“I want a f*cking parade.”

That was Rocco Baldelli’s rallying cry to his clubhouse in spring training. He wasn’t talking about incremental improvement or simply competing for a division title. He was setting the bar at the top: a World Series championship, a parade down Hennepin Avenue, the kind of celebration that cements players into franchise folklore.

“The community will forever be indebted to you,” Baldelli continued. “Forever. They’ll f*cking love you.”

If you walk around Target Field, the evidence of what parades mean to Minnesota is everywhere. Kent Hrbek has a bar inside and a statue outside. Dan Gladden is a voice on the radio. Kirby Puckett is bronzed. Tim Laudner greets fans on the television broadcast. Bert Blyleven and Tom Kelly’s numbers hang in retirement. They aren’t remembered just because they were good. They’re remembered because they won. They gave this state parades.

The 2025 Twins didn’t deliver a parade. They didn’t even come close. What they delivered was another losing season, over 90 losses for the sixth time since Target Field opened in 2010. The offense spent April swinging pool noodles. The bullpen gave away leads. Fans sank into malaise. By July, the front office hit the eject button and turned the roster into a liquidation sale.

This wasn’t the corner turned in 2023, when Minnesota finally won its first playoff series in two decades. That team felt like the start of something. Instead, ownership slashed payroll, lost its TV deal, left swaths of the fanbase unable to watch, floated a sale, then backpedaled and brought in investors to cover debts. The same hands on the wheel. The same directionless drift.

And so, instead of a parade, Minnesota got prospects.

There were brief flickers of life. A 12-game winning streak in May. A handful of strong individual performances. But the overriding story was failure and frustration. The offense looked lifeless. The bullpen collapsed again and again. Fans checked out. By August, Target Field felt like a ghost town.

I remember what a parade feels like. In 1987, I was a kid in first grade, standing downtown with my sister, ticker tape in the air, the city buzzing, Sal Butera’s car catching fire in the procession, the kind of chaos that never leaves your memory. In 1991, it was the same energy, the same joy, the same proof that a baseball team could unite an entire state. Leaving downtown in ’87, I stuck my hand out the car window along Washington Avenue and strangers in Twins gear slapped it like we were all family.

That’s what a parade does. It bonds people. It brands memories. It tells you that for once, in this corner of the sports universe, we are winners.

And that’s why Baldelli’s words cut so deep. We want that f*cking parade. Not just for the players. For all of us.

Could the Twins get back there? Maybe. Byron Buxton, when healthy, is still one of the best centerfielders in the game. Pablo López and Joe Ryan are a formidable one-two punch. Royce Lewis has star potential, Luke Keaschall appears ready, and the pipeline is stocked with names like Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez, and Kaelen Culpepper. The Twins have built a reputation for developing arms, and pitching depth is finally a strength.

But hope is fragile. López, Ryan, even Buxton could be moved this winter. Ownership hasn’t inspired confidence. And fans know the cycle too well. The peaks of 1987 and 1991 followed valleys in the early ’80s. The division titles of the 2000s came after the misery of the late ’90s. The Twins lose, they rebound, they hang around the fringes, they collapse, and the cycle repeats.

2025 felt like another valley.

I’ll admit something. This was the first year in my life that I didn’t attend a Twins home game. Part of it was life. Kids in travel sports. Work that swallowed spring and summer. Part of it was principle. I wasn’t eager to hand ownership money after they tore the roster apart. And part of it was heartbreak. Watching the promise of 2023 vanish so quickly.

But I know myself. I’ll be back. We all will. That’s what baseball does. It gives you just enough. A streak here. A promising prospect there. A glimpse of what could be. And it keeps you coming back.

And we keep coming back for one reason.

We want that f*cking parade.

It likely won’t be next year. Maybe not the one after that. But somewhere down the line, when this core grows, when the prospects click, when the cycle turns upward again, we’ll be back downtown. Ticker tape in the air. Kids on shoulders. High-fives out of car windows.

Because we all want what Baldelli wanted this past spring. A f*cking parade.