The thing about inexplicable sports occurrences — streaks and curses, slumps and hexes, whatever lies between — is that the longer they last, the more we grasp for reasons and explanations. Thus, the Minnesota Twins arrived in the MLB postseason Tuesday. When they last won a playoff game, their starting pitcher was 8, their designated hitter 5, their manager a player in his second major league season.

So as Minnesotans paced and pondered in anticipation — or maybe straight-up angst — about their first-round playoff series with the Toronto Blue Jays, forgive them for trying to distance their team from its travails, which would be (gulp) 18 straight losses in postseason games dating from … 2004?

How to explain such a peculiarity, except to say there’s no explanation?

“It’s a curiosity, to be sure, to lose 18 in a row at anything,” said Dick Bremer, the Twins’ television play-by-play man for the past 40 years. “Rock paper scissors, it would be notable if you lost 18 in a row.”

“I’m well aware of our playoff futility over the last two decades,” said Craig Finn, lead singer of rock band The Hold Steady, who grew up in suburban Edina and wears, on most days of his life, a Twins hat. “But even 18 seems like too much. I can’t even believe that that’s the case.”

“It’s how many?” said Matt LeCroy, a backup catcher and first baseman for the Twins from 2000 to 2005 and again in 2007. “That’s strange. That’s hard to do.”

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So the trick this week in Minneapolis: Find a way to dismiss a streak that defines October for a franchise and a generation — or more — of its fan base.

“Royce Lewis had no part in it,” Bremer said, beginning to tick off current Twins who have no ties to the past. “Kyle Farmer had no part in it. Sonny Gray, Pablo López. It’s very odd that a franchise could go through this.”

How the heck did any team get here? Like any phenomenon that feels like a living, breathing organism, the streak has a birth date: Oct. 6, 2004. The opponent was the New York Yankees, the goliath that had eliminated the Twins in the division series the previous October. From 2002 to 2004, the Twins’ regular-season record against the Yankees: 2-17.

“It was one of those things everybody thought it was in our head,” LeCroy said. “I don’t know if it was in our mind like that. We weren’t scared of the Yankees. The Yankees were better.”

Finn had moved to New York during the early 2000s, right when MLB was talking about eliminating the Twins altogether. Facing the Yankees — and the aura and the legends and the crowds — was daunting.

“I sort of remember having a chip on my shoulder then,” Finn said. “We were the ‘Contraction Kids,’ and the Yankees were so good at that point. Living in New York was pretty annoying. I liked New York, but on that front, I didn’t love it.”

Still, baseball is full of October examples in which the team that is demonstrably better does not win. Even a coin weighted to heads comes up tails at some point — unless you’re the Twins.

That night at Yankee Stadium, the Twins had been buoyed by their ace, Johan Santana, who threw seven scoreless innings to beat the Yankees, 2-0, in Game 1 the day before. In Game 2, Yankees Manager Joe Torre called on Mariano Rivera, by then already an incomparable closer, to protect a 5-3 lead in the eighth.

Somehow, Minnesota’s Justin Morneau flared a ball to right that brought in a run and cut the Twins’ deficit in half. And then came the kind of play that defines fans’ experiences and reflections on curiosities such as the Twins’ postseason losing streak — a “What if” or an “If only” that was big in the moment and grows enormous over time. Corey Koskie came up with runners at first and third. With the count full, Manager Ron Gardenhire decided to run for Morneau with the fleet-footed Luis Rivas.

When Rivera went into his motion, Rivas tore toward second. Koskie shot a ball into the left field corner. Torii Hunter scored the tying run. With Rivas running on the pitch, the Twins were going to take the lead. Except … Koskie’s ball hopped over the wall for an automatic double. The umps made Rivas return to third. Rivera retired the next two men.

Even after Hunter homered in the 12th, Alex Rodriguez’s double against worn-out closer Joe Nathan tied the score again. When Hideki Matsui brought home Derek Jeter with a sac fly, the Yankees had evened the series — and the Twins, as a franchise, were off to wander the postseason wilderness.

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The Yankees finished that series with two wins at the Metrodome, the clincher in 11 innings when Rodriguez scored on a wild pitch and Rivera closed it out. Since, the Twins have been swept in division series by Oakland in 2006 and by the Yankees in 2009, 2010 and 2019. They lost a single-game wild-card matchup to the Yankees in 2017, a best-of-three first-round series to Houston in 2020. Eight of those 18 losses were by four or more runs.

And yet, the days leading into the Toronto series allowed for some optimism.

“I’m going to Vegas this weekend,” Finn said. “And if you were to play the roulette wheel and 18 straight times it came up black, you’d put your money on red, right? I guess that’s still sort of my feeling about this year.”

That fits the nature of a fan base rooted in “Minnesota nice.” Though nearly two decades without even one playoff night of happy, restful sleep “has depressed, to some degree, the fan interest,” Bremer said, there was the idea that one swing, one play, one game could turn everything. There could be optimism at Target Field because Minnesotans default not to derisive but to supportive.

“They were special,” LeCroy said of the fans. “They rooted for you no matter what. They’d pull for you when you were bad. They just wanted you to be good. It all felt like family to me.”

But could any family endure all this losing — at the most important time of year — much longer? Bremer thought back to the legendary Minnesota teams, pre-streak. In 1987, when a young Twins team made the franchise’s first playoff appearance in 17 years, Minnesota faced the heavily favored, 98-win Detroit Tigers. Twins third baseman Gary Gaetti, in the first two postseason at-bats of his career, jacked home runs. A few weeks later, the Twins were World Series champions.

“It seemed to lift everybody up,” Bremer said. “When someone gets hot, it provides a spark that can carry a team for a long, long time. Twins fans are hopeful that someone will step up and take control of the game, and by extension the series. The hope is Royce Lewis or someone could do the same.”

Bremer said this Tuesday morning. That afternoon, Lewis hit a two-run homer to left in the first inning, a solo shot to right-center in the third. That’s all López, the starting pitcher, and four relievers needed. Shortstop Carlos Correa made a spectacular and heady play in the fourth to cover up a botched grounder and cut down a runner at the plate. Michael A. Taylor made multiple impressive catches in center field.

And in the ninth, when Twins closer Jhoan Durán got Toronto’s George Springer to ground out, Minnesota — the Minnesota Twins, of all teams — had a 3-1 postseason victory.

“I refuse to believe that this group of players is somehow cursed or intimidated,” Finn said. “… I’m an optimist by nature, but I just don’t see how it can keep going this way.”

Tuesday, it changed. Wednesday, the Twins could win a series. Their run of 18 straight postseason losses is over. Sonny Gray gets the ball for Game 2. Stay positive, Minnesota.