There’s No Place Like Home for Steinbach

ANAHEIM — He turned down better offers and did not get any closer to the World Series. Such was the force that tugged at catcher Terry Steinbach to return to his home state to play for the Minnesota Twins.

He had grown up and attended college in Minnesota, making his return big local news. On top of that, in 10 seasons with the Oakland Athletics, Steinbach had been to three World Series and three All-Star games.

This was more than local boy does good. This was a local boy coming home to help fix local team, or so went the perception.

Sunday, Steinbach lived up to some of that with two home runs and three runs batted in the Minnesota Twins’ 5-4 victory over the Angels at Anaheim Stadium. This season, there haven’t been too many days this sweet, so it was a moment to enjoy.

“This team is still developing,” said Steinbach, 35. “Maybe it didn’t look great on paper, but you can’t always go by that. There is a lot of stability here.

“You look at what the Twins have done the last 10 years. They have two world championships. They’ve had the same manager [Tom Kelly] for 11 years, longer than anyone else. They have stability.”

Steinbach was supposed to add to that. He has, to an extent, but not at the level expected when he signed. Sunday produced more mixed results.

He grounded into a double play with runners on first and third to end the first inning. In the eighth, he grounded out with runners on first and second, again letting the Angels off the hook.

But the upside overshadowed those moments. His two-run homer in the third gave the Twins a 3-0 lead. He then broke a 4-4 tie in the fifth with a home run to left.

“I’ve been stranding runners all over the place the last two days,” said Steinbach, who is hitting .326 with runners in scoring position.

Still, in the last 14 games, Steinbach has hit .434, with three home runs and 11 RBIs.

Steinbach was considered a catch among free agents during the off-season bidding. Six teams pursued him, and Oakland, Toronto and St. Louis offered more money.

Like Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor, Steinbach chose Minnesota for something more than baseball.

He had grown up in New Ulm, Minn., where he still is the all-time leading scorer for the New Ulm High School hockey team. And he was a two-time All-Big Ten baseball selection at Minnesota.

It was hardly an Odysseus-like journey getting back. Steinbach may have spent 10 years in Oakland, but his off-seasons were spent in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis.

“You are born and bred in Minnesota and it carries a lot of clout,” Steinbach said when he signed a two-year, $6.2-million contract in December.

The Angels--given the choice--would have preferred that Steinbach had grown up in Florida, Georgia, Colorado or any other National-League-only state. Steinbach hit four home runs last season against the Angels and has 20 lifetime.

Steinbach is coming off a season during which he had 35 home runs--setting an American League record for catchers with 34 home runs--and 100 RBIs.

No one was expecting him to match those numbers, but he has only five home runs thus far. On top of that, he has thrown out 15% of runners attempting to steal, well below his career average (36%). Nor has the Twins’ pitching staff been improved.

Still, on Sunday, none of those problems existed. Steinbach lived up to his billing.