Every once in a while Batgirl does the Blogger's Minute on WCCO's Twins Magazine with Rita Maloney. Here was this week's

Well, Rita, there's been a big change in the Twins clubhouse, and I don't mean Lew Ford's new pair of lucky game socks for '06. It's been widely reported that Nick Punto started doing yoga over the off-season but did you know that Tony Batista spent his off days in Japan jetting over to the Himalayas to study with swamis? It's true. When the two of them discovered their mutual affinity, it didn't take them long to join forces and spread their love for the ancient meditative practice among the team. And boy has it caught on. Where last season the clubhouse was full of tension, now the players spend their time quietly admiring each other's asanas. And where they used to fight endlessly over hip hop versus country, now they debate the merits of various yoga styles. While Torii Hunter and Joe Mauer prefer the stamina building of ashtanga yoga, Carlos Silva and Juan Rincon are really all about the gentle, inward, ananda yoga and its repetition of silent affirmations. The clubhouse has become a veritable ashram, with Punto in charge of yoga instruction and Batista acting as spiritual guru, preaching Shauca, or purity, Satya, truthfulness, and Tapas—which is either self-discipline or appetizer-sized portions designed for sharing.

I think this bodes very well for the team in '06--by aligning our chakras we will release more prana, or life force, and learn to convert with runners in scoring position. And with practice and study we will travel along Patanjali's eightfold path to enlightenment and can achieve Samadhi—also known as the post-season.

Namaste, Rita.