Bob Collins
Few Minnesota Twins players have been as revered in Minnesota over such a short period of time as Jim Thome was. He was, you probably know, traded back to his ancestral baseball homeland — Cleveland — late in the season. But if he wants to continue playing baseball, it’s unlikely he’ll have a job in Cleveland. Could that mean a return to Minnesota? Maybe he’ll give us a peek at his plans when he speaks to the City Club of Cleveland at 11 a.m. CT.
You can watch his speech here. If that doesn’t work for you, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is also streaming his remarks.
He’ll be interviewed by Indians baseball announcer Tom Hamilton.
update 11:50 a.m. – Thome wasn’t much for showing up anybody, but he cited this homerun in the 1995 World Series in which he flipped his bat toward the Atlanta dugout.
“Greg Maddux had just thrown at Eddie Murray,” Thome said today. “And we had a bench-clearing brawl.”
Thome knew drama.
11: 59 a.m. – “I’ll go to my grave insisting that the strongest thing you’ve ever had was a Bud Light,” Hamilton says as he brings up the steroid issue.
“I’ve had a few of them,” Thome said.
12:07 p.m. – A member of the audience told about a store opening in his community. “My mother was on her deathbed, and you stopped the autograph session, and you told my wife you knew she was dying. You walked out of the building with my wife and told her you would pray for her.”
12:13 p.m. – Finally, someone asks the question. “I want to keep playing,” Thome says. “But I need teams to keep calling. I love my family — I have kids that are going to be 9 and 4 that are just a pleasure. And then my body… everybody says ‘you can play forever.’ At 41 years old, you can’t play forever. Under the right circumstances and the right positioning, you can continue to play and I certainly want to do that. I sure enjoy waking up and being around my family and getting in the car to go to my lodge. There’s a lot of good things going on. We’ll see.”
