Scheduled start time: 6:10 Central (to mitigate traffic tieups with the game next door)

Weather: 'Twill be lovely, start temp 63°

Opponent’s SB site: Lone Star Ball

TV: BS North (where available). Radio: The sounds at night are big and bright

Texas starter Jose Urena is a total journeyman, bouncing from team to team. You know what a journeyman MLB pitcher is? Better at baseball than you or I will probably ever be at anything.

Hopefully the Twins nuke him.

Bailey Ober, meanwhile, is coming off a bit of a Tubthumping last Saturday . Well, sir, you get knocked down, but you get back up again. YTD digits:

As most of you know, former MLB star Alex Rodriguez was part of an ownership group that almost bought the Timberwolves. Possibly to move them; the team’s lease at Target Center runs through 2035, although buying it out would only cost $50 million. (Paying relocation fees to the league would cost much more .)

The deal fell through after several payments had been made. The Timberwolves owner, Glen Taylor, claimed that the last payment wasn’t made on time. The A-Rod group claims that Taylor, who most Wolves fans deeply hate , simply got “sellers’ remorse” now that the team is actually good. Now he gets to keep majority control, and keep A-Rod’s money. It’s good for Glen.

A-Rod has, possibly, a historic connection to the Wolves. When he signed his $252 million dollar contract with Texas, some people wondered what the extra $2M was for. Wasn’t $250 enough?

Well, Kevin Garnett had gotten the NBA’s biggest-ever contract extension, at $126M. Maybe A-Rod thought he was twice the star.

He’d wanted to be a star in New York; the Mets were interested. Supposedly, A-Rod (and Scott Boras) demanded that Rodriguez get “a Shea Stadium office, a full marketing staff, a personal merchandising tent at spring training, billboards around the city, luxury boxes and a private jet that allowed him to travel separately from his teammates.”

(Yet teams sometimes spread "didn't hear it from me" rumors about such things to explain why they didn’t sign a certain guy. These rumors may or may not be true.)

In any case, Rodriguez played like a monster in Texas. And that’s when, according to him , he started using steroids, because he was “feeling an enormous amount of pressure to perform.” (Rangers owner Tom Hicks expressed finger-wagging disappointment at this revelation, because presumably jumping from 42 homers a year to 52 was NEVER something that virtuous owners could tolerate.)

It’s also when Rodriguez began his bizarre feud with Derek Jeter. The two had formerly been baseball buddies, and would stay at each others’ apartments when their teams were in town. But strangely, A-Rod felt the need to tell Esquire , in 2003, that “Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him. He’s never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun. And he hits second?that’s totally different than third and fourth in a lineup. You go into New York, you wanna stop Bernie and O’Neill. You never say, Don’t let Derek beat you. He’s never your concern.”

Of course, the two would become teammates in 2004, and win a championship in 2009. Still, for some Yankees fans, that feud will always make them hate A-Rod. You don’t mess with Saint Jeter.

Oddly, Rodriguez almost became Jeter’s direct rival with the Red Sox. He’d agreed to a trade (for Manny Ramirez) that would reduce his salary by $4 million a year, in return for speeding up his opt-out season from 2007 to 2005. The union nixed it.

I suppose you all know the rest. A-Rod lying about steroids, getting caught, lying again, getting caught again, getting banned for an entire season. He even issued a handwritten letter to Yankees fans, apologizing for “the mistakes that led to my suspension.” It didn’t come close to Joey Votto’s letter , and he was apologizing for far less.

How he had paintings of himself as a centaur, and dated various famous people, and all that. I’m not going to bother looking up the links.

But there was one story I’d never heard.

Former teammate Doug Glanville, trying to express sympathy for A-Rod’s side as someone who “cared a lot, maybe to a fault, about his image as a baseball icon,” shared this AMAZING story in a 2009 New York Times editorial :

Let me put his talent in perspective. We were playing the University of Texas to kick off the spring training season. Most players feel like they have nothing to gain and everything to lose when they play against a college team, but for college programs, it’s great. Buck Showalter, our manager, decided to bat Alex lead-off; his plan was to have him bat once, go home early and get some rest.

Well, a crafty left-handed pitcher for the Longhorns struck out Alex on a high fastball. This kid had to be thinking, “I just struck out one of the best players in major league baseball.”

Alex made the walk back to the dugout and announced, “There is no way I am going out like that!” He told Buck he had to get another at-bat. And once the line-up flipped over to the top again, Alex was ready.

The University of Texas brought in some hard-throwing right-hander who missed the strike zone on his first three pitches to Alex. All of them were high in the zone, almost at head level.

Alex stepped out of the box and said to the catcher, “Tell him to bring the ball down so I can see how far I can hit it!” From the on-deck circle, I marveled at the bold move. If Alex had said that to a major-leaguer, the next pitch would have been in his earhole.

The pitcher did bring the ball down, and Alex hit one of the longest home runs I have ever seen. It went over some inflatable Coke bottle well beyond the fence. But he wasn’t done. Before beginning his trot, he left a greeting for the catcher: “Welcome to the big leagues.”

It was right out of “The Natural.”

Keep in mind, Glanville’s writing this to get you to FEEL for A-Rod. Doesn’t quite work, does it?

Here’s what might. Rodriguez’s dad abandoned the family when he was 9. That doesn’t excuse arrogant, jerky behavior! But it is something to sympathize with.

Rodriguez told The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski how emotional it was to finally reconnect with his dad, 15 years later.

He discussed the meeting with his then-wife. They “didn’t want it to be at home in Seattle, where so many familiar faces would be around. They didn’t want one of the big markets, like New York, where the media spotlight would be brighter.”

So he finally met his dad again. In the Metrodome.

Unfortunately, the reconciliation didn’t last. In real life, unlike in movies, parent/child reconciliations often don’t work out.

Yet that Metrodome memory, Rodriguez said, is why he wanted to buy the Timberwolves. Because of the connection he feels to Minneapolis.

Then again, he did lie about steroids a lot. So… who knows. At least he’s a pretty good broadcaster!

Any/all updates on the TWolves game are very welcome. I’ve been to the high school theater named after Anthony Edwards! Because I am a TIME LORD! And it’s Doctor Who night!