BRADENTON, Fla. -- They're the inspiration for every dollar-challenged team in every mid-sized quasi-metropolis in America. If you can't be the Yankees these days, you might as well try to be the Minnesota Twins -- the anti-Yankees.

The Twins' payroll -- like their win total -- has gone up this year for the third straight season. But it's still another (gulp) $100 million until you arrive at The Bronx.

And even after a year in which the Twins won their division by 13½ games and beat Oakland in the playoffs, their highest-paid position player still will be Torii Hunter, at $4.75 million. Eight Yankees position players will make more than that this year.

	Torii Hunter set career highs in nearly all offensive categories in 2002, including home runs (29) and RBI (94).

But this isn't a story about money, not really. This is a story about the other things that make the Twins what they are -- the best, the closest, the most lovable, the most watchable $54-million team on the continent.

Money can't buy you all of those things. It can't buy you joy. It can't buy you camaraderie. It can't buy you chemistry. And while the Twins haven't cornered the market on those attributes, they sure know what intersection to find the market.

"Chemistry -- that's very important here," said their manager and chemistry professor, Ron Gardenire. "These guys grew up playing together. They went through some real tough times together. Then finally last year, they were able to break through and win the division together. They have a lot of fun together, and it shows. If you spend time in our clubhouse, you can see there are a lot of good friends in there. And that's important."

These Twins are living proof of just how much chemistry matters. Of course, it matters more if the chemists can play a little. But without that chemistry, how would these guys ever have survived their near-death contraction experience last year -- and even found a way to use it as the fuel for their joyride to October?

"You know what?" said first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. "People think you only have chemistry when you win. We had chemistry when we almost lost 100 games, too. We said, 'No one else believes in us? We might as well believe in ourselves.' ... So last year, we said, 'They're trying to get rid of us? Let's use it to our advantage.' And we did."

There's no way to quantify which was most responsible for the Twins' spectacular season -- the believing, the chemistry or the talent. But all of it showed in everything they did, from the first day of spring training to the way they dealt with Game 5 against the Angels. And it showed again this winter -- in the transactions column.

Here, for example, would be your typical transactions listing this offseason for the Twins and Yankees:

New York Yankees: Signed free agents Hideki Matusi, Jose Contreras, Chris Hammond and Todd Zeile for $59.3 million.
Minnesota Twins: Zzzzzzzz.

Oh, OK, it's not as if the Twins did nothing at all this winter. They did bring in a couple of non-roster relief pitchers (Mike Fetters, Jose Cabrera). They did open a spot for Matthew LeCroy and their slew of outfield bats by non-tendering DH David Ortiz.

	“	I see the same look in the eyes of every guy in this locker room. We've all had success, and we've all been humbled. That's why this group is a bunch of fighters. And we're not going to stop fighting now. ”
		— Doug Mientkiewicz, Twins first baseman

But unlike some teams -- say, teams that win 103 games, nearly lead their league in ERA and home runs, and then still sign the biggest international pitching and slugging names out there -- the Twins don't tweak for tweaking's sake, don't fiddle for fiddling's sake, don't spend for spending's sake.

It takes a lot of courage in this day and age for a general manager to say, "This is my team, and I like my team, and I'm not going to mess with my team." But that's essentially what Twins GM Terry Ryan said.

"I know that in the wintertime, what people want to hear and see on the news is their team making high-profile additions," Ryan said. "But I tried to go into the winter preparing people for what was to come. I said, 'All we'll probably do is keep our own (players).' And that's what we did."

There was a time not so long ago, obviously, when the Twins didn't even do that. But revenue sharing -- and winning -- made it possible for them to sign Hunter to a four-year, $32-million deal, and to sign Jacque Jones to a two-year, $7.1-million deal.

So the payroll -- which has gone from $16-to-$27-to-$41-to-$54 million the last four years -- went up again. But the payroll is about the only thing about this team that has changed.

There are a lot of reasons for that. But it starts with the fact that Terry Ryan got his degree from the school of "If It Ain't Broke, Why Are You Looking up the Number of the Repair Shop?" University.

"If you like your team and you've been successful," Ryan said, "I don't know why you'd want to mess with things."

That isn't a quote you'll ever read from George M. Steinbrenner III, friends. But it sums up the Twins, where stability is a goal, not a sign of complacency.

"I don't think anybody would have messed with this group, to be honest," Mientkiewicz said. "They stuck their necks out in '99 to bring us all up. And this is what I think they envisioned for us a long time ago."

In 1999, the Twins lost 97 games. But that was still the first step in the journey that led them to the top of the AL Central.

