"How hard could it be?"

Image courtesy of Flickr/Joe Bielawa

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Twins Daily has learned that the Minnesota Twins plan to replace the human who portrayed beloved fake bear TC with a real, live bear.“It’s no secret that baseball’s fan base is aging, and we need to appeal to a younger crowd if we want to grow the sport,” said Twins GM Thad Levine. “The market research is clear. Millennials and Gen Y crave authenticity and a lack of artifice. Parading a grown man in a bear costume about Target Field just doesn’t land with them. We’re going to give them something real.”Sources tell Twins Daily that the team is already auditioning bears in the Ely area to replace Greg Wilfahrt, the man who portrayed TC the last two decades “There was some pushback within the organization,” said a front office source with knowledge of the process. “Lots of ‘What if it eats a baby or Max Kepler’ scenarios. They’re fair points, but at the end of the day, how hard could it be? They’re just big dogs. We’ll put up a few extra nets and give them some peanut butter.”Levine says the Twins hope that the new TC will continue to perform their predecessor’s duties.“The home run contests in the outfield are probably just a matter of coaching the new TC up,” said the GM. “James (Rowson, Twins hitting coach) isn’t afraid of a challenge. And while there’s definitely been some static about having an enormous bear guided only by an urge to feed and mate visiting hospitals, we’ve seen how patients’ eyes light up when TC enters their room. Those service elevators are pretty big, gotta figure we can squeeze a bear and, say, Sergio Romo in there.”This is not the first time the Twins have attempted to use an actual bear as its mascot. With Wilfahrt battling the flu, the 2009 team brought a brown bear named Patches on its offseason Twins Caravan. It later mauled 23 at a Fergus Falls steakhouse before being subdued by Kent Hrbek.