daily, which had just launched a month or two prior. Although the spark was instantaneous, it took another five years and more beers to put their brands together into one. Throughout the 2000s, each individual grew their own name and following in the Twins’ sphere. During this, the idea of a collaborative effort started to float around. Parker: We had a couple of group projects including an Offseason Primer ebook and the Star Tribune’s TwinsCentric blog that we had worked together on, but we also kept our separate blogs. It was like a trial run to see if we could all function together. John: Seth and Nick talked about how we came together to produce some content, but that wasn’t when we decided to do the website. Between 2007 and 2011, we did produce a lot together: pdfs that we sold directly, some hard copy annual programs that we produced for Maple Street Press, and also we often copied and pasted stories from our individual blogs to a blog we had at StarTribune.com. But the site wasn’t a thought until 2011. Nick: We went to the Swarzak game, and wandered over to nearby Dan Kelly’s Pub for postgame drinks, where we started hashing out ideas for a collective plan to move forward. The rest, as they say, is history. Parker: If you want to make it clean, sure, it was the Swarzak debut game at the Metrodome. We had a small group of bloggers and we went out afterward and did a blood oath to put together a daily Twins website. John: Fox Sports had asked us to combine our sites, but it was subscription-based site, and that made us a little uncomfortable. So I researched options. Rob Litt, who runs GopherHole.com, tutored me in running a site based purely on ad revenue. I found a software package that could do a lot of what we wanted so for about $1,300. So we sold a pdf, used all the money to buy the software, and I programmed the modifications. We tested it, set up a writing schedule for the four of us, and launched it when pitchers and catchers reported. And like the Big Bang Theory, Twins Daily was born. While the first name iteration suggested was TwinsCentric, Nick (or Seth, up for debate) ultimately came up with the catchy moniker used today. Right away, the website took off like wildfire. Just in the first week, Twins Daily built an impressive following. In the first five weeks, there were 1,100 registered users, with nearly 500 regularly contributing through discussion threads and posts, and over half a million page views. For a small-market team with hobby writers, this was an unprecedented feat. Over the first year, organic growth continued, and the site was redesigned for better user experiences. Brock: A funny story… the four of them were *very* proud of the website. I hated it, heh. In fact, I was so aggravated just looking at it that I redesigned their logo without asking (I didn’t even know John, Parker, or Seth at this point), sent it to Nick, and basically said “get that da**ed ugly thing off the site and replace it with this”. Right off the bat, my first large project was redesigning the site and adding new features. As the community grew, a fan-favorite event emerged. John: The first Winter Meltdown was unofficial, where we just bought a keg at Hubert’s. That was Parker’s idea, and I think it was kind of a shared event with DiamondCentric, which was his (and Brock’s) company that made t-shirts. We were shocked 100+ people showed up, including a lot of media. So the next year, we had it more formally, called it the first annual, and included Gleeman & The Geek. It was at Mason’s Barre, which is now The Gold Room. The first speaker was Scott Erickson, which ended up being a legendary night because he stayed and hung out with everyone for several hours. I think we had about 200 people, which packed the place. Although the Winter Meltdowns and the website grew in popularity, there were ebbs and flows along the way. Not surprisingly, they often coincided with the success of the Twins. One of the highest points in viewership and engagement was after the 2019 Bomba Squad season. However, a small global pandemic put a wrench into things, and the drop was precipitous. Fans had much more important things to worry about. Ad revenue, traffic, and morale came to a screeching halt. For any business, this is detrimental. The once-flourishing community was lifeless. However, the Twins Daily writers and founders rallied. The writers continued to produce daily content, and Seth, Nick, John, and Brock continue to find innovative ways to rally the community. From virtual interviews to TikToks, these entrepreneurs had to pivot to navigate the unknown. Regardless of how dire the situation got, they never stopped paying their writers for their contributions. Although monetization is a key challenge, providing a springboard for writers is at the forefront of the founders’ goals. Although the current state of baseball is dire, the Fab Five have a lot to be proud of with what they’ve built in the past ten years. When asked whether Twins Daily is what they envisioned ten years ago, it was a resounding no across the board. None of them predicted that Twins Daily would become not only a large, passionate community but also a legitimate business instead of a modest side hustle. To close, for any fans of the podcast How I Built This by Guy Raz, each founder was asked how much of their success can be attributed to luck and skill. They all agreed that while luck played a factor, a lot of hustle and follow through contributed to the creation of the Twins Daily that we all love so much. Thank you for reading, and thank you John, Nick, Parker, Brock, and Seth for all that you’ve done. View full article

