Pensacola officially became Twins Territory last week.

The Minnesota Twins visited Pensacola on Jan. 31 to celebrate their new affiliation with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos during the first ever Twins Winter Caravan Pensacola. 

Minnesota Twins guests included general manager Thad Levine, director of minor league operations Jeremy Zoll, Blue Wahoos manager Ramon Borrego, and pitching prospects Tyler Wells and Devin Smeltzer.

More than 500 fans joined the Caravan at the Studer Community Institute’s Garden Street building for a family-friendly evening of meet and greets, question and answer sessions, autographs, ballpark food, and special announcements. The Twins Winter Caravan is one of the longest running and most extensive team caravans in professional sports, bringing Twins players and personalities to numerous stops in over 40 communities throughout the Midwest during the month of January. 

Fans also were able to sample new concessions offerings that will be available at Blue Wahoos Stadium in 2019. Thanks to generous donations by the Twins, fans will have the chance to take home Twins apparel and autographed memorabilia through door prizes and a silent auction to benefit the Studer Community Institute.

The auction raised $1,192 to benefit SCI’s early learning programs. We couldn't be more grateful to our friends in the Wahoos family for their support of our work and mission.  

As we gear up for the coming baseball season, Wahoos fans will have another opportunity to help support SCI's Brain Bags and early learning projects. You'll now have the option to addd $1 to your ticket price in support of SCI.

The donation will support the SCI Brain Bags, early literacy gift bags given to new mothers before they leave the hospital. They include: a storybook, “P is For Pelican, the ABCs of Pensacola,” which uses landmarks in our community to build letter awareness and encourage family reading; Baby Steps, a baby book that can be personalized to help parents track early brain development milestones in the first three years of life; a toy; and a binder of community resource information and partners to help support parents. It includes library locations, screen time guidelines, Thirty Million Words Initiative teaching points, healthy lifestyle advice for first year of life, and more.

Brain Bags are provided to Baptist, Sacred Heart and West Florida hospitals at no cost to the hospitals. Only through our donors support are we able to provide this resource to the community — where only 46 percent of our children are ready school when they start kindergarten according to state education data.