Correa enjoys sightseeing, mingling among opposing fans in LA

This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park's Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Last year, when Carlos Correa came to Southern California while with the Astros, he said he barely even left the team hotel. If you need any reminder why, just watch any of his at-bats from this past series at Dodger Stadium. Or, rather, listen -- because I’m pretty sure you could hear the thunderous boos from the Dodgers faithful all the way back home in the Upper Midwest.

But this time, the Twins had not one, but two team off-days in Los Angeles -- one on Monday, one on Thursday -- and being the Marvel and Star Wars nut that he is, Correa simply had to bring his wife, Daniella, and eight-month-old son, Kylo, to Disneyland, where father was far, far giddier than son.

A man of Correa’s stature in the baseball world doesn’t exactly blend into a crowd, though, and he said he was often recognized by fans in Dodgers hats. He said his companions would get a little closer to him, ready for the prospect of potential trouble. But he was pleasantly surprised to find that all those fans who might have booed and jeered him in Chavez Ravine were actually very excited to see him -- and quite friendly.

“You know what I realized?” Correa asked. “That in the stadium, when I go, they like boo and stuff -- and it's like an entertainment type of thing for everyone to just do that. But when they see me on the streets, they're, like, super nice.”

Obviously, Correa is used to all of the booing by now -- and he has learned to live with it. His parents were worried about it when it all started, he said, but they no longer call or text him about such things anymore.

When Correa is between the lines, Dodgers fans certainly seem to take his presence personally. And it’ll likely be a long, long time before they stop showering him with torrents of boos and chants -- if they ever stop, that is.

It’s part of the gameday experience, to be sure -- but he’s glad to have found that those feelings appear to stop there.

“In this trip here, I also went to the aquarium in L.A. over there, and I went to restaurants and stuff, and people were super nice and super, super fun,” Correa said. “ And I was just taking pictures with everyone. It was cool. So one thing I learned is [that] it's part of the entertainment when I go to the stadiums.”

That realization likely contributed to what Correa described as “one of the best off-days of [his] career,” enjoyed with his family in a place where his nerdiest fandoms were indulged in a big way as he roamed Disneyland all day, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. He proudly showed off a photo of himself with his family in front of the Mickey Mouse Ferris wheel -- and another of him and Daniella sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars."

Noticeably missing from that photo reel: Kylo Correa didn’t get a picture with his namesake.

“We tried, but apparently Kylo Ren is a tough one to get,” Correa said. “So we didn't get to see him. We didn't find him. But yeah, we were looking forward to that. Maybe another time when he's older.”

There will certainly be time for that, now that he knows he’s more welcome here than he once thought.