The following is an excerpt from the 2024 Gregg Media Guide, a 35-page lighthearted collection of essays, player profiles, a prospect list, and more that I penned prior to the 2024 season. The opening essay was the most serious piece of writing, as it's something that I've thought a lot about over the last year, even if it might not make sense to everyone. I've decided to post it here, in case anyone else finds it interesting.

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I’m being serious. I kind of miss 0-18. If you are deep enough in the weeds to purchase the Gregg Media Guide, you already know that the Twins broke an 18-game streak of playoff losses that spanned from 2004 to 2023. During that time, despite their success in the AL Central (five division titles and a Wild Card berth), they were utterly futile. It was embarrassing.

But it was also kind of funny. And kind of remarkable. And you almost got used to it.

Let’s get the first one out of the way. Despite being a diehard Twins fan for my entire life, I’ve been known to identify myself as a bit of a sports nihilist. I don’t take it personally when the team plays poorly. I almost find it weird to root for the team. But I still love the Twins. I also love a good storyline.

One of my favorite characters in The Simpsons is Ol’ Gil Gunderson, a consistently down-on-his-luck victim of the rat race. No matter what job Ol’ Gil has worked himself into in any given episode, the consistent theme is that he’s not good at it and/or he’ll be screwed by the world in some way. It’s sad, but it’s also so funny to see how Ol’ Gil will manage to screw it up this week.

Admittedly, many fans of The Simpsons are not fans of Gil for one reason or another. Much in the same way, few Twins fans found joy in the Twins year after year fustily letting the season slip through their fingers. Well, some rejoiced in it, but many of those seemed to be more fueled by their love-hate relationship with the team, whether that be a disdain for ownership, analytics, or any other pet peeve.

It was like a clown car’s breaks being cut on the Audubon. You know it’s a tragedy, and people are going to be hurt, so you hope they navigate it safely into the ditch, but you also know it would be funny if 11 clowns flew through the windshield, in a shocking, horrifying, but hilarious way.

Beyond the humor of it, there was something remarkable about the streak. It had never happened before. Other things that had never happened before at some point: No one had ever hit 765 homers, no one had ever had 262 hits in a season, and no one had ever stolen 1406 bases. But then they happened, and that was special.

You will probably never see another team lose 18 straight postseason games—in any sport. It’s literally the longest playoff losing streak in the history of North American men’s pro sports. I hope you can appreciate that. They say that every day you can go to the ballpark and see something you’ve never seen before. In a sad and comical way, the Twins etched their names into baseball history and folklore.

Chris Hanel put together a terrific oral history and movie documenting each of the losses in order. He used win expectancy charts to explain just how improbable it was that a team could pull this off. It required snatching defeat from the jaws of victory several times, with many games in which the Twins had a win expectancy over 90%. I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t, or re-watch it in hindsight.

Around the same time that Chris’s movie was released, I wrote a 5000 word narrative about the concept of a streak that lasted 19 years. By my math, in the 18 losses, over 100 individual Twins played in a playoff game for the team. The general manager was changed four times, there were three managers, and three separate Pohlads stood as the face of the ownership group during that time. No Twin played in more than four of the seven playoff series, and five distinct cores of talent moved through the organization between wins.

It was special. Maybe not in the way you’d hope, but it was remarkable. And it only got more and more remarkable as each loss piled up. We could have seen an 0-20, and we were robbed of it.

Finally, I got used to the streak. Not in a Stockholm syndrome way, but more in an acclimation. It’s what I grew to see the Twins as, and many inside and outside of Twins Territory did as well. And so now it’ll take some getting used to.

It’s now feasible that the Twins could make a run. The monkey is off their backs. I saw them win for the first time in nigh on 20 years. It’s awesome. But it’ll take some getting used to.

Who knows, maybe they’ll be able to play the Yankees heads-up now, breaking that funk as well. Maybe they’ll have a playoff team that doesn’t always come with the “best team in a bad division” qualifier. But, maybe, they’re also just now a normal team with nothing special about them.

People paid attention to 0-18. In the same way, they paid attention to the Mariners’ two-decade playoff drought. People pay attention to the Rockies having never won the NL West. People pay attention to the poverty operations of the Athletics. But the Twins? They’re just another consistently mediocre to solid team now.

They sit among teams like the Blue Jays, Brewers, and Diamondbacks now. There’s not a lot to laugh at, but also not a lot of history. No one is going to be rallying the troops behind the plucky team with 12, 13, or 16 straight losses taking on the Evil Empire Yankees or Astros. The Twins, who have always struggled to break out of obscurity, return to the tier of teams that are just that: teams.

And so there’s an adjustment to be made. 0-18 is over. There could always be a new streak. It would be funny, special, and noteworthy if they went and won a World Series. The same goes for if they rattled off 10 more straight playoff losses and 2023 was a blip. But for now, they’re another mid-market team with a mid-market payroll.

I’m glad they broke the streak. I shed a couple manly tears as I sat in my office alone watching it on a 19-inch TV screen that I’ve had since they were on a nine game losing streak.

But I kind of miss it.

Thank you for ordering the Gregg Media Guide. I don’t take much seriously, but I do hope that it’s worth your time and money to read through this and have, at least, a few chuckles along the way.

Greggory.

(if you'd like to purchase the full GMG for as little as $2, here's the link, hopefully the owners don't fire me for this. https://greggtmasterson1.gumroad.com/).