The Twins closer entrance that could electrify October

After a grueling 162-game season, playoff baseball -- just a month long -- can be incredibly intense.

Twelve teams, who mostly match up well against one another, usually need a little something extra to get to the next round. Some special form of momentum.

Sometimes it's a player who turns superhuman during October. Other times it's something not totally game-related: a dancing monkey or beards or even a song created for babies.

The Twins, who take on the Blue Jays in a AL Wild Card Series starting today, may have that key ingredient this year.

When the top of the ninth inning hits and Target Field goes black, there's a loud gong that sounds. Then, a song, and a show, for a man put on stage to protect the lead for Minnesota. A fiery, stadium-shaking anthem reserved for the fastest throwing closer in all of baseball.

"Our fans are just trained to know, when there's five, ten seconds of silence during that end of the ninth inning at home, it's, 'Oh boy, here it comes,'" Dustin Morse, Twins VP of Communications and Content, told me in a recent call. "They open the gate, the lights go down. It's goosebumps, man."

You may have seen Jhoan Duran's full entrance when it went semi viral during an SNY broadcast in early September, but it's been around far longer than that. The planning for an explosive song to be paired with an explosive pitcher actually took place during a road trip to Arizona in 2022 -- well before the 25-year-old even became the closer.

"We were in Arizona in 2022 when we started talking about putting a lot of emphasis on Duran," Morse said. "That's when we started putting highlight videos together. At the time, Duran wasn't named the closer but you know what you have when a guy throws 103, 104."

"Yeah, when we discovered that Duran was going to be a bullpen guy, and we also realized he was going to be throwing 101, 102, we knew we had to activate for him," Sam Henschen, Twins Director of Gameday Experience, told me. "We always kind of had different closer scenarios and ideas for different players throughout the years, but this seemed like it could be a special thing."

So, that year, the content team took tons of photos and videos of Duran in front of a green screen to be used for a scoreboard video, telling him to 'look cool.' Morse, Henschen and other Twins personnel thought flames running around the stadium screens and crawling spiders -- playing off the reliever's spider tattoo -- could also heighten the intimidation factor. (Morse said he thought there could be some great retail value in "Durantula" but Kevin Durant and others have already claimed it as their own).

The choice of song, though, was mostly thought up by Morse. On a medium, in a moment, where some of the world's greatest ideas come from.

"Yeah, I guess you could say, driving around listening to Pitbull radio is where the song came from," Morse laughed.

The song Morse heard was "El Incomprendido" by Farruko -- an anthem-style club song that he knew would get Target Field moving. Duran loved the beat, but not so much the lyrics, so he requested "Hot" by Pitbull and Daddy Yankee be mixed in. Morse asked his friend, DJ Skee, to combine the two into an electrifying, 2-3 minute compilation. Fitting for the hardest throwing arm on planet Earth.

Duran saved eight games in 2022 with his entrance music (Jorge López was actually the closer most of that season, using the bone-chilling Freddy Kreuger theme for his intro), but became the full-time closer this season. The entrance has only evolved as his role has increased.

Duran added an Undertaker dong at the beginning -- a fantastic component. Fans now light up their phones when the ballpark goes dark. More graphics, more fire and more crowd noise make it all feel like the start of some epic, nightly concert.

Henschen, the conductor of the ceremonies, says things can get dicey when Duran and another reliever are both warming up and they're not sure who's going into the game. But generally, they nail it just right.

"I'm up in the scoreboard control room and I'm on an intercom with everybody," Henschen told me. "It's really not a rush. If it's the ninth inning and he's warming up, it's 'Alright, is everybody ready? Audio ready? Video ready?' It's all just a quick trigger push on our end. Us just being prepared."

The resulting footage, especially as the Twins have played well and stormed their way into the playoffs, has been electric. Reminiscent of Edwin Diaz's closer song last year or Morse's inspiration, Trevor Hoffman's "Hells Bells," from his days working for the Padres.

Shortstop Carlos Correa has mentioned the entrance giving him goosebumps, telling Morse how he feels after experiencing it in person: "There's no way we're losing."

After big games, with sold-out crowds, Duran and Morse have looked at each other saying, "Oh, that was a good one."

"It's kind of fun, especially now that [the fans] know what's about to happen," Henschen said. "It's like, 'Hey, watch this, watch this.' That's what you want in this world, as many 'Watch this' moments as you can."

It's a rallying cry for a loyal fanbase aching for a postseason victory. And if the Twins win one series with it -- along with their talented starting staff and home-run hitting prowess -- the ninth-inning show could get even stronger and louder as it gets darker and deeper into the fall. A combination that would obviously benefit the Twins and, most importantly, Duran -- the person in charge of preserving every win.

"It makes the players feel great, the fans obviously enjoy it and Duran, I mean, I'm convinced he comes in more amped," Morse told me. "Not that he needs anything more, but 104.8, maybe that entrance has a little something to do with that."