Torii Hunter had a real choice to make in the winter of 2014, and it still hangs around as the kind of baseball what-if that never quite goes away.
At 39, Hunter was deciding where he wanted to finish his career. Minnesota wanted him back.
Kansas City did, too, and the Royals had plenty going for them after their 2014 run to the World Series. On the To The Majors podcast with Kevin Pillar and Cody Allen, Hunter laid out just how close that decision really was.
“I had a decision to make, and guess what the decision was: should I go to the Royals, or should I go to the Twins?” Hunter said.
The Royals looked strong on paper. Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Lorenzo Cain were coming into their own, and Alex Gordon was still giving them elite two-way production in the outfield. For a player chasing one last shot at a ring, Kansas City was no flimsy backup plan.
But the Twins made the pitch that mattered most.
Hunter’s history with Minnesota was always going to shape the conversation. The club drafted him in the first round of the 1993 MLB Draft, and he went on to become one of the franchise’s defining players.
Still, the relationship had some rough edges. After the 2007 season, the Twins let him walk in free agency, and he signed with the Angels, where he kept piling up big seasons before later playing for the Tigers.
When the Twins came calling again seven years later, Hunter had reasons to pause. He said on the podcast that his wife didn’t want to return to Minnesota after the way his first stint ended. And the Royals were sitting there fresh off a trip to the World Series.
Then Mike Herman, who was on the Twins’ communications staff during Hunter’s original run in Minnesota, gave him a reason to come back. Herman told him one more season could put him in the top five in franchise categories and lock in his place in team history.
“He was like, ‘Hey, come back, and you’ve got an opportunity to be in the top five in every category with the Twins, and you’ll go down in history or whatever. And we love you,’” Hunter recalled.
That was enough. Hunter chose Minnesota and played one final season with the club that drafted him.
The Twins didn’t reach the postseason in 2015, but Hunter still turned in a strong year at age 40, batting .286 with 22 doubles, 22 home runs and 81 RBIs. More than the numbers, though, he got the ending he wanted: he retired as a Twin.
And yet the regret lingers.
Minnesota entered the final weekend of the 2015 season with a shot at an American League Wild Card berth, only to run into Kansas City at Target Field. The Royals swept the Twins, locked up the top seed in the American League and kept rolling all the way to a World Series title over the New York Mets.
That’s the part Hunter can’t help but circle back to.
“If I would have chose the Royals, would I have won my World Series?” Hunter said.
It’s the kind of question baseball never answers. Maybe he gets a ring in Kansas City.
Maybe the story changes completely. Maybe it doesn’t.
But Hunter’s choice still says plenty about what Minnesota could offer that Kansas City couldn’t: the chance to close the book where it opened.
The Royals had the stronger team in that moment. The Twins had the stronger pull.
Hunter took the homecoming, played his last season in Minneapolis, and left the game in a Minnesota uniform. The championship never came, but for his place in Twins history, the ending was already written.
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