Justin Morneau’s love for baseball came from watching Toronto Blue Jays games as a kid. Their games were televised all over Canada, and even sitting three time zones away in New Westminster, B.C., Morneau paid close attention to the likes of John Olerud, Joe Carter and Pat Borders. He was 11 and 12, when they won back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993.

So it figured Morneau would have a few extra jitters when he made his first trips to Rogers Center (the stadium formerly known as SkyDome), where he was batting .043 (1-for-23) heading into this series. Before leaving for Toronto on Sunday, he said, “Hopefully I can change that. It’s always exciting when we go there. There’s a little more attention made. I’ve got to go out and try to win games, try not to get too excited and stay within myself.”

I got a kick out of La Velle’s note yesterday, that Morneau is doing promos for the Canadian version of SportsCenter. It sounds like reporters swarmed him in the clubhouse again, so there were the expected distractions, and he still went out last night and slugged his 27th and 28th home runs. As Seth Stohs points out today, Morneau is on pace for 46 homers and 139 RBI. The Twins’ single season records are 49 home runs (Harmon Killebrew in 1964 and 1969) and 140 RBI (Killebrew in 1969).

The Twins’ inability to sign Morneau to a long-term deal last offseason looks incredibly short-sighted. He’s not eligible for free agency until after the 2010 season, but he’s going to break the bank if they keep taking him year-by-year through arbitration. His salary jumped from $385,000 to $4.5 million last offseason, and it will likely move closer to $9 million next year. The Twins worked out a four-year, $33 million deal with Joe Mauer, and from everything we’ve heard, Morneau was willing to do something similar. If the Twins needed to see how the reigning MVP would respond to last year’s success, I guess it’s fair to say he’s proving that 2006 wasn’t a fluke.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.