Did You Know: Twins Batboys Used to be Real Sets of Twins
I'm not a huge baseball fan and even less so a Twins fan. So I won't pretend that what I'm about to share is information I alone was privy to or even that it was commonly-known information you should have known.
I was browsing the internet recently when I stumbled across a fascinating LIFE article on the Minnesota Twins. The piece was brimming with historical detail I hadn't known before. For instance, before moving to Minnesota in 1961 and becoming the Minnesota Twins, the baseball team used to be called the Washington Senators. Additionally, the name "Minnesota Twins" was chosen carefully, the interlocked T and C on the logo being a clear indication that the team belonged to the Twin Cities together and not specifically Minneapolis where the team was based. Perhaps most interesting -- and the subject of the article -- was that the Minnesota Twins, in keeping with their name and theme, hired pairs of twins as their batboys!
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While they waited to be interviewed, they were served hot dogs and milk. Twins Richard and Peter King (pictured above) were selected to be the Twins' batboys, and another pair -- Jerry and James Dempster -- were also chosen as ball boys.
The article didn't go on to share what life as a bat boy for the Minnesota Twins entailed, though we did find this rather interesting first-hand account by Blake Schnitker, who was fortunate (or perhaps unfortunate) enough to be a bat boy with his cousin during the Twins' Spring Training in Ft. Myers, Florida in 2003. You can read his account of being verbally berated by Twins' catcher A.J. Pierzynski for "misplacing" two buckets of Bazooka Bubble Gum here.