Gardenhire happily returns to Twins' spring home

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Ron Gardenhire reunited with a number of people from his Minnesota past on Monday, catching up with the players, coaches, staff and ballpark employees who were once part of his daily spring routine.

But the thing that seemed to make the Tigers manager happiest? He got to ride his motorcycle -- a Harley Davidson Trike -- to the ballpark.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Gardenhire said after watching his Tigers blank the Twins, 3-0.

Gardenhire made the trip from Lakeland on Sunday night, staying at the home he owns in Fort Myers.

“This is a fun day, coming back down here,” said the former Twins skipper, who hadn’t been to the CenturyLink Sports Complex since 2016, when he served as a special assistant in the Twins front office. “I spent a lot of time here and it’s my home. Sleeping in your own bed was really nice, and coming to the ballpark here like I did for a long time was really neat. I saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was all fun.”

One special moment took place before the game even started, as Gardenhire’s son Toby -- a manager in Minnesota’s farm system -- and Twins legend Tony Oliva brought out the lineup cards and met the Tigers manager at the plate. The group posed for a photo with the umpiring crew before retreating to their respective dugouts.

“It’s always fun to see him out there in uniform,” Gardenhire said of his son, who was recently named manager of the Class A Advanced Fort Myers Miracle in the Gulf Coast League. “He likes what he’s doing, loves the organization over here and he’s enjoying baseball. That’s fun that they let him come over.”

Gardenhire’s history with the Twins is lengthy, dating back to the club’s 1991 championship season, when he began an 11-year run as the team’s third-base coach.

Gardenhire went on to manage the club from 2002 through 2014, winning six AL Central titles during his 13 seasons in Minnesota. He won AL Manager of the Year honors in 2010 after guiding the Twins to 94 victories.

Gardenhire saw plenty of his former team in 2018, his first as Tigers manager. Detroit went 7-12 against Minnesota last season, and he returned to Target Field for the first time in late May. But returning to Hammond Stadium seemed to be a wonderful experience for Gardenhire, whose first thought as he rolled up to the ballpark was, “Boy, I haven’t been here in a while.”

“Just being back at this stadium is really nice,” Gardenhire said. “They’ve done a lot more to it since I was here. It’s a really nice area, a really nice ballpark.”

Some of the manager’s old friends on the grounds crew had requested that Gardenhire bring them Tigers hats, but he thought better of it.

“They wanted to wear hats and drag the infield between the game,” Gardenhire said. “I said, ‘Then you won’t have a job. They will fire you here. I’m not going to do that. That’s stupid.’”

Kyle Gibson, the Twins’ starter on Monday, was the winning pitcher in Gardenhire’s 1,000th victory with the Twins, a feat accomplished by only nine other managers in history.

“It’s moments like that that you get to be a part of for somebody’s career like that who had been around for a long time,” said Gibson, who caught up with his former manager before the game. “It makes it a lot of fun.”

Gibson, one of the few players remaining from Gardenhire’s final year managing in Minnesota, believes his former manager can have a big impact leading the Tigers.

“Every now and then, when you have a clubhouse full of young guys, you need veterans to straighten everybody up or you need a manager who goes in there and keeps the order a little bit. I'm sure that's what he's going to do, and he's going to rely on his veterans like Miggy [Cabrera] and some of the other guys he has over there to show guys the ropes.”