Of the eight current regular position players, six of them (Mientkiewicz, Hunter, Jones, A.J. Pierzynski, Cristian Guzman and Corey Koskie) played on that '99 team. So did three of the five starting pitchers (Joe Mays, Eric Milton, Brad Radke) and the closer (Eddie Guardado).

(The Twins) need to find a right-handed thumper to counteract that 23-29 record against left-handed starters last year. But the difference between the Twins and the Yankees is this: The Yankees would have filled that hole with Jeff Kent, Pudge Rodriguez or the ghost of Joe DiMaggio. The Twins merely opened a vacancy for (Matthew) LeCroy, who has patiently waited his turn while putting up numbers at every level. And nobody in their clubhouse spends 10 seconds fantasizing about the guys they didn't sign.

That's twice as many prominent players as the Yankees still employ from their '99 team, which won 98 games and swept the Braves in the World Series. Draw your own conclusions.

"You've gotta think," Mientkiewicz mused, "that if it said 'Yankees' on our chests, they'd be disappointed in us (for not winning the World Series). But we got somewhere last year a lot of people didn't expect us to go. And we realize there are a few more steps to get to the ultimate goal. This is the first time we've ever gone to spring training and we could feel like that goal was finally within reach."

You still don't find many geniuses picking the Twins to win the World Series -- although Sporting News baseball columnist Ken Rosenthal did just rank them No. 1 in the first TSN power poll of the year. ("Has he been fired yet?" Mientkiewicz quipped.)

But if the average schmoe out there in North Dakota or someplace is looking on the Twins as some kind of one-year fluke, he's clearly been shoveling too much snow.

If you look back on last season more closely, you see, you'll notice this was not a team on which everybody had career years. Far from it.

"Offensively, our whole infield should be better," Gardenhire said. "Luis Rivas broke his arm, and he was never really right the whole year. Koskie hurt all over -- bad hand, bad wrist, bad hamstring. Doug had a bad wrist all year. Guzman had a bad knee, a bad foot and a bad shoulder. So none of them did what they were capable of doing with the bat. But they all caught the ball about as well as you can."

Of the nine guys in the lineup, only Hunter, Jones and Pierzynski raised their personal offensive bars. But "if you start looking at the numbers and crunching them," Ryan said, "you can see there's upside with almost all of our players."

A year ago this time, you would have thought that if the Twins were going to win 94 games, it would be a tribute to their starting pitching. Uh, nope.

Radke (groin), Milton (knee) and Mays (elbow) got hurt. They were the only team among the eight playoff entrants that had no starter pitch 200 innings. And their starters had the highest ERA (4.38) among the eight playoff rotations. So if Radke and Mays stay as healthy as they've been so far and Milton returns from arthroscopic knee surgery by May, there's no reason their starting pitching can't get better, either.

In other words, to sum this up: They might hit better. They might pitch better. Defensively, they're still the greatest leatherworking show on earth. Their system keeps cranking out dazzling young players. (Watch out for Michael Restovich, Lew Ford and, before too long, Joe Mauer.) And every team in their division -- except the White Sox -- went backwards.

So basically, there's more chance of Norah Jones being a one-hit wonder than there is of the Twins being a one-hit wonder. "Most of our players are just moving into the prime of their careers," Ryan said. "And most of our position players are not even near their prime. ... I've always felt that if you've got players and you know the talent is there, it takes three or four years for guys to get comfortable up here. Well, most of our guys are two- or three-year players."

Granted, they need to find a right-handed thumper to counteract that 23-29 record against left-handed starters last year. But the difference between the Twins and the Yankees is this:

The Yankees would have filled that hole with Jeff Kent, Pudge Rodriguez or the ghost of Joe DiMaggio. The Twins merely opened a vacancy for LeCroy, who has patiently waited his turn while putting up numbers at every level. And nobody in their clubhouse spends 10 seconds fantasizing about the guys they didn't sign.

"To me," Mientkiewicz said, "the time when we turned the corner as an organization was when we stopped thinking about who we didn't have. We wasted too much time worrying about not having Ellis Burks or not having Jim Thome or people like that. Now we just look at what we have."

Maybe the best thing about the Minnesota Twins is that they never complain. Ever. They know they can't be the Yankees. But they can sure try to beat the Yankees.

"I applaud the Yankees," Gardenhire said, "because they try to win. They'll do anything they can to win, so I tip my hat to Mr. Steinbrenner. We can't do it the same way as the Yankees. So we do it our way. They do it their way. But the bottom line is, we're both trying to do the same thing. We're both trying to win."

Well, even in a year where they don't have contraction to inspire them, don't bet against them.

"I see the same look in the eyes of every guy in this locker room," Mientkiewicz said. "We've all had success, and we've all been humbled. That's why this group is a bunch of fighters. And we're not going to stop fighting now."

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.