As August dawned in downtown San Diego, Paul Molitor went for his usual morning walk. The Twins’ third-year manager had much to contemplate.

Over the previous 48 hours, his new Twins baseball bosses had traded away his No. 3 starter (Jaime Garcia) and his all-star closer (Brandon Kintzler) in a clear vote of no-confidence, at least when it came to the 2017 Twins’ chances of reaching the postseason.

His team having lost 12 of its past 17 games, including three of its past four by a single run, Molitor could sense the season limping to a crossroads. His young team about to fall a season-high four games under .500 that night against the Padres, Molitor sorted through his various emotions and wondered what he should say to his players.

As he strode along San Diego Harbor, a place where he spent many winter days early in his hall-of-fame playing career, Molitor set his iPod on shuffle and kept churning forward. Soon, the familiar voice of his old friend Bruce Springsteen filled his ears with a clarion call that stopped Molitor in his tracks:

Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold

We swore blood brothers against the wind

I’m ready to grow young again

Cause we made a promise we swore we’d always remember

No retreat, baby, no surrender

Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend

No retreat, baby, no surrender

Upon reaching the visitors’ clubhouse at Petco Park early that afternoon, Molitor took a blue marker and wrote four words on the whiteboard where the daily lineup is posted: “NO RETREAT. NO SURRENDER.”

He didn’t add Springsteen’s name or the song title, “No Surrender.” He just left it at that.

“I think a lot of people know I have a little Bruce Springsteen thing,” Molitor said this week. “That song just happened to come up on my walk that day. It kind of stuck in my head. Right at the trade deadline, we’d lost a few people. There’s no looking back.”

The Twins were five games behind in the American League wild-card standings, but there were still two months and 59 games left to play.

CHANNELING THE ANGER

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim

The walls of my room are closing in

There’s a war outside still raging

You say it ain’t ours anymore to win

As Byron Buxton walked back into the Twins clubhouse that Aug. 1 afternoon, the 23-year-old center fielder checked the lineup card to see if he was starting. He smiled as he saw his name listed seventh in the batting order. Related Articles Twins reinstate pitcher Homer Bailey and will start him tonight vs. Tigers

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Out since July 14, first with a strained groin and later with a flare-up of the migraines he’s battled for years, Buxton was eager to get back to work but also dealing with the same confusion many of his teammates were after the trade deadline. He saw those four words on the whiteboard and immediately grasped their message.

“As a team that told us, ‘No matter what, he has our back,’ ” Buxton said of Molitor. “So just keep going out there fighting. Don’t worry about what we can’t control. Just focus on what we can control. That’s going out there and playing baseball.”

Molitor wasn’t sure how many of his players would make the connection to a Springsteen hit off “Born in the U.S.A.” now more than three decades old, but Buxton got it.

“I did. Right away,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s Bruce Springsteen.’ I listen to quite a bit of that type of music. There were quite a few of us who knew who he was.”

One by one, the 25 Twins players that walked in that day saw that same four-word reminder. Before heading out for batting practice, a players-only meeting was called.

Veterans Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier ran the meeting, which lasted only 10 or 15 minutes, Buxton said. The mood was somber and purposeful.

“The biggest thing I remember is Joe and Doz stood up and they said, ‘Just because we lost a couple of our brothers, that doesn’t change who we are,’ ” Buxton recalled. “I think them telling us that and so many of us looking up to them as our leaders, it took that weight off our shoulders of, ‘What are we going to do next?’ ”

Asked if the group was more angry or confused that day, Buxton didn’t hesitate.

“Angry,” he said. “There weren’t many smiles. There were no happy faces or anything. We kind of took what they were saying and took what had happened and turned it into our motivation. We let that motivate us to say, ‘All right, if nobody believes in us, the guys that are here, we’re going to believe in ourselves.’ That allowed us to go out there and play this game free.”

They vowed to forget the standings, forget the continuing rumors as the season entered the August waiver trade period.

Instead, they agreed to take each game, each inning, each pitch for what Molitor always told them they were: an opportunity.

“San Diego was a big point for us to come together and keep doing what we’re doing,” Buxton said. “A lot of thoughts were floating around during that time. It was a regrouping session for us. It kept things in perspective to not look ahead. Just take this game day by day, one pitch at a time and everything else will work out.”

A 20-win August followed as the Twins, against all odds, surged back into the wild-card picture.

STAYING CLOSE

Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound

I can feel my heart begin to pound

You say you’re tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down

As he stood on the fringe of a champagne-soaked clubhouse celebration late Wednesday night, his Twins team back in the postseason for the first time in seven years, Mauer was asked about Molitor’s whiteboard message. A confused look spread across the first baseman’s face.

“I remember the day,” Mauer said with a smile. “Maybe I missed it on the board.”

The players-only meeting remains vivid, however.

“It was a great meeting,” Mauer recalled. “We decided we wanted to finish what we started. That was kind of the thing, and the boys responded. Obviously, we lost some good players that (weekend), but I think guys took it upon themselves to come back out there and finish strong.”

Mauer has been a part of many players-only meetings over his 14-year career. Despite public perception of him as a quiet, lead-by-example type, he has even spoken up at those meetings in the past.

This meeting, the San Diego Summit, was different.

“We just wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page,” Mauer said. “We’d had an off day when I think a lot of those trades happened. We just wanted to pull everybody together, and we do that throughout the year. I think that was a point where we really got out there and there was a lot of people that talked, and it was good.”

Another 14-year veteran, reliever Matt Belisle, could sense that day as a turning point as well.

“It was a very, very good meeting,” said Belisle, who has converted eight of 10 save chances since stepping in for Kintzler. “We just wanted to make sure where we were coming out of that. We just wanted to stay close.”

Belisle, 37, had been part of three different clubs that reached the postseason: 2009 Colorado Rockies, 2015 St. Louis Cardinals and 2016 Washington Nationals. He could tell the right things were being said that day in San Diego.

“It was just sticking to the plan of resiliency, sticking to the plan of staying together,” Belisle said. “It truly was, ‘We’re going to come out of this, regardless of what trades happen or don’t happen, and we’re going to play for each other and play to win.’ Nobody really thought we could do much.

“If we were going to win, we had to learn how to be winners. We wanted to just make sure all the guys understood, even when you lose, if you do it right you’re a winner. We’re going to fail, but let’s just take each game at a time, forget about yesterday and be winners and see where we end up.”

Was there anger in the room?

“Absolutely,” Mauer said. “I think the biggest thing in the meeting was to direct that anger or whatever feeling in a positive way, and I think we were able to do that. A lot of the veteran guys spoke up and we decided we were going to put it in a positive direction, and here we are throwing champagne and beer all over each other.” Related Articles Twins reinstate pitcher Homer Bailey and will start him tonight vs. Tigers

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A few steps away, another son of St. Paul, Mauer’s forebear at Cretin-Derham Hall High School, stood back and enjoyed the celebration. Did Molitor ever ask how the players-only meeting went?

“A part of me was curious and another part of me said the players are going to do what the players do,” he said. “If they decide to have a meeting amongst themselves, that’s their business. So I trusted the leadership in the clubhouse.”

Entering the final series of the regular season, the Twins had gone 33-23 since that meeting in San Diego. Losers of 103 games just a year ago, they had completed a historic turnaround.

“It was a nice response,” Molitor said. “Like we talked about that day on the West Coast, it was a time to think about yourself and not about what other decisions other people were making. They had to back it up, and they did, and here we are.”