If you didn't get a chance to read Jim Souhan's article about the days and nights of Lew Ford, it's worth a look. He's so adorable Batgirl just wants to give him a big Bathug.
There was the time Gardenhire told Lew to get ready to pinch hit. Ford hustled into the bat room behind the dugout. "I heard this huge crash," Gardenhire said. "I looked around the corner, and Lew's sprawled on the floor. He wiped out. I had to stay back there with him because I was laughing too hard to manage the game."Last year, the Twins were in Anaheim. Ford had a sore arm. Gardenhire tried to send Ford in as a pinch runner, but he wasn't on the bench.
"I went running up to find him in the clubhouse," designated hitter Matthew LeCroy said. "He's sitting in the back, icing his arm and clipping his nails. He wouldn't believe he was supposed to be in the game. Finally I convince him, and he rips off the ice bag, stops clipping his nails, throws on his spikes and goes running through the door . . . but runs the wrong way.
"I had to chase him down and send him back. He gets there too late, and sits on the bench, like a kid waiting to get scolded."
He once mixed up Portland, Maine, with Portland, Ore., while trying to navigate a minor league promotion. This winter, he missed a flight to TwinsFest because he thought the arrival time was the departure time. Last year, after his sore arm was diagnosed as a break, Doug Mientkiewicz asked, "How's your arm?"
Ford held his cast up to Mientkiewicz's face and said: "It's broke! Look!"
When Ford got sent down last year, the clubhouse guys helped him pack his stuff, and they asked him where he wanted it. They wound up at the loading dock, and Ford was asked, "So where's your car?"
Ford gave them that look and said, "Car?"
This spring, a Red Sox pitcher came in to face the Twins. Ford walked over to Michael Restovich and asked, "Did we see this guy at Pawtucket last year?"
The pitcher was closer Keith Foulke. Said Restovich, "No, Lew, this guy led the American League in saves last year."