Busy week for the Twins

Welcome to my new home.

This will be a busy week for the Twins as TwinsFest approaches. Baseball talk will start to dominate - not soon enough, I'm guessing, after that Vikings debacle yesterday.

Now it's time for a shameless plug: The Fifth Annual Diamond Awards takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Minneapolis Hilton.

It's an annual gathering of like-minded individuals to talk baseball, have a good meal and raise money for neurological research at the University of Minnesota. There's a silent auction before the banquet with a lot of great items to bid on (including a chance to follow me around the ballpark for a day). We'll hand out awards from the 2009 season - Joe Mauer, Joe Nathan, Denard Span, Jose Mijares, Michael Cuddyer and other players will be on hand - and look ahead to the 2010 season. The Diamond Awards will be televised at a later date on FSN,

There will be a lot of talk about the opening of Target Field (photo, right, courtesy of David Joles). In fact, I know that a Target Field presentation is on the script! Heard last week that the final seat count will end up just under 39,500.

Tickets for the event are $150.00, of which $100.00 is tax deductible. We have raised over $2 million to help the U of Awards with research and patient care in ataxia, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).

For more info, go to www.minnesotadiamondawards,com or call 612.624.4444.

What's going to be strange for the Twins is going back to a building they just moved out of.

Hopefully the Twins will have some news this week to spice up these events. They remain interested in slugger Jim Thome, although I sense that the White Sox will make a late push to keep him so he doesn't land with a division rival, Tampa Bay has been mentioned as a possibility, too.

And maybe we can get a Joe Mauer update. The Twins and Mauer have done a good job of keeping details of their negotiations to themselves. All I have been told is that the sides are talking. Haven't heard any numbers.

Other than that, the Twins might have some minor news to announce, like the Gophers' baseball game that will be played at Target Field in late March, and a bunch of new sponsorship deals. Joe C., Howard and I will take turns appearing at the StarTribune booth to answer fans' questions.