KANSAS CITY, MO. – Kyle Gibson sees nothing wrong with a little comic relief near the end of a long season. And, if it happens be the end of a losing season, it can be salve for wounds suffered through accumulating losses.
"The hardest part is keeping everybody together, and keeping everyone fighting for each other and staying focused on a team atmosphere," Gibson said. "Aand this brings that."
What Gibson was referring to Sunday sat to his left in the visitors' clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium, as reliever Trevor Hildenberger was slipping on a costume of a jockey riding a horse. All around the clubhouse, Twins players with less than one year of service time — along with some staff members in their first season with the club — put on similar costumes as the team's annual rookie dress-up day took place.
It helped that the Twins beat Kansas City 9-6 Sunday to avoid getting swept in the four-game series, and that the club rang out a season-high 18 hits, that it belted four home runs to tie a season high and that Gibson pitched into the seventh inning in his 30th start of the season to earn the victory.
So the mood was light in the clubhouse afterward. Even if the Twins had lost — another loss will give them 82, clinching a sub-.500 season a year after a playoff appearance — the event would have been a welcome diversion. A total of 18 players and staffers dressed up and went on the outfield about 30 minutes after the final out was recorded and raced from the right-field foul line to the left-field foul line, following the contour of the infield.
Assistant strength coach Erik Beiser dressed up as a bugler, but the Royals actually played a prerace bugle over the sound system as the Twins lined up.
"My goal is to not finish last," Hildenberger said. "Or embarrass myself."
The one rule was that contestants had to gallop … or at least gallop as well as they can. Willians Astudillo broke the rule and was disqualified.
