Twins' next top prospect: Louisa Baldelli, age 1 3/4

MINNEAPOLIS -- Baseball these days is all about letting the kids play -- and Rocco Baldelli took that to heart.

Following the Twins’ 6-0 victory over the Red Sox on Thursday, the Twins’ skipper brought his 21-month-old daughter Louisa to the press conference room, and as he discussed serious baseball business like Byron Buxton’s pair of 465-foot homers and Joe Ryan’s complete-game shutout, Louisa was equally serious about picking up every round object in her immediate area and handing it to her dad -- all while he was on camera.

It just started with a plastic baseball and a toy basketball -- but then, she stumbled upon a bucket full of baseballs under a table in the corner, and she got really busy.

At first, Baldelli gently stopped his on-camera answers to thank his daughter for each of her generous gifts. But then, as more and more and more baseballs started coming -- about one every 15 seconds -- he did an admirable job of somehow managing to hold on to every single baseball, because he certainly wasn’t going to drop any of the gifts from his daughter.

It’s a good thing he has big hands -- and, apparently, ironclad focus and multitasking ability, because he never once lost his train of thought (or his grip) as he talked about one of his team’s more significant wins of the season.

And once the cameras shut off and the interview ended, Baldelli looked down, counted the orbs in his full hands, and gleefully told everyone in the area that Louisa had given him nine baseballs in total -- equating to one for each of Ryan’s strikeouts in the Twins’ first complete-game shutout since 2018.

Let’s check back in with Baldelli’s baseball-corralling ability in about two years or so, when his soon-to-be-born twin sons will be able to walk and join their older sister in toting baseballs around the press conference room.