Let's Road Trip Twins 2025: Trip #12 - From the South Side to Passports

[Steven Trefz]

As the Twins look to close August on a roll, they return to Chicago to take on the White Sox and sneak up into Canada to tussle with Toronto. From this vantage point, the road trip looks winnable, but that’s why they play the games.

 

Image courtesy of © John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images

Chicago White Sox - August 22-24
Rate Field - Capacity  40,615
2024 Attendance -  1,976,344 (ranked 8th out of 15 AL teams, 19th overall MLB)

The Twins travel to Rate Field to close out Road Trip #1 to start the season, but when the heat of August comes to call, the environment will feel completely different. From temperature to temperament, the Twins will most likely face a completely different Sox team on this trip. Win, lose, or draw, there is no rest to be found. It’s time to head to Toronto to see what’s left of the Jays.

You can check out our full write-up of [Guaranteed] Rate Field here.

 

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Toronto Blue Jays - August 25-27
Rogers Centre – Capacity 39,150
2024 Attendance - 2,681,236 (Averaged 33,101, ranked 3rd out of 15 AL parks, 9th overall MLB)

In mid-May of 2024, the Twins steamed into Canada with some energy and hope, and they left with a two games to one series victory. The middle game of the series, however, is the one that sticks out in the memories as an ominous foreshadowing of the Twins' 2024 season. The Twins mounted a 7-1 lead in the third inning against Kevin Gausman, only to have the young Simeon Woods Richardson falter against his former team. Cole Sands got touched up for three runs, and the end of the Steven Okert/Jay Jackson reclamation projects surrendered the rest of the damage in a 10-8 loss.

The Twins have been traveling to the Rogers Centre with their passports since 1989, and they've been leaving with their tail between their legs since then also. A combined 56-81 record speaks to the difficulty of international road trips in the middle of the baseball season. Surprisingly, the Twins have gone 15-6 in Toronto since the 2017 season, so recent trends offer hope for the 2025 journey.

When Toronto got their MLB franchise in 1977, they started out in a retro-fitted football field called Exhibition Stadium. In 1989, the SkyDome was introduced (renamed Rogers Centre in 2005), soon to gain classic replay status for Joe Carter’s World Series winner and back-to-back championships. In the 2010’s, the Blue Jays even boasted the highest attendance in the American League!

The SkyDome/Rogers Centre boasts about being the first stadium in the world with a fully retractable motorized roof, hosts a hotel with rooms that look out onto the field, and rests within the Old Downtown neighborhood of the 4th largest city in North America. The field itself? A bit cookie-cutter in form, with excellent food and tourist vibes throughout the concourses.

The sounds, tastes, and sights of Toronto are pretty epic. The CN Tower observation deck, Lake Ontario beaches and waterfront, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and an actual “distillery district,” all exist within a few blocks of the ballpark. If you don't have your passport yet, now's the time to get your paperwork rolling if you want to catch the first of this year's annual trips.

From here, the Twins head home to welcome wayward travelers from San Diego and then a rematch with the White Sox. Will Minnesota be traveling into September in style? Or will the playoff hopes of 2025 be in the rear view mirror already?

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