John Blanchette: Redmond level-headed despite ups and downs

SEATTLE – Mike Redmond has won a World Series ring and lost 108 games in a season, and yet neither produced the same emotional pulls he’s discovered in this, his 10th major league summer.

In the season’s early stages – while his two young boys were still in school in Spokane – the Minnesota Twins catcher started hopping flights home on off days, just for a 24-hour family fix.

“I was getting beat up there for a while,” he said, noting the air miles logged to Spokane from ports as far flung as Texas and Anaheim, “but just to see those kids even for a day was worth it.”

Two weeks ago, he was reminded again just how worth it. The horrifying, tragic collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis just a half-mile from the Metrodome and in the hour before a Twins home game left at least nine people dead, and it was into the fourth inning that night before Redmond was able to track down his wife Michele and the boys. They’d been at a Little League game.

“But to know some of those people were on their way to a ballgame,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s too real.”

And then there’s baseball – satisfying, maddening, mystifying.

Redmond, in all likelihood, will see more game action this year than in any of his previous nine seasons. He had to pull starting catcher Joe Mauer’s regular shifts when the defending American League batting champ was injured for five weeks, and he’s been in demand as a DH – the Twins not having the offensive pop to keep a .292 lifetime hitter on the bench.

But the Twins, who went from 12 1/2 games behind to A.L. Central champions last year by winning 70 of their last 103 games, never found that gear this year. They’re a game under .500 after Tuesday night’s 11-3 win over the Mariners, and what has been one of baseball’s model franchises for both its frugality and ability to develop talent is showing some fraying at the seams.

The big snap occurred at the trading deadline, with the Twins just five games off the wild-card pace. General manager Terry Ryan hoisted the white flag, trading .300-hitting second baseman Luis Castillo to the Mets and then announcing that the club could “absorb” the loss – even though 14 different players have been retrieved from Triple-A this season as reinforcements.

Reaction in the clubhouse was volcanic. Two-time Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana, signed only through 2008, declared that “It doesn’t make sense for me to be here” in light of the club’s tepid commitment. Centerfielder Torii Hunter, who will be a prize free-agent at the end of the season, allowed that “It could make it easier for me to move on.”

Maybe no one felt worse than Mike Redmond.

“I played with Luis for 14 years – we’ve been teammates since we were in ‘A’ ball,” he said. “We won a World Series together. For me, it was way more personal.”

And yet Redmond didn’t go overboard, or even climb the rail.

“A team like ours doesn’t go out and get front-line free agents and doesn’t make a lot of trades,” he admitted. “We rely on the personnel we have.”

It’s funny how that same outlook plays in different clubhouses – or at different stages of the window of opportunity opening or closing.

In Seattle, for instance, the Mariners are in the wild-card hunt, too. They certainly have needs – starting pitching especially – and yet when GM Bill Bavasi couldn’t find an arm or a deal he could live with at the deadline, he sat tight. Not only did this not trigger outrage among the players, but loony leftfielder Jose Guillen got all torqued about the promotion of Adam Jones from Triple-A – somehow deluded that it would disrupt team chemistry.

Not that do-nothing always flies here – see the M’s of 2002 and 2003. But that was a different administration and a baseball lifetime ago. Only Willie Bloomquist, Ichiro Suzuki and (briefly) J.J. Putz remain from those years, when it was clear the M’s were squandering the best years of the franchise’s existence without winning it all.

These M’s are on a different cusp and have also seen that Bavasi and ownership are trying – the off-season additions of Guillen, Jose Vidro and Miguel Batista weren’t particularly sexy, but they have produced. The Twins pretty much did not a thing even before the season, never mind the deadline.

Redmond, however, prefers to be either diplomatic or philosophical, or both.

“I’ve been on both ends,” he shrugged. “I remember in Florida seeing Cliff Floyd and Ryan Dempster traded away when we were three games over .500 and then losing 10 straight. I also remember going out and getting Chad Fox and Ugi Urbina and Jeff Conine and winning the World Series. I guess I’ve been able to take the emotion out of it and maybe the other guys in here can’t because they’ve only been in one organization.

“As players, all we can do is do our jobs and give the effort and say you did the best you could. The other stuff you can’t worry about. Because it happens all the time.”

But that’s just it – a Santana, a Hunter, a Mauer and a Justin Morneau don’t happen all the time. And from the sounds of it, they may not happen together for long.