Twins’ Mickey Gasper turns his 0-for-life major league stat into 1-for-21 and calls it a start

ST. LOUIS - The most thrilling six weeks of Mickey Gasper’s baseball career were always tinged with a little bit of melancholy. True, more than six years after he was drafted, just two months short of his 29th birthday, Gasper had been promoted by the Red Sox to the major leagues.

His parents, Mick Sr. and Livia, were at Fenway Park constantly to root him on, and nearly every time he came to bat, the team’s TV broadcaster focused on them, ready to document the excitement they’d feel over his first hit.

It never came.

Gasper went 0-for-18, the New England Sports Network stopped showing his parents, and he spent the winter with a .000 next to his name, a mark he brought to Minnesota after a Christmas Eve trade.

“You’re just trying to help the team win every time when you’re out there, and when you’re not getting hits, there’s only a handful of things you can do,” Gasper said. “Do you start chasing hits every now and then? Certainly. But I just try to help the team win. Whatever they need me to do, I’m trying to do it.”

He went to the plate for his first at-bat as a Twin in the second inning Saturday, with Trevor Larnach standing on second base. Perhaps a little overeager, Gasper swung at the first pitch, a cutter from Cardinals starter Erick Fedde on the inside corner, and popped it up to shortstop Masyn Winn.

“I would really have liked to get that RBI,” Gasper said, “but Willi [Castro] picked me up” with a two-out double.

He flew out to shallow right field in the fifth inning, too, raising his career 0-fer to 20 at-bats.

But leading off the eighth inning, Gasper hit a hard grounder to the left of Winn, who was able to reach it but stumbled a bit on the damp grass. By the time he got up and threw the ball, Gasper had arrived at first base with that zero now erased.

The Twins’ dugout erupted, and the ball was retrieved as a keepsake.

“I was excited. I was trying to start an inning, get us back in the game,” Gasper said just before joining his parents to celebrate. “That’s why I play, for them. All the hours my dad, my mom put in, getting me to practice and games, it’s really all for them.”

He noted the irony, too, of hitting several balls hard during his slump, then beating out a ground ball for a hit.

“That’s why you run hard down the line,” Gasper said. “I always got yelled at by my dad to run hard. Winn made a nice play, getting on his belly, and I was able to beat it out.”

Too bad it was in a loss, Gasper said. But it’s a memory that will never fade.

“Hopefully, this is the first of many for me,” Gasper said, “and tomorrow is the first of many wins for the Twins.”

For the second straight game here, batting practice was scuttled by rain, though this time, the game started on time.

The Cardinals notified the Twins that Sunday’s weather looks even worse, though. But since the Twins don’t return to St. Louis this season and their postgame flight to Chicago is short, the Cardinals likely are willing to wait out the weather, expected to clear by late afternoon.

• The Saints’ game against Indianapolis at CHS Field was rained out. The game will be made up as part of a doubleheader when the Indians return to St. Paul in late April.

Lefthander Danny Coulombe had postgame plans Saturday: find a TV and root for Texas Tech, his alma mater, to reach the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four.

“Basketball was big in Lubbock,” where he native attended college. “It would be a blast” if they could upset top-seeded Florida.

Across the locker room, Edouard Julien sounded excited to see whether Auburn can get past Michigan State on Sunday. Julien played baseball for Auburn in 2018 and 2019. He knows coach Bruce Pearl, he said, and learned the cockiness of playing in the Southeastern Conference.

“I feel good about their chances,” Julien said of the Tigers. “If it’s not an SEC team, it’s an easy win. Now, when they play Florida or Tennessee or Alabama …”