Mike Giefer:

In the wake of an offseason dodging the threat of contraction and playing in a summer hindered by a low payroll and constant talks of a strike, the Minnesota Twins emerged as one of the best teams in baseball and played their way to the American League Championship Series before falling to the eventual world-champion Anaheim Angels.

They sent three players to the All-Star game, turned out another Gold Glover and won their division by 13 games.

And they did all of this with a constantly banged-up pitching staff and a handful of position players who underachieved at the plate.

The Twins’ payroll was around $42 million last season. Only two players on their roster were obtained through free agency, their average starter was about 26 years old, and none of their starters had any postseason experience. Yet they managed to come just a few games short of the World Series.

Go ahead and cheer for whomever you want to, but no one can deny that it’s the Minnesota Twins who capture the true pulse of America’s national pastime. A team that plays with a passion, a team who undoubtedly has earned the title of America’s team.

And while there might not be many world-championship banners decorating the Teflon of the aging Metrodome, the atmosphere circulating through the 20-year-old stadium is as rich and genuine as it’s been since the good old days of baseball, when players like Mantle, Killebrew and Ted Williams circled the base paths.

They’re not a group of high-paid all-stars or a collection of future Hall of Famers, but they’re a team of 25 ball players, all of whom share the same passion for the game and all of whom thoroughly love what they do for a living.

Guys like Hunter, Mientkiewicz, Jones, Pierzynski, Koskie, Cuddyer and LeCroy. Players no one had really heard of until last season’s charge to October and players who might not even be that significant if they played on the roster of a different team.

They don’t have much money, a renovated stadium or lucrative endorsements, but they find a way to make it work. And they’re ready to take that next step this year.

Analyzing the other end of the baseball spectrum, where smug teams like the cheating New York Yankees reside, the passion and commitment to the true essence of baseball is lost in a sea of greed, selfishness and overpaid players.

And what once represented everything good about baseball — guys like DiMaggio, Cobb and Ruth — has been transformed into everything that is wrong with today’s game.

Heading this evil organization of sellouts is the relentless George Steinbrenner, that greedy tyrant of an owner who is so bent up on garnering success that he exhausts nearly $200 million a season to buy it.

Ignoring every roadblock established by baseball to even the playing field of the sport, Steinbrenner continues to exploit smaller-market teams by spending hordes of his money each year simply because he has it.

Each offseason, he lures in high-priced veterans desperate for one last chance at a postseason, stacking his roster with a collection of former all-stars, most of whom probably hated each other at some point in their careers.

While the rest of the Major League Baseball teams opened up their season yesterday in the first of their 162-game schedule, the Yankees don’t begin their season until late in July — usually a few days before the trading deadline, when old man Steinbrenner and the rest of his cheating organization assess who they need to buy to catapult themselves to the forefront of the playoff race.

And it usually works for the Yankees. No one can argue that their four World Series championships since 1996 and nine consecutive playoff appearances aren’t impressive.

Watching a night game under the lights of Yankee Stadium on a crisp autumn evening is certainly something special. They’re a proud tradition, and they’re winners.

But knowing the source of their success, it’s just not the same as a team who wins with a patient minor-league system and a group of guys who have been playing ball together since they were 20 years old.

Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams make more than the entire Twins starters do combined. On paper, the Yankees are a far superior team.

But what the Twins have made everyone understand is that it’s what you have between the lines that counts.

And dedication, commitment, and passion for the game aren’t commodities that can be purchased in an off-season transaction or lucrative free-agent contract.

Ben Robinson:

Despite what your sixth-grade basketball coach may have told you, there is no such thing as a moral victory in sports. The very term itself is ridiculous, implying that losing requires morals, and winning, a lack of them. Then again, maybe that’s why that last-place team always toted home the sportsmanship trophy. Too many morals.

My evil Yankees, if you listen to the joker on my left, have none of these. And that’s why, unlike my colleague’s Twins and most other MLB teams, the Yanks win lots of world championships. 26, to be exact. That’s almost one every four years for as long as baseball has been around.

The Yanks have always been big spenders. In 1930 they shelled out a then-ridiculous $80,000 to Babe Ruth, $5,000 more than President Herbert Hoover made that year. The Babe’s response: “I had a better year than he did.”

And that’s been the Yanks’ credo ever since. Wins justify skyscraping contracts; World Series berths substantiate world-record payrolls. Yanks owner George Steinbrenner may be a magnet for ire and indignation, but he knows, thanks to his ruthless buy/sell tactics, he’s got a 90 percent chance of winning the Series while the rest of the league casts lots for the remaining 10.

The sad part is that most MLB owners couldn’t care less. They’re businessmen, not baseball people. Turning a profit, improving their bottom line — these are their goals. Not winning.

Case in point: the Chicago Cubs haven’t fielded a competitive team since the invention of the steam engine, yet Wrigley is constantly on the verge of collapsing from the legions of oblivious Cub fans who continually funnel themselves into the park to be thrilled about watching a losing product.

The Chicago Tribune Company, owner of the Cubs, sees this and finds no reason to field a winning team. Last year they paid Sammy his stipend, then padded the lineup with a 90-year-old Fred McGriff (who’s even older in Crime Dog years) and a pitcher who sounds like he should be smoothing the ice between periods (Carlos Zambrano).

Sosa jerseys keep flying off the racks, management keeps promising that Kerry Wood will absolutely, indubitably be healthy for the next 15 seasons, and Cubs fans buy it. It’s the all-too-knowing leading the hopelessly blind.

Of course, other teams try the big-money approach. The free-spending Mets didn’t know a 75-86 record came as a free gift with their ultra-pricey Mo Vaughn/Robbie Alomar/Jeromy Burnitz purchases. The Rangers spent $105 million on baseball’s version of a natural disaster, Carl Everett; a rapidly aging JuanGon; and a 72-90 record.

But it’s not as if anyone lumps these free-spending losers with the Yanks. It’s not big market vs. small market; it’s the Yankees vs. everyone else. If the Yankees win, it’s a horrible conspiracy funded by drug money and terrorists and everything else impure. Anyone else: it’s a triumph for the underprivileged, a long-awaited win for that 60-pound kid who kept getting his glasses destroyed in gym-class dodgeball.

That’s the problem. The rest of the free world seems to take sickly, perverse pleasure in watching the Yanks fail. When, before the emergence of the Yankee dynasty, did winning games — which, as we discussed earlier, is the object of sports — automatically place a team at the top of everybody’s Things to Hate List?

Call them greedy, oppressive, Stalinistic, whatever. Throw darts at Jeter’s smug mug, call Clemens “Benedict Arnold,” scream “sellout” at Giambi.

Just don’t hate George for wanting to win.