Chilly Reception for Gaetti’s Return

MINNEAPOLIS —  Outside, it was freezing. Of course. What’s a Minnesota Twins’ home opener without peanuts, popcorn, hot dogs and snowball fights in the parking lot?

Inside, Gary Gaetti was hoping for a little warmth, but he could understand if the steel and fiberglass of the Metrodome refused him sanctuary.

Home wasn’t home for Gaetti anymore.

“I really don’t expect the people of Minnesota to be cold,” Gaetti said, speaking before his Metrodome debut as a member of the enemy. “I think the reaction might have been different if they played the opening game immediately after my negotiations with the Angels. But now, they’ve had time to think about it. They’ve had time to get used to it.

“I think it could be mixed, but I could be wrong. I just saw Mark Langston go back to Seattle, where he got a very cold welcome.

“I’ll just expect the worst and deal with it.”

Three hours later, 45,000 fans had their chance. What would the G in G-Man stand for now?

Greed Before Honor?

Gone For the Gold?

Goodby . . . And Good Riddance?

Just before the pregame introductions reached the seventh spot in the Angel batting order, public-address announcer Bob Casey decided to cut Gaetti a break and issued a reminder:

“Without this guy we wouldn’t have won a World Series . . . GAR-EE GUY-YET-EE! “

Cheers beat the jeers, 4 to 1.

From there, though, matters quickly deteriorated. World Series coattails extend only so far. By Gaetti’s fourth at-bat Friday, a swinging strikeout that finalized a 6-0 Angel defeat, the boos were ringing so loudly, Gaetti wondered if he had gone from friend to foe . . . or fad.

“Knowing the fans in Minnesota,” Gaetti said, “this is going to become their favorite thing to do--boo Gary Gaetti. They’ll probably hold a Come And Boo Gary Gaetti Night.”

Homer Hankies optional.

Gaetti made note of the fact that another former Twin-turned-Angel, Rod Carew, was honored before the game with a video of some career highlights, set to Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better,” proclaiming Carew to be the greatest Twin of them all.

“Funny,” Gaetti said. “They didn’t boo Rod Carew. But, then, he’s ‘the greatest.’ He decided to leave, too.”

Actually, Carew was traded. One other thing: He actually made the Hall of Fame.

OK, so maybe Gaetti was a tad sensitive. He had his reasons. Save for a seventh-inning double, little went right for Gaetti on this night.

He threw away a ball for an error.

He looked awful on the off-balance, one-handed swing that ended the game.

He lost. For the first time as an Angel.

“I’m not real happy about the outcome, but that’s baseball,” Gaetti said. “You know, we needed to play a better game than this. It would have been better if I came in here and played a good, solid game and we won, but they probably still would have booed me. Which is OK.

“It doesn’t matter if they boo me now, because it’s obvious that they’re going to do that from now on.”

The Angels waved $11 million-plus at Gaetti this winter when he was granted new-look free agency, and after considerable hemming and hawing, he finally succumbed. He isn’t the first. But among the 1987 world champion Twins, Gaetti was the first marquee name to bolt voluntarily.

Frank Viola, Bert Blyleven and Tom Brunansky were traded.

Gaetti bolted.

Bolting doesn’t sit well in the state of Minnesota, the largest small town in the world, as Kent Hrbek can tell you.

Hrbek was tempted by the free-agent bonanza after the 1989 season--Detroit threw the Silverdome, the Pontchartrain Towers and Lake Michigan at him--but Hrbek settled for less money to remain a Twin, now and forever.

“I hope he’s happy with what he did,” Hrbek said of Gaetti. “There’s more to life than baseball. You have to look at the round of the thing, the whole picture. That’s what I did when I signed my contract. You can only play baseball for so long. You have to think about your family and where you want to settle down.

“I was surprised he left. He had a pretty good situation here--his family lives here, his home is here. He was set up pretty good here. Apparently, the money influenced his decision.

“I’m happy for him. He’s trying something new. . . . I hope he’s happy with what he did.”

Presently, Gaetti is trying to talk himself into it.

“I’m enjoying it,” he told a large pregame gathering of writers, most of them local. “Everything’s going so fast, I haven’t really lived in L.A. so far, but I like a lot of what I see.

“I like the climate. I don’t like all the traffic, but you have to deal with it. There are some very, very nice areas there, and that’s why there are so many people out there. . . .

“I think it takes time to settle in. It’s going to take more than a month.”

Gaetti has talked about “panic flings” he experienced during the final stages of his negotiations with the Angels, as he began to envision life beyond the Metrodome.

“It was right after I decided to tell my agent that, yes, I would seriously consider the Angels’ offer,” Gaetti recalled. “I went to take a shower and this wave of fear just enveloped me. It hit me that I was just about to leave my comfort zone.”

Gaetti says he’ll never forget the welcome he and the other ’87 Twins received after returning home with the American League pennant in hand.

“They told us in Detroit that they wanted to bus us back to the Dome so the fans could say congratulations,” he said. “We were saying, ‘Aw, what’s the use? A couple thousand might show up, at the most.’

“Then, we’re driving there and we see all these people hanging over the freeway overpasses. They open the garage door of the Metrodome and there are 60,000 people inside. It was overwhelming. I just started bawling.”

The scene was so different Friday, Gaetti could have cried again. But, then, nothing lasts forever--although this time, those words served as solace for Gaetti.

All things must pass. Even Friday night.