October baseball is the best sports experience in the world. The culmination of 162 games compressed into 3-, 5-, and 7-game series is hard to beat. Every pitch bears the weight of lifelong dreams of hoisting the World Series trophy. Every October, the fans of the teams lucky enough to be playing get turned up to 11. All the stadiums are packed, and the atmosphere is unmatched. One constant in most postseason crowds is the use of a rally towel, rag… or, some may even call it: a Homer Hanky.Â
On Dec. 27, 1975, for an AFC Divisional game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts, broadcaster Myron Cope is credited with suggesting fans bring their own yellow/gold towel to the game. The Steelers won the game and went on to win the Super Bowl. Thus, the Terrible Towel became a fixture in their organization. That idea would eventually be monetized, for a good cause. In 1996, Myron Cope gave the rights to the towel to Allegheny Valley School, an organization that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. A portion of all Terrible Towel sales have gone to that school ever since.
Just over a decade after Pittsburgh got the party started, the Homer Hanky famously debuted in 1987. It was a wildly successful promotion, from the Star Tribune. As the Twins continued to win, the Homer Hanky’s popularity only grew. CBS claimed over 2.1 million were sold during the 1987 World Series. Let’s not forget that in the 1987 postseason, the Twins went undefeated at the Metrodome on their way to a World Series title, embedding the Homer Hanky in the DNA of Twins fans forever.
The Homer Hanky was naturally brought back for the 1991 postseason run, when the team and the hanky found similar success. The Twins were a perfect 2-0 at home against the Blue Jays and went 2-1 at home against the Braves in one of the greatest World Series of all time. That brought the home playoff record of the Twins in the Homer Hanky Era to 10-1. The Homer Hanky was associated with excellence and sheer joy in the Twin Cities. The sea of white in the Metrodome is as memorable as the pinstriped jerseys on the players’ backs. Of course, since then, their record has gotten much worse in the playoffs. Their attempts to revive the Hanky have been a bit cheap; the red ones handed out by the Strib in 2019 were an especially bad idea.
Now, October is flooded with teams waving their rally towels, looking to capture a little home-field magic (except the Yankees, because they consider winning very serious business and no fun is allowed). Looking around in October, I certainly miss seeing the Twins in the playoffs. However, they will always have their mark in October, when you see the rally towels waving, hoping to capture a little bit of that 1987 magic.
Are you interested in Twins history? Then check out the Minnesota Twins Players Project, a community-driven project to discover and collect great information on every player to wear a Twins uniform!