Ron Gardenhire famously went fishing over the All-Star Break. Paul Molitor probably hung out with his kid and did dad shit, like grumbling about the thermostat, wearing socks with sandals, and grilling. Rocco Baldelli, however is a different kind of manager. A cool, hip manager. So his All-Star break is a little different.
According to sources, Baldelli and a couple of the other Twins coaches have a plan. Supposedly, “We’re gonna go on a road trip, and just like, experience life.”
As for the destination, it seems to be unimportant, and quite possibly undecided. Instead, Baldelli said “Well, Wes (Johnson,) he got a selfie stick, and we’re just gonna find someplace to take some crazy pics, post them up on instagram. That’ll make all the people I went to high school with super jealous, give them some wicked FOMO”
As part of a MLB Manager’s job is to be prepared for any situation, Baldelli couldn’t quite leave for the trip without doing some prep, telling our source “Yeah man, I’ve got a wicked spotify playlist set up, we’ve got a bunch of cool bands on there you probably haven’t heard of. We’ve got a cooler with some ‘bucha and a few avocados in it, and we’re just gonna see where life takes us. We got a van from this car-sharing app I found, and I picked up a few battery packs for my tablet, so we’ll just camp out, down a couple PBRs and binge on Netflix at night.”
Since Baldelli travels so much with the team, inquiring minds naturally wondered why he would want to do something like this. “All that travel man, its cool and stuff, but it’s just not authentic. We wanted to get some authentic experiences.”
Bullpen coach Jeremy Hefner said he considered bringing along a pet cat he referred to as his “fur baby”, “for the memes,” but it is unconfirmed if he actually went forward with this plan.
Judging from various social media feeds, the trio have already checked out several brunch spots and dive bars across the upper midwest, as well as at least one beach. They also seem to have somehow found a farmer’s market with a stall selling organic, free-range beard oil.
Bill Evers, the 44-year coaching veteran was invited along, but seemed skeptical, telling us “I don’t get why these young guys are into something like that. Personally, I like a nice quiet day off in my lazy boy, but the missus has a pretty long list of stuff for me to get done around the place. Probably gonna have to make three trips to Menards. She might even drag me to a damn antique store or something.”