Mike Redmond: Story lost because he was wearing pants

Former Twins’ catcher Mike Redmond is now the bench coach for the Colorado Rockies, who are hosting the All-Star festivities this week. Hometown guy Trevor Story chose Redmond to be his pitcher for the home run derby tonight, and Story was knocked out in the semifinals, despite hitting the second longest home run of the evening.

Mike Redmond is famous for one quirk of his baseball career, as immortalized by Vin Scully.

That video is well worth spending a small amount of your day on, but if you can’t, its exactly the story you think it is. Mike Redmond, infamously, took naked batting practice—and now he has connected the practice to Story falling short in the derby.

Late this evening, our intrepid man on the street tracked Redmond down in the bar at the Holiday Inn off the freeway. Redmond was several drinks deep into a cocktail of his own creation, and confided in our reporter that:

Look kid, I like ya, so I’m gonna tell you some truth. Trevor coulda hit 40 of ‘em outta there, but he let himself get all constricted. I’m tellin’ ya kid, you gotta get some airflow around the ol’ potatos. If Trev hadn’t been wearin them pants, Petey wouldn’t have had a shot. Anything worth doing, is worth doing naked.

Out of pure curiousity, we also asked Redmond if any other former Twins had ever joined in the practice.

Joe Mauer, he always wore pants to swing, no wonder he was just a singles hitter. Nick Punto on the other hand, he was a wild man. He’d go out on the field before the they opened the gates, strip down to his shoes, and practice sliding headfirst into the bases.

Former Rockies infielder Nolan Arenado, representing the Cardinals at the All-Star game, agreed that this was a common theme with Redmond.

Mike, he’d get a group of us together, and talk would turn to batting, and he’d always tell us “take off them pants boys, let your swing free.” None of us ever really wanted to take him up on it. The mental picture was bad enough.

Story declined to comment, stating only:

Mike’s a good coach, and it was an honor to have him pitch to me, but I’m not going for public indecency on national TV.

We’ll have more on this situation as it develops.