The Minnesota Twins hurled a 2-0 shutout of the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday night, which was notable for a few reasons. It provided a respite from three weeks of truly wretched pitching. They shut down a team led by MVP candidate Cal Raleigh.

It came in the wake of a closed-door, pitchers-only meeting. They weren’t the only ones who felt the need to regroup. Per multiple press box sources, the team’s beat writers held a similar, invite-only confab to clear the air as the midseason doldrums were allegedly taking a serious toll on the journalists.

“It was just the beats, no columnists, no radio, no TV,” said a writer who was in attendance and asked not to be identified. “The beautiful people can have their own damn meeting.”

Sources say there was no incident that sparked the meeting, just a general sense of malaise after the season’s first half saw multiple weather delays, travel misery, and at least one instance of a beat writer throwing their neck fan at a caterer because the ranch dipping sauce for the press box chicken tenders was watery.

“You have some big personalities in that group,” said a source from the Twins’ public relations staff. “Lots of people say there’s no ‘I’ in team, but there’s definitely a ‘me’ in [The Athletic’s] Aaron Gleeman.”

Although none of the beat writers wanted to go on the record to discuss the details of the meeting to respect the candid nature of the conversations, two of the reporters in the room said spirits were lifted by a group singalong.

“Phil [Miller, Star Tribune] pulled out an acoustic guitar and began playing Roxette’s ‘It Must Have Been Love’ from the Pretty Woman soundtrack, and everyone just started singing along,” said one journalist. “Betsy [Helfand, Pioneer Press] has the voice of an angel.”

“Once Phil played those sweet, sweet power ballad chords, everyone got on board,” said the second journalist. “Dan [Hayes, The Athletic] prefers that indie Sad Dad music, but even he was harmonizing with the new guy [Matthew Leach, MLB.com, who took over from two-time Jeopardy! loser Do-Hyoung Park].”

This appears to be the first such meeting of the journalists who cover Twins baseball since 2005, when the writers gathered in an abandoned J.D. Hoyt’s to figure out the best way to describe a post-steroids Bret Boone in print without getting sued. 

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