Twins’ superfan attends Spring Training for more than two decades

Writer: Sylvie Sparks
Published: Updated:

For devoted baseball fans, the MLB season isn’t just the summer months. It all starts in the spring and at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers for the Minnesota Twins.

Twins’ Superfan Neil Pierce has traveled from Minnesota to Fort Myers every year for more than two decades all for the love of his favorite team.

The ushers at Hammond Stadium know him well.

“It’s always ‘Good morning, Neil! Well, Hi, Terry or whoever,’” Pierce said.

He’s like family around there because he’s been coming to the Twins’ Spring Training for 26 years.

“The first year was a week, second year was two weeks, then it got to be two months,” Pierce said.

Neil lives about 100 miles away from Target field in Alden, Minnesota, so he doesn’t make it to many regular season games.

He lives more than one thousand miles away from Hammond Stadium and never misses a game in Lee County.

“I just love the Twins,” Pierce said. “As a young boy, kind of like, ‘Oh boy! Wouldn’t that be fun to go to a Twins Spring Training?’ and I started doing it and then I thought ‘That’s a lot of fun. I’ve got to come down again.’ I’ve been coming since.”

This year, he and neighbors from Minnesota rented a house for two months and plan to spend that time getting as many baseball cards signed as possible.

“We just meet some of the players and get a few autographs signed,” Pierce said. “Just the atmosphere of being around fans and players and green grass and a baseball stadium and all that good stuff. I played baseball when I was younger. I played baseball in college. I played in kind of a semi-pro league and I was a high school baseball coach for 33 years.”

You could say baseball is Neil’s life, he would.

Neil will be coming to practice for the next week until he gets to watch the Twins face the Braves in their Spring Training home opener at Hammond Stadium on Feb. 22.

Copyright ©2025 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.