Antione Jenkins’ Mural Will Enlighten Twins Fans For Generations

Minneapolis – Antione Jenkins didn’t pretend to keep his cool on Monday after he saw his biggest creation to date installed on Target Field’s concourse.

He had created several murals throughout the Twin Cities before, but it was surreal for him to be selected to create one for a Major League park.

“If I was told as a kid I was going to have this mural inside the baseball park, I probably would’ve peed myself to be honest,” Jenkins said. “I’m not going to lie to you guys. Truth be told, I’d probably just be stuck in awe. I wouldn’t even be able to believe it because I never thought I was going to be an artist.”

The Baseball Heroes mural at Target Field features some of the best Black ballplayers to have spent their careers in the Upper Midwest. It includes Twins legends Earl Battey and Torii Hunter, to Baseball Hall of Famers Satchel Paige and Lou Brock, to name a few.

The Twins and the Minnesota Ballpark Authority commissioned the mural in April 2025. A year later, their vision to honor the legacies of these players has come to life in ways they couldn’t have expected.

Jenkins is a self-taught artist who got his start in shoe design. He started off creating designs for Milwaukee Bucks shooting guard Gary Trent Jr.’s sneakers on the court during his freshman year at Duke University.

“I started originally using shoes from my little brothers, other siblings from the house, and I grabbed paint from Walmart and started painting on them, wore them to school, and had some friends that liked it,” he said. “[Trent] committed on ESPN on live TV, was showcasing my shoes, and then from there I was like, ‘I think I’m going to be an artist instead of an athlete. And that was my transition from there.”

Jenkins submitted two different concept art ideas for the mural. One depicts the players in stained glass, while the other, chosen, showcases them as superheroes in the latest comic book to hit the newsstand.

“I really wanted them to feel either the emotion from each highlighted play, or the emotion from the players themselves, and just seeing them in a bigger setting,” Jenkins said. “All of these players involved, I want them to feel like, 'Ah, this is really them, like oh my gosh, I can't believe it.' So that was the feeling of it.”

Jenkins got to relive one of his favorite baseball moments from childhood in this mural, featuring Hunter’s ‘comic book strip’ based on one of his most famous home run robberies of Barry Bonds in the 2002 All-Star Game.

However, some of the players included in the mural, such as Ray Dandridge, Hilton Smith, and John Donaldson, were new to him. It became a valuable educational moment.

“I think that I definitely learned there was a lot more players that came from the Minneapolis and St. Paul area that I did not know that were famous baseball players,” Jenkins said. “Torii Hunter was always my childhood favorite from the Twins growing up, but Kirby Puckett is a legend. Jim [Mudcat Grant], he’s a big dog up there, Satchel Paige, another one.”

The mural will include a plaque with a QR code that provides biographies of each player featured. It’s already proven educational for Twins manager Derek Shelton, who was unaware of one of Hall of Famer Willie Mays early stops in his pro-ball career.

“I didn’t realize Willie Mays had played for the Millers,” said Shelton. “One of the things that Hawk, LaTroy Hawkins, and I were talking about was the education for people of players that have come before and to be able to learn about them, and the fact that we’re doing that, I think, is really special.”

If there’s one word to describe Jenkins's creation of the mural and its unveiling at Target Field on Monday, it’s surreal. He wants to create that feeling he had when he was selected to create Target Field’s newest work of art for fans every time they see it.

"That nervous feeling was just going to be coming from all these different people feeling enlightened from the art I create,” said Jenkins. “So that's where I'm getting all this energy and feeling like the emotion from everything that's come forward, and energy I want to give to other people and a light that shines to the world, because let the world be my canvas.”