Souhan: Thirty years of Twins spring training memories

FORT MYERS, FLA. – The Twins are concluding spring training. I’ve been to 30 of them. Journey with me to a time predating cellphones, selfies and Pilates.

Nutrition in baseball is a new phenomenon: In the mid-1990s, I walked from the Twins home clubhouse to the minor league clubhouse and caught the end of a workout. As the superstars of tomorrow jogged off the field, they were treated to a free lunch — boxes of Blimpie subs sitting in the Florida sunshine, the mayonnaise flowing like a river of sadness into the grass.

Marty Cordova was a rising star in the organization in 1995: One night I went to dinner at Shoeless Joe’s, a Fort Myers restaurant that became a dance bar after dinner hours.

Cordova was working as the bouncer.

He didn’t think he was going to make the big-league team. I told him he was a lock to be the opening day left fielder and should not be working nights, much less at a job that might require him to break his hand on someone’s chin.

He quit the bouncing job and was the rookie of the year.

Kirby Puckett was always the first player to arrive, bringing bagels for clubhouse workers: That wasn’t the end of his generosity. In 1994, first-round draft pick Torii Hunter lockered between Puckett and Dave Winfield. Puckett told Hunter, “I’m gonna leave my wallet right here. Take whatever you want. Don’t even tell me.”

Twins manager Tom Kelly won two World Series with Gene Larkin on his roster: In the early 1990s, the Twins’ top prospect was former Stanford star David McCarty, the No. 3 overall pick in 1991.

After a meeting in 1994 that determined that McCarty would make the team instead of Larkin, Kelly, distraught, offered this quote on McCarty making the team:

“Stanford, boola, boola, boola.”

I went on a scouting trip with then personnel director and future GM Terry Ryan: We watched the Pirates play the Rangers in Port Charlotte.

Ryan saw a Pirates prospect getting off a bus, 200 yards away, wearing a black pullover. He told me not only the kid’s name, but what he had hit in Class A the previous season.

Then the Pirates’ youngsters sprayed a few hits against Nolan Ryan. “Uh-oh,” Terry Ryan said. “Nolan is not happy. This bird better watch out.”

That “bird,” the Pirates’ next hitter, took a fastball that seemed to stick to his shoulder like it was velcroed. The Pirates would not get another hit off baseball’s strikeout king.

In the early years of Lee County Sports Complex, Hammond Stadium abutted a large pasture: Kent Hrbek hit a long home run to left-center in 1993. Asked about it, he said, “My goal every spring is to hit a cow.”

When Ron Gardenhire became manager in 2002, he put on one of the great charm offensives in baseball history: To keep the players loose, Gardenhire set up David Ortiz, calling Ortiz to the field to see how far he could hit a golf ball.

The ball, of course, exploded on impact.

It was in a Gardenhire clubhouse that the following occurred:

Ortiz began screaming at third baseman Corey Koskie. Why? Ortiz had pulled on his pants to find them filled with ice. Koskie had placed the ice in his pockets to distract him from the peanut butter in his underwear.

Colleague La Velle E. Neal III and I were at a bowling alley one night when Gardenhire walked in, carrying his own bowling ball in a monogrammed bag, saying, “You gotta do it if you want to be a barroom Olympian.”

Journalism 101 classes don’t teach this: The best place to get background on the ballclub was to buy the coaches a round of beers at the infamous watering hole near the ballpark.

In 1995, the first phase of spring training featured replacement players, which was an abomination. At about the time regular spring training was ending, the real players agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement, meaning there would be an abbreviated spring training lasting into late April.

Longtime bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek and I found ourselves at the usual place, and talked about what it would be like to spend three months straight in Fort Myers. We were not thrilled.

Stelmaszek spent 32 consecutive seasons as a Twins coach and was Tom Kelly’s righthand man. He was a baseball historian and storyteller nonpareil.

He started talking, and I did not interrupt. Finally, Stelly looked up and said: “Well, the sun’s up, I guess we’d better get to the ballpark.”