MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -His nose broken by a bad hop the day before, AL MVP Justin Morneau was back in the lineup and playing first base for Minnesota on Sunday night against Detroit.
He never would have heard the end of it from his hockey-playing buddies in Canada if he couldn’t play. After a throw from across the diamond skipped off the turf at the edge of the dirt behind first base and bounced straight toward his face, forcing him to leave Saturday’s game in the eighth inning, Morneau took plenty of text-message grief from friends.
NHL defenseman Willie Mitchell, who plays for Morneau’s beloved Vancouver Canucks, joked in a text to Morneau that would be wise to keep his current girlfriend because he wasn’t “getting any prettier.”
Most of the blood from the blow, Morneau said, came from a cut caused by the seam of the ball that hit him on the bottom of his nose.
As for Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, his left knee was still sore Sunday – but not enough to keep him from leaving his cold compression device in the office and returning to the dugout after two days away.
“If it starts screaming at me, I might have to go back up there,” he said.
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