Among the inglorious numbers associated with Minnesota sports history, some are more readily conjured than others. Just say 41-donut or 27-yard field goal, for instance, and Vikings fans will wince.
Perhaps because it has yet to stop growing, however, the number "16" doesn't quite register the same way. But make no mistake: the streak it represents is among the most amazing in Minnesota sports history.
From 2004 to present, the Twins have lost 16 consecutive postseason games: the last three in the 2004 Division Series; sweeps in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2019; plus the wild-card game in 2017.
In what are often cited as the four longest-standing major men's professional leagues in the United States, the Twins are now tied for the longest playoff losing streak in history with the 1975-1990 Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL.
In a quest to quantify just how spectacular and unlikely this streak has been, I enlisted the help of Sean Forman — a person to whom many of us owe a debt of gratitude.
Forman is the creator of Baseball Reference, a site a lot of us visit as frequently as any other in the world. During a phone conversation this week — Forman is based in Philadelphia — we tried to boil heartbreak down into cold, hard calculations.
• Forman started out as basic as possible, essentially agreeing with the Chuck Klosterman assertion from his book, "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" that states "there is only one mathematical possibility: Everything is 50-50. Either something will happen, or something will not."
Can that be applied to a losing streak? It sure would make the calculation simpler.