It was 1986, back when Ron Gardenhire and Rick Anderson both had goofy mustaches, back when they were minor-league players rooming together in a tiny house.
They’d talk about their dreams in baseball, both of them young players just fighting for a chance. Gardenhire already had dreams of becoming a manager. He once told a reporter about how Anderson would become his pitching coach. It’s an old clipping they’ve laughed about many times over the years.
“We would sit in our room and Gardy would say, ‘We’ll be together someday after this,’” Anderson told the Star Tribune back in 2002, the first time they were united at the MLB level.
“Of course,” Anderson added, “we might have been drinking a lot of beer at the time.”
Gardenhire and Anderson spent 13 years together with the Twins, leading low-payroll clubs from the brink of contraction to six AL Central titles. Anderson’s…
