Twins announce plans to retire Tom Kelly’s number 10
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Good Morning.
A pleasant enough salutation for just about everyone on earth. Yet for Minnesota Twins infielders, these two words have been despised for years. “Good Morning” is former manager Tom Kelly’s name for the most cruel and unusual spring training workout known to man, a 2 1/2-hour groundball-breaker and throwathon conducted on an oven-baked infield in Fort Myers, Fla.
When Twins infielders enter the clubhouse and see “Good Morning” marked on the team’s daily schedule board, they understand that by the time they are eating their pregame cold cuts, their elbows will be stinging from sweat and dirt mixed into their scraped-up skin. Their quads and glutes will be something less than functional, their arms too tired to raise above their heads and their weight down five to seven pounds from when they punched the clock.
“Just a comprehensive workout,” says infield coach Al Newman, who endured his share of Good Mornings playing for Kelly from 1987 to ‘91. “TK wanted to know who hadn’t kept his arms and legs in shape during the winter. And he wanted to see which guys were mentally capable of making a play when physically they were exhausted.”
- Jeff Bradley, ESPN The Magazine
Read the rest: “Twin Killers”
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“Tom Kelly has a simple code,” says Twin general manager Andy MacPhail. “He demands three hours of the players’ attention and hustle. Not for himself, as I see it, but out of respect for the game. When a player shows respect for the game, Kelly shows respect for the player. Remember, he wouldn’t even go out on the field in ‘87 because he thought it was the players’ moment.”
- Steve Rushin, Sports Illustrated
Read the rest: “Stress Management”
(TK card via Charlie’s Website 2009)
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