Aaron and John talk about Byron Buxton's return, Kenta Maeda's elbow surgery and where it leaves the 2022 rotation, Joe Ryan's odds of being a September call-up, Josh Donaldson's impossible task, and Miguel Sanó doing it again. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. View full article

John joins Aaron from his baseball road trip in Houston, and the two discuss Jorge Polanco's resurgence, the Twins' decisions around veteran and rookie playing time, Josh Donaldson's injury status, and MLB's ratings and streaming problems. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. View full article

Aaron and John talk about Byron Buxton turning down the Twins' contract offer, Nelson Cruz being traded to Tampa Bay, Alex Kirilloff's season-ending surgery, and what's ahead in what figures to be a drama-filled week leading up to the MLB trade deadline. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. View full article

How did that happen? Am I being pranked? OK, this is nuts, but I swear that I just saw the starting lineups for tonight, and Ryan LaMarre is starting for the Twins in center field. Now, I’m aware that Byron Buxton is out for the season and the rest of the outfield is hurt, slumping or both (Hurlumping? Slurting?), but this can’t be right, can it?I’ve done some Googling, and there are definitely stories saying that the Twins reacquired him from Atlanta, but I’ve also seen stories on those “deepfake” videos that make you think Bill Hader is Tom Cruise, and the latter honestly seems more likely. Someone would have said something. Not to brag, but I’m friends with John Bonnes. Not to double brag, but I text back and forth with him from time to time. He’s an avid Twins fan. And he didn’t say a damn thing to me about this. What I think happened was, the last time the Twins were in a pennant race, Ron Gardenhire had Jason Tyner bat in the middle of the order. Now, Jason Tyner is known for three things: Having a middle name that’s just a backwards spelling of his last name;Having his bobblehead day called off because he was demoted; andNot being the kind of hitter one would normally see in the middle of any playoff-contending team’s batting order. He had one career home run. One.And yet, here he was, batting fifth in games that mattered. On television, where children could see it! My theory is that the Twins are finally back in a real playoff battle, and are paying tribute to this unprecedented event in Twins history. Since bringing back Tyner, now 42 and retired, would make it too obvious that it was a bit, the Twins are using a more recent “oh yeah, that guy, the one with the 5 o'clock shadow at 10 in the morning” to have some fun with their fans. I applaud their effort and look forward to seeing who is really getting the nod in center tonight! UPDATE, FRIDAY MORNING, 9:07 AM: This was not a bit. They also played Ronald Torreyes. I don't understand anything anymore. Click here to view the article

