Any doubt that the Twin Cities has a special place in baseball player Rod Carew's heart will be erased upon learning that he brought his daughter, Michelle, back to Minneapolis to be buried after her death from leukemia in 1996 at age 18.
Although born in Minnesota, she was just a baby when Carew left for Southern California after joining the Angels in 1979.
In the Orange County, Calif., hospital where she died, she often expressed her desire to see it snow, never having experienced it growing up.
In his autobiography "One Tough Out: Fighting Off Life's Curveballs," Carew recounts the burial at United Hebrew Brotherhood Cemetery in Richfield, where Twins legends Tony Oliva and Kirby Puckett were pallbearers:
"She wore one of her favorite T-shirts. It was purple, her favorite color. Those small gestures meant a lot to us. But it was nothing compared with what happened during the burial. It snowed. Not heavy and not for very long, just enough for everyone to absorb the power of the moment. I looked up to the heavens and thought, 'Now she is at peace.' "
The book, written in first person with Jaime Aron, starts with his upbringing in Panama and really takes off after Carew details how he broke into the majors after moving to New York City in part to elude an abusive father.
Cut from his high school team in the Washington Heights neighborhood near Yankee Stadium, Carew tried out for a sand lot team. A Twins "bird dog" scout, Monroe Katz, saw him play and tipped off an official Twins scout, Herb Stein, who in turn notified Hal Keller, head of the farm system.
Keller arranged an on-field tryout the next time Minnesota came to the Bronx to play the Yankees. They suited the 18-year-old in Oliva's uniform and let him take batting practice. In his first two series of five at-bats, he clouted four home runs over the right-center fence.
