Tom Kelly was home in Maplewood watching George Mitchell's news conference when the former Twins manager received a call.

"It was from my partner in New Jersey," Kelly said. "He said, 'You made the report. Page 109.' "

The partner reference was to Kelly's ownership of standardbred racehorses. And the actual page in the Mitchell Report was 110.

The one-paragraph passage said that in 2000 or 2001, a visiting clubhouse attendant at the Metrodome found a syringe. He went to the home clubhouse and asked Kelly for advice on what to do.

Kelly's response: Be very careful with the syringe, put a towel around it and dispose of it in a safe place.

Kelly is quoted in the report as saying a syringe in an opponents clubhouse was "not his business," and he reiterated that Monday.

"I always tried to take care of my team," he said. "I didn't get involved in other people's business."

Kelly managed the Twins from 1987 through 2001. He was asked if there was a point -- as the arms and shoulders of players grew larger, opposite-field flies disappeared over the fence and fastballs increased in velocity -- when he said to himself:

"What is going on here?"

He answered with a return to the same theme:

"Honestly, when we played, I always felt, 'They are going to line up nine, we're going to line up nine and compete the best we possibly can.' I didn't want anybody out of their lineup, see anybody hurt.

"We'd be playing Oakland, and somebody would say, 'Mark McGwire's not going to play' ... I didn't like that. I wanted to play against McGwire."

Interpretation: Kelly considered it a challenge to have his team face someone as ultra-strong as McGwire, and he spent no time wondering how these mammoth sluggers possibly could have lifted so many weights.

There were steroids rumors concerning a Twins player in the '90s. The name didn't appear in the Mitchell Report, so it won't be used here.

"I would tell him, 'You're doing great, stay just like you are, this is perfect,' " Kelly said. "He would come to spring training bigger and I'd ask, 'What happened?' and he'd say, 'I lifted weights.'

"OK, he lifted weights. What am I going to do? Call someone a liar."

Chuck Knoblauch, the Twins second baseman for seven seasons, was named in the report. It was Kelly's impression that the steroids implication stemmed from Knoblauch's time with the Yankees.

Then again, he can't be sure, because Kelly admits to the same naïveté that plagued baseball in the the '90s.

"No one was doing steroids out in the open," he said. "You weren't going to walk through the clubhouse and see someone with a needle sticking in his butt.

"To this day, I don't know what these things look like. I hear about the cream and clear. What is this stuff? I wouldn't know it if I saw it."

Mitchell's investigators had two interviews with Kelly at a Minneapolis law office.

"The first interview, it was pretty much a waste of time because the fellow's questions didn't make much sense," Kelly said. "The second time was much better.

"It was an interesting process, and to see it all come out today ... I'd say they did a good job. Some people are going to skate, of course, but that's the way it is with everything in life."

Kelly offered one of those mild chuckles that was familiar in his managing days and said:

"I remember in '94 or so, the outfielders would be running sideways, trying to get to a ball in the alley, and then they would take a right turn and start heading for the fence. You see all those right turns and left turns, you know something is going on.

"I blamed a harder ball. Most of us thought it was the ball. After taking in all that was said today, I might have to say it was something else.

"I did hear this today, though -- that 20-20 hindsight is the easiest way to look at something -- and I have to agree."

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com