I’m sure we all remember May 23rd, 2009 as the debut of Twins pitcher Anthony Swarzak. But there was something exciting brewing up in the stands, too. Watching Swarzak (who threw seven scoreless innings) from the Home Run Porch was a collection of Twins bloggers, brought together by Parker. We met before the game at Huberts, but afterwards we split several pitchers at Dan Kelley’s and commiserated about the dead-end that blogging had become. We didn’t settle on the idea of writing together that night, but we walked away with the idea of seeing if we could, as a team, figure out a way to make blogging more worthwhile. We traded some ideas and at another Twins game in June and decided to try and publish some content as a PDF file.That resulted in the Trade Deadline Primer, which had a Foreword written by Phil Mackey. It sold 87 copies. But it was so much fun to write that we followed it up with the Offseason Handbook, which sold a lot better. That project convinced Maple Street Press to give us a try at writing a 128-page Minnesota Twins Annual going into the inaugural season of Target Field. And that convinced StarTribune.com to hand us a blog on their site. Note that this is Part 2 of a series of articles celebrating Twins Daily’s 5th anniversary. Each of the Twins Daily owners will share their thoughts on the site's first five years and what it has meant to them. You can find Part 1, by Seth, here. There were failures, too. Our attempt to do a national Trade Deadline Primer was a disaster and Maple Street Press went bankrupt after our second annual. But we enjoyed working together, and it was often more rewarding than working alone. Still, none of us suggested combining sites and I’m not sure it even occurred to any of us. That had to come from an outsider. In the fall of 2011, someone from Fox Sports, who owned Scout.com, approached us about taking over their Minnesota Twins Scout.com site. The offer was tempting, but it meant turning our sites into one subscription site. While researching the feasibility of this, I met with the owner of GopherHole.com, which is not a subscription site, and he schooled me in the economics of his site. It sounded like we could do something similar. The tricky part would be building the site. We agreed to sink any money we made from the Handbook into trying to launch the site. Fortunately there was a software package which had most of what we wanted and which was customizable enough that I could handle the lightweight programming. We kicked around designs and names and worked on the site into January. I’m often asked if Aaron Gleeman and I talked about him joining Twins Daily. He and I had started our podcast that August, just before we were approached by Fox Sports, so after just about every podcast we would talk about the project. Shortly before we went live, we talked in theory about him joining our group, but he couldn’t due to the contract he had with NBC Sports, where he was working full time. I remember the moment we KNEW we had something. Parker, Nick, Seth and I were on a phone call and I think we were reviewing the site. Nick blurted out “Why the hell didn’t we do this five years ago?” We did some testing with friends, which finished in February. We planned on launching on Opening Day but decided we couldn’t wait, and launched on February 19th, when pitchers and catchers reported. On Day 1, the traffic was immediately five times what we expected. More surprising was that it didn’t drop much on Day 2. Within a month the site was passing the half million page view mark and we were swooning. That led to some growing pains. First, there was an odd attack – and even more odd, it was by Phil Mackey who had written the Foreword on our very first publication - on how bloggers had “no accountability” and “their platforms are too large in 2012.” Our response felt like a coming-of-age for the site. We also faced technical concerns that required lots of attention and Nick reached out to Brock. Brock, may not know this, but that almost didn’t work out. Brock misunderstood our offer and I became a petulant, pouty ass. Nick gets the credit for straightening things out. Fortunately, it worked out because adding Brock to our team in June was perfect; he filled every need while also being a hell of a good guy. He also brought over the BYTO (Battle Your Tail Off) forums to the community. Another godsend happened about six months into the site. I started becoming so disgusted with the level of discourse in the forums that I was personally ready to shut them down if things didn’t change. We established a fairly clear set of guidelines but what really turned things was glunn, who took the forums over and established a strong culture of tempering passion with civility. It is one of the things that makes me happiest about Twins Daily and I am forever in debt to him and the moderating team which he assembled. The events have become popular and have their own history, and Parker gets most of the credit for kicking them off. It was his idea, I believe, to buy a keg at Huberts, across the street from Twins Fest in January of 2013. We wrote that we would just stand behind the bar and serve beers to anyone who wanted to stop by – and over one hundred people showed up. Our first Pub Crawl was actually a #GrandDrunkRailroad where we took the metro transit rail line towards the game and stopped at unsuspecting bars. I still remember the look on the face of The Cardinal’s bartender when 80 of us in red t-shirts just kept walking through the door. In 2014, we decided that I would step back from writing to work on trying to find ways to financially support the community and its writers. We have had a little luck with that, and I’m happy to say that if you write on our blogs and are promoted to the front page, you can make every cent we get for that story. On the other hand, we also tried to launch similar communities for the Wild and Vikings and those didn’t go as well. I learned a lot from those struggles, and among them is how fortunate and blessed we were that our members rallied around Twins Daily the way they did. Building this site is a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of luck, and I think we all feel very fortunate to have found it. That work and luck have created something that I would like to continue to see grow in depth and breadth, and I hope you’ll join in as we tackle some opportunities over the next five years. The new goal for Twins Daily shouldn’t be to look forward five years, but to look forward fifty years, at which point I’ll be very lucky if I’m able to visit the site as a 99-year-old. To thrive that long, Twins Daily is going to need to continue to rely on the people that provide so much of their free time to keep the community on track. Indeed, it feels like the focus will need to shift even more to the community than the founders, which was always the intention. We’ll explore that future together. Five years ago, the day after we launched, the future of Twins Daily felt limitless. To me, it still does. I’m profoundly grateful. OK. Now ask any questions you have. I promise I’ll be as candid as I can. I’ll also try my best to faithfully remember all I can, although I’ll admit that this story emphasized to me just how bad my memory really is. If Gmail didn’t have an excellent search function, I would have messed up about half of this story. Fire away! Click here to view the article

Getting antsy for the baseball season to begin? Then join us Thursday night for a kick-off party at Target Field to raise money for Tix for Tots. John Bonnes, Star-Tribune Twins beat reporter Phil Miller, Twins Director of Corporate Communications and Broadcasting Kevin Smith and Rene Saarigianopoulos of Kare 11 will be talking baseball and answering questions.Enjoy a rich selection of appetizers in the beautiful Metropolitan Club at Target Field, and select a bottle of wine to take home from the "wall of wine." Bid on silent auction items including a suite for a Twins game, the opportunity to throw out the first pitch, batting practice passes, autographed Twins memorabilia and much more. Tix for Tots has been supplying free tickets to disadvantaged youth for events all over the Twin Cities since 2002. Partnering with the Twins, they've provided over 183,050 opportunities for kids to experience the excitement of Twins baseball (often for the first time). I hope you can join us, and help support the mission of Tix for Tots! Click here to view the article