Fuld finds no friendly confines at Target Field

Sam Fuld played three seasons for the Cubs, where the walls are made of brick. He played eight games in Target Field, where the walls are padded, at least a little.

Guess where he suffered his concussion.

"I can't think of anything worse" than the Wrigley Field bricks, Fuld said, but it's the not-so-soft plastic of Minneapolis that gave him a concussion that bothers him still. Fuld, who ran into the wall on May 2 and played for nearly a week until his condition worsened, was eligible to be activated from the concussion list on Friday. But he hasn't played in 10 days, hasn't been able to do any physical activity, and said he's still several days away from returning from the disabled list.

The 32-year-old outfielder thought his concussion symptoms were fading — but they came back strong this week. "I had a setback on Wednesday, but I feel much better now," Fuld said. "I had a really rough day, just bad headaches," along with nausea, and an oversensitivity to light, sound and motion.

He wants to stay active, do a physical workout, but his condition just won't let him. "The remedy here is to do as little as possible," he said. "Stare at a wall for 24 hours, basically."

His symptoms have receded again, but manager Ron Gardenhire said the Twins will take their time putting him back on the field. "You've got to be patient with these things," Gardenhire said.

Mariners pitching coach Rick Waits is looking forward to a reunion this weekend — he and Twins first baseman Chris Colabello go way back. So far back, in fact, that neither one really remembers their first meeting.

Yeah, something like that. Waits pitched for a team in Rimini, Italy, from 1987-89, after his 12-year major league career ended, and among the people he got to know there was another former pitcher, a guy who led Rimini in wins for three seasons and played for the 1984 Italian Olympic team. That was Lou Colabello — Chris' father.

"I knew the Colabellos really well. A real baseball family," Waits said. "All the American families kind of got together over there, and I must have known him as a little kid."

Colabello's family had moved back to the U.S. by that time but spent summers in Rimini around the baseball team. "I remember he would go work out with my dad," Colabello said. "I remember my parents mentioning Rick Waits all the time."

When the 30-year-old Colabello, who played for Team Italy in last spring's World Baseball Classic, arrived in the majors last year, Waits, then the Mariners' minor league pitching coordinator, noticed the name, "and I said, 'Wow, could he be any relation?' It's a pretty amazing story."

• Harmon Killebrew's widow, Nita, will throw out the first pitch before Saturday's game, on the third anniversary of the Hall of Fame slugger's death. Her appearance is part of a fundraising announcement for the Children's Lighthouse of Minnesota, a hospice for terminally ill children and their families.