The Twins face the Orioles at Hammond Stadium on Tuesday, and Tony Oliva will be there, as always.
For once, he wishes he was somewhere else.
"I'm jealous. I'm jealous. I would like to be there, to be a part of it," Oliva said of the Rays' scheduled game against the Cuban national team in Havana. "I love the game, and I love Cuba, so I wish I was there to see it."
Oliva said he is ecstatic that Major League Baseball has a role in President Obama's efforts to re-establish ties between his homeland and his adopted country, but he's mostly just pleased that it's finally happening. Oliva was one of the last Cubans to emigrate to the U.S. in 1961, before an economic and travel embargo was established.
"This is what I've prayed about. I don't know why it's taken so long. The countries should be close friends. I never believed this would last 50 years. I didn't think it would last one year," Oliva said. "We're so close, we should be brothers. If we played in Miami and [Harmon] Killebrew hit a ball, it would have landed in Cuba."
Oliva has returned several times in the past decade to visit relatives, but he would relish a chance to take his longtime team to his home island. "Someday, the Twins will go," Oliva said. "The Cuban people are happy, so it's a good day for Cuba and a good day for baseball."
Meyer a starter again
Alex Meyer gave up starting last May, when his ERA at Class AAA Rochester stood at 7.09. Terry Ryan believes the time is right for the 6-foot-9 righthander to give it another try.
"The consensus is, we are going to start him, because we want him to work on his pitches, and that's tough to do in the pen," the Twins general manager said. "I'm not saying that's going to be [the decision] for the life of his career or even the life of the 2016 season, but that's the way we're going to start."
Meyer, sent back to Rochester last week, had expressed a mild preference for remaining in the bullpen, but Ryan said if the Twins recall him to relieve, it's a simple transition.
