Jim Souhan: Gardenhire hits the road in offseason

His moment of glory had arrived. As Ron Gardenhire waited to be honored as the American League Manager of the Year at the Baseball Writers dinner in New York last week, the legendary Bobby Cox looked into the audience and congratulated him.

"Yeah, he said, 'Congratulations, 'Rod,'" Gardenhire said. "He always calls me Rod. He did it in front of everybody.

"It was still one of the best weekends I've spent in New York in a long time."

Gardenhire laughed. The Twins manager was sitting in his office at Target Field on Friday night, poking fun at his losing record in Yankee Stadium and a winter travel schedule that sounded like a remake of "Tin Cup" or "Trains, Planes and Automobiles."

After losing to the Yankees in the playoffs, Gardenhire spent a few days at his home in Little Canada, then loaded his deluxe RV and drove to Marshall to pick up his daughter from Southwest Minnesota State.

Then they headed south, to Kansas, home state of his wife, Carol, and Oklahoma, where he was raised.

"Only broke down once," Gardenhire said. "We were on the turnpike between Wichita and Okmulgee, where I grew up. We started driving and there's really not a lot out there.

"I'm out in front of my motor home, hitting golf balls out into this little pond, where the cattle were walking by. I lost a lot of golf balls."

That was fun, for a while.

"The sad thing for me was, I was on the side of the turnpike for five hours, and not one of my fellow Okies stopped to see if I was OK," Gardenhire said. "No one. Three cop cars went by, and here's a 40-foot RV broken down by the side of the road, and no one stopped."

Of course, Oklahomans seeing a guy hitting golf balls and watching TV by the side of the road might just assume the guy is on vacation.

"If I had put up the awning, I guess I could understand that," Gardenhire said. "If I had known the highway patrol wasn't going to stop, I might have had a few Budweisers."

"You know the guys -- Kent Hrbek, Walleye, Spike, Bird and my brother-in-law," he said.

That wasn't his only trip to South Dakota, just as the Manager of the Year award wasn't his only achievement of the winter.

"I'm not a historian," he said, "but someone with the Twins told me that I went on the longest Twins Caravan trip ever. We left here on a Sunday morning at 9, in the big bus, and we had to stop for gas before we got to Rapid City. I've never had to stop for gas before we got where we were going.

"It was the first time I ever went on the Caravan and changed time zones."

Winning the Manager of the Year award meant the former Met got a chance to attend the New York baseball writers dinner for the first time, and Bud Harrelson, the former Mets shortstop who was Gardenhire's infield coach with the Mets in 1982, introduced him at the banquet.

"It was really cool seeing all the players and managers, and honoring Bobby, and Joe Torre and Lou Piniella for their retirements."

On the caravan, emcee Kris Atteberry kept introducing Gardenhire as the Manager of the Year.

"It's a neat thing," Gardenhire said. "You don't pay much attention to the enormity of it, but in all honesty, when it's all said and done, it's pretty cool.

"I wish my coaches could have been up there with me the whole time."