Tom at Mighty Flynn (my favorite baseball-themed Tumblr!) came to last month’s baseball-themed Salon Saloon, and wrote about it this week. He posted the excerpt below of our little show’s gutsy attempt to co-opt a British football anthem for our own state’s uses, and I love it. I was shocked at how enthusiastic about it people were. The girl shouting “together!”, the guy at the end freaking out about “win! win! win!”, and the audience spontaneously echoing “Twins! Twins! Twins!” with no prompting.
It’s too beautiful. We’ll sing it together at Target Field next year, I hope.
Tom says:
“Marching On Together” (excerpt) - Andy Sturdevant & Chairman Mauer
To close out “The Baseball Show,” under a projected slide reading, “The Curse of G.B. Leighton,” Salon Saloon host Andy Sturdevant discussed the two most recent additions to the baseball song canon in Minnesota: Leighton’s “This is Twins Territory” and “Please Don’t Call Them Twinkies” by The Baseball Project & Craig Finn. The first is just awful in all respects, while the second, to paraphrase Sturdevant, is basically a bunch of proper nouns strung together. Neither, he argued, really works as a fight song, especially when compared to the original, classic Twins anthem, “We’re Gonna Win Twins.” To solve the problem, Sturdevant suggested Twins fans look to Great Britain, where the futbol club Leeds United has co-opted one of the most sacred songs in the American songbook, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” If they can sing “Glory, Glory, Leeds United,” he asked, why can’t we use one of their songs? He then proved how well the tune to another Leeds song, “Marching On Together,” lends itself to the substitution of a few key words:
Here we go with Minnesota
We’re gonna give the boys a hand
Stand up and sing for Minnesota
They are the greatest in the landEvery day, we’re all gonna say
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!
Everywhere, we’re gonna be there
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!
Marching on together
We’re gonna see you win
We are so proud
We shout it out loud
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!
…
We’ve been through it all together
And we’ve had our ups and downs
We’re gonna stay with you forever
At least until the world stops going round
…
Every day, we’re all gonna say
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!
Everywhere, we’re gonna be there
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!
Marching on together
We’re gonna see you win
We are so proud
We shout it out loud
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!
…
We are so proud
We shout it out loud
We love you Twins! Twins! Twins!”___________________________________________
The next installment of Salon Saloon is “The Television Show,” November 23rd at Bryant Lake Bowl Theater. If you’re in the Twin Cities area, you really ought to go.
