Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday.

“They ought to change their name to the Losers,” he grumbled.

  He claimed to be related to Kent Hrbek because his cousin used to buy tires from a man who lived next door to someone who once shook hands with one of Hrbek’s former coaches. I saw the resemblance.

  It’d be silly to call the Twins anything but the Twins, but the Lakers is a better name. The Lakers NBA team moved from Minneapolis to California and became the Los Angeles Lakers. Stuff happens. The New Orleans Jazz team relocated and became the Utah Jazz. The Loons wouldn’t have been a terrible name. It’s certainly better than the Losers.

  The Twins lost 103 games. Some say they did it without even trying and that they’d need smelling salts to play pepper, but 103 losses in a season is far from a major league record. The Cleveland Spiders lost 134 games in 1899. They won 20. The New York Mets suffered 120 defeats in 1962 and the Detroit Tigers piled up 119 losses in 2003. Many other squads had more than 103 losses, but those three topped or bottomed the list.

  The Twins name derived from the Twin Cities. There were two minor league teams located there–Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints–when Calvin Griffith moved the Washington Senators to Minnesota in 1961. Griffith didn’t want to alienate fans from either city and considered the moniker Twin Cities Twins. Griffith settled on the Minnesota Twins, the first MLB team to be named after a state and not a city. There are others now — Arizona, Colorado and Texas. Twins caps display a “TC” (Twin Cities) insignia and their logo shows two men, one in a Minneapolis Millers uniform and one in a St. Paul Saints uniform (Minnie and Paul), shaking hands across the Mississippi River.

  The Twins are important to me. Friends and family are ardent fans or lunatics, depending upon point of view.

  I like the Twins. I’ve attended games at Metropolitan Stadium where there had been so few fans in the stands that I met them all.

  I was at the Metrodome when the Twins won the 1991 World Series. I watched as the leadoff hitter for the Atlanta Braves, Lonnie Smith, stepped into the batter’s box and shook hands with Twins catcher Brian Harper.

  Pitchers Jack Morris and John Smoltz traded scoreless innings. In the eighth inning, the Braves had runners on second and third with no outs. Smith should have scored from first on Terry Pendleton’s double, but he didn’t. Maybe he lost sight of the ball as Dan Gladden and Kirby Puckett chased it to the outfield wall. Perhaps he fell for shortstop Greg Gagne and second baseman Chuck Knoblauch’s trickery as they pretended to field the baseball. Ron Gant grounded out, Morris walked David Justice and Sid Bream hit into a double play to end the inning. The Twins had the bases loaded with one out in the bottom half. I hoped the cleanup hitter would go forth and multiply, but Hrbek lined into a double play. In the ninth, the Twins started the inning with two singles before Shane Mack hit into a double play and Paul Sorrento struck out. Morris pitched scoreless ninth and 10th innings. In the bottom of the 10th inning, Gladden hustled a broken-bat bloop into a double. Knoblauch sacrificed him to third with one out. The Braves walked Puckett and Hrbek to face the pinch hitter manager Tom Kelly sent to the plate. With the outfield playing in, Gene Larkin poked a single over the left fielder’s head to send Gladden to a home plate that looked like a house with a pointed roof. Morris pitched 10 innings to win 1-0. Various accounts said the roar of the crowd of 55,118 was deafening. I couldn’t say. I couldn’t hear anything.

  Try to hit a Zach Britton sinker or throw a Zach Britton sinker. Britton, of the Baltimore Orioles, might be the best relief pitcher in baseball and he has a nasty sinker. A sinker is a type of fastball that has significant downward and horizontal movement and is known for inducing ground balls. Who doesn’t want to induce ground balls?

  Few people could hit a Britton pitch or pitch like him. The odds of any player becoming a star are astronomical. The Twins might lack stars, but we’ll keep watching and listening. That doesn’t show up in the box score.

  That’s a lot of losses, 103, but it could be worse.

  They didn’t leave a scar.