Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Another Pennant for the Minnesota Twins

Tomorrow was supposed to be Opening Day for the Minnesota Twins.  If you are not a serious fan this might not be a big deal.  But even for you passionless types I'm sure the beginning of baseball still stirs something.  It is synonymous with hope, something we could use more of these days.  And it represents renewal, rebirth.

In general American culture is very linear.  Charge straight ahead into the future, or down the busy highway, or on into the next phase of your career.  Timekeeping systems that cycle are rare, and the two that come immediately to mind - baseball and agriculture - are holdovers from our simpler past.

Oh well.  Time for baseball posts anyway.   

This was to be a season of strength for the Twins.  There might have even been a pennant - in the sense of a championship win - at the end of it.  Now, who knows, so lets just take a quick look at another pennant - in the sense of a ballpark souvenir - to distract us.




Unlike the last Twins pennant I featured (its shown here on the left) this one has no identifying marks.  Judging from the difficulty I had finding an exact match out in the jumbled world of the internet I suspect it is not a common one.  But of course most of these sorts of things are not super rare.  So here's what I can say about it.

1. Pre 1969.  It has no MLB logo and so is from the free wheeling days when small manufacturers just contracted directly with clubs.

2. Pretty darn high quality.  Notice how the red uniform sleeves and the skin colored hands are slightly different shades?  Every extra color you add to such a design adds cost and probably reduces your margins. The felt is in good shape and the lettering nice and crisp.  Somebody took plenty of care with this design.



3. Probably not much before 1969.  This is close enough to my specimen that it may have come from the same unidentified manufacturer.  Slightly different font on the team name.  And the post 1969 MLB logo.



Today's featured pennant is in good enough shape that I'd consider taking it to a Twins game and waving it.  Gently.  But until that happy day, well I'll take it off the wall tomorrow and give it a brief, gentle wave anyway.

 

1 comment:

Honeybee said...

For sale next door: two 1987 Championship Wheaties boxes. Don't know if they contain the crunchy cereal, but the price goes up if they do. (Part of the pandemic larder, stale or not.). C'mon over!