MLB playoffs 2023: How Royce Lewis embodies upstart Twins

Royce Lewis' father, William, sat near the back of the family section behind home plate and could only shake his head. "He would do something like that," he told himself. Derek Falvey, the Minnesota Twins' president of baseball operations, turned to his 7-year-old son Jack, wearing a cream-colored Royce Lewis jersey gifted to him for these playoffs, and found himself at a loss for words.

"If you write that as a fiction story," Falvey later said, "everyone would say that's too much fantasy. 'That's not real. That can't be real.' You would think it's fake."

Twenty-four hours before he became a certified Twins legend, hitting the two home runs that set the tone in the victory that ended an…