A Popular Twin is Coming Back!!

If you haven’t already heard this already, I’m not sure where you were hiding – especially since I’m sure most of the country could HEAR my squealing and jumping! The Twins have finally made an off-season move that I can whole-heartedly support.

So you know how we moved Jake Mauer up to Cedar Rapids and left that High A Miracle team without a manager?  Yeah, now it has one!!

“I always wanted to see if I could be a manager,” … “I always felt like I was a Twin. What I want to do is get it back to where it was when I was there.” Doug Mientkiewicz

This fulfills one of my personal dreams as a Twins fan – not just because Dougie Baseball was my first baseball love – since I think he provides a true understanding of how to LEARN a defensive position and my hopes are that kids coming up through the system will learn the balance between the glove and the bat. I know this is only my personal bias but it’s something I think has been lacking in a lot of the kids we’ve been bringing up. I really couldn’t be happier about this arrangement.

Since I’m a little behind on getting it written up, here’s a couple other stories that give all the details:  Twins name Doug Mientkiewicz manager at Fort Myers and Mientkiewicz back in Miracle uniform.

Now we just have to get Red Dog back coaching/managing for us and my dreams will all have come true. I don’t ask for much.. it’s not like I want JJ Hardy to move into my neighborhood so I still get peeks of him too…

Followup: just listened to Dougie get interviewed by Reusse & Mackey – here’s a link to the podcast (Dec 11, Hour 1, about 24:30) because it was a GREAT one – and he covered a bit of how this all happened. Sounds like Mauer moved specifically to create the opening for the Twins to bring Doug in. Doug’s Mother-in-Law is very ill and his family is all in Florida. It took awhile for them to figure out if he could make the decision to keep working full-time given the family needs but once it was decided, his move to Florida was the best for the family and I think works out really well for the Twins too. I think it explains a lot about the moves and the timing. I haven’t felt this good about what we were doing in the lower levels in a long time and it’s definitely making me more optimistic about the teams in the next few years.