It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot when talking about sports. Everything is a historic home run or a once-in-a-lifetime performance.

But this season, the Minnesota Twins did something unprecedented and truly historic.

When the Twins won their season finale and the Detroit Tigers lost that same day, the Twins claimed a division they nearly gave away before the season even started.

Just two months into the season, Minnesota had already almost eliminated itself from the postseason race. On June 13, the Twins were in fourth place in the AL Central, 12 games off the Detroit lead and five games under .500.

And that’s when the miracle began.

Minnesota finished the season sprinting its way up the division standings on a 71-33 roll – that’s .740 baseball, ladies and gentlemen.

When the dust settled, the Twins had passed last season’s World Series champion Chicago White Sox and edged out the Tigers for their fourth playoff appearance in the past five seasons.

Chicago’s collapse began midway through July, when the Sox were still within striking range of the Tigers. They lost 13 of their next 23 games, giving ground to a red-hot Twins team that caught and passed the Sox for second place in the division on Aug. 25.

But the Twins weren’t done there. They continued to win as the Tigers stagnated, gaining ground on the team that had led the American League Central since May 16.

Not all the credit here can go to the Twins. It is true that Detroit pulled off one of the biggest choke jobs in baseball history.

As late as Aug. 22, the Tigers had a 7.5-game lead on the second-place White Sox and an eight-game cushion on the Twins, throwing that advantage away in the short span of a month and a half.

When the dust settled, Detroit gave up 28 runs in a three-game sweep to the lowly Kansas City Royals, handing Minnesota the division on a silver platter and setting itself up for a first-round match-up with the New York Yankees.That Tigers-Yankees series will actually be illegal to watch in 48 of our 50 states because of the horrific things New York will do to a Tigers team that doesn’t have a prayer.

Even though Detroit gave the division away, Minnesota won it the right way.

The Twins pitch. They play defense. They play their own feisty brand of small-ball that wears on opposing pitchers.

Minnesota is home to the soon-to-be undisputed Cy Young winner (Johan Santana) as well as shoe-ins for the league’s MVP (Justin Morneau) and Manager of the Year (Ron Gardenhire).

And don’t forget Joe Mauer, the major league batting champion who finished the season with a cool .347 average. Oh, and the guy is the current arm candy of a former Miss USA. Not a bad season.

The middle of the Twins lineup is as formidable as any in baseball not named New York. Michael Cuddyer, Morneau and Torii Hunter have combined for 89 homers and 337 RBIs. Morneau became the first Twin to hit 30 home runs in a season since Kent Hrbek and Gary Gaetti eclipsed that mark in 1987 – Hunter joined him just a few weeks later.

The power portion of the lineup is able to put up its gaudy numbers thanks to the rest of the lineup, which gets on base regularly and has been dubbed the “piranhas” by Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen.

Minnesota’s pitching staff is also phenomenal. No team in the American League is better at closing a game than the Twins. From the seventh inning on, Minnesota has an ERA of 3.06, best in the league.

Detroit’s ERA in that same stretch of the game is 3.71 and Chicago’s is 4.50. These are two of the most glaring reasons Minnesota will hang an AL Central champions banner from the roof of the Metrodome next season.

– Grant Wall is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Fort Dodge.