It's good to have Twins baseball back -- and not just because of the games themselves. Because, you see, Twins baseball also means the return of copious e-mail correspondence with our pal Kraig Applecherry, who is very much like a ground squirrel or "gopher" in that winter often means hibernation. But here he is in April, ready to roll. He passed along a fairly interesting promotion from Callaway by which the golf club maker is crossing over into the National Pastime. How so?

Throughout the 2010 season, Callaway will provide a full set of its new Diablo Edge golf clubs, the longest of their kind that Callaway has ever developed, to any big league player who hits a home run that travels a distance of at least 470 feet. According to hittrackeronline.com, which collects data on every long ball, there were 10 such home runs in 2009. An additional 27 home runs traveled between 460 and 469 feet.

As we watched three Twins home runs fly out of Anaheim last night, we wondered which Twins player might have the best shot at blasting a 470-footer and thereby landing those clubs (not that, you know, they couldn't just buy them). So we checked out Hit Tracker, a great site we hadn't visited for a while, to take a look at last year's Twins leaders in home run distance. Here are the top 10:

1. Michael Cuddyer, 458 feet.
2. Cuddyer, 455 feet.
3. Jason Kubel, 455 feet.
4. Kubel, 452 feet.
5. Cuddyer, 450 feet.
6. Cuddyer, 448 feet.
7. Kubel, 447 feet.
8. Delmon Young, 447 feet.
9. Cuddyer, 445 feet.
10. Justin Morneau, 444 feet.

That's not exactly stunning stuff if you've ever watched Cuddyer and Kubel take batting practice, but it was interesting to see they combined for all of the top 7 longest home runs for the Twins in 2009. (By the way, Cuddyer also had four of the next seven from 11-17. Also possibly of note: Brian Buscher hit a 434-footer -- longer than any of Joe Mauer's 28 blasts. His longest checked in at 433).

So of the holdovers, Cuddyer has to be considered the favorite. Kubel is certainly in the mix as well. But hold the phone: in the race to 470, the top competitor on the 2010 Twins could be Jim Thome. He launched a 460-footer and a 459-footer last year. He also topped the magic number in 2008, with a 471-footer. (And his Game 163 blast off Nick Blackburn that year went 464). That said, Thome is slowing down and probably won't get nearly as many at bats this year as he did in previous years. So if we had to set an order of prediction as to who could reach 470 feet from the Twins this year, it would go like this:

1. Cuddyer; 2. Thome; 3. Kubel; 4. Young; 5. Morneau; 6. Mauer; 7. J.J. Hardy.

Your thoughts in the comments, as soon as you are done playing around on Hit Tracker. It has addictive properties.