A Sunday Night Football stylized lineup introduction sounds like a fun thing for a baseball team to do to add some spice to an early April regular-season game. But when you’re the Minnesota Twins playing at home to one of the smallest turnouts in franchise history, it begins to lose its luster.

The trouble that has plagued the Twins franchise has been well-documented. Last summer, they undertook an unprecedented firesale at the trade deadline that shocked even the team’s own broadcasters. As has become popular in markets where owners are choosing not to spend money to field competitive rosters, “sell the team” chants overtook some broadcasts. After the moves to cut salaries, the Twins have the 23rd most expensive payroll in the majors, even behind the vagabond Athletics.

The admission that the team does not plan to compete in 2026 doesn’t exactly inspire excitement to make it out to the ballpark. And with a Monday high of just 41 degrees, you really couldn’t blame fans for wanting to stay home.

So when the Twins local broadcast on Twins.TV tried a big-game intro with the vast majority of the stands sitting empty; you can imagine the cognitive dissonance that must have been going through the minds of however many viewers were watching at home. Even the caption itself talks about Monday Night Football in spite of the intro being inspired by NBC’s Sunday Night Football.

Monday Night Baseball > Monday Night Football pic.twitter.com/dwlW4tujix

— Twins.TV (@twinstv) April 7, 2026

When Target Field opened in 2010, Minnesota was 6th in MLB in attendance with an average of just under 40,000 fans per game. Those days must seem like a lifetime ago for baseball fans in the Twin Cities.

The Twins actually defeated the Tigers 7-3 on Monday to lift their record to 4-6 through the first ten games of the 2026 season, so maybe the players were somehow inspired by the SNF intro, even if they couldn’t draw that much inspiration from the stands.

In case you were wondering, the announced attendance at the game was 12,569 fans. Maybe they were all hiding in the concourse to stay warm.