FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Paul Molitor can't recall the identity of the player in question, but he still remembers that day he was managing the Twins during a road trip to Milwaukee, when the player looked up at the Brewers' retired numbers, looked at his skipper, and asked, "You used to play?"

"Keeps you humble," the Hall of Famer said with a wry smile.

To be fair, it's now been 24 years since Molitor hung up the cleats on his legendary career, meaning very few of the young players that he worked with during his time in the manager's office -- and none of the prospects he works with now -- have any recollection of him as a player.

The game of baseball and the art of coaching it have changed considerably in that time, and that's something that Molitor, who managed the Twins from 2015-18, is aware of every time he steps into a Minor League clubhouse these days as a roving instructor for the Twins. And it is on his mind again as he returns for a second Minor League Spring Training.

"I think players really think the game is different now than it was even 25 years ago," Molitor said. "The difficulty of it, the leaps and bounds we've made in pitching, and the difficulty of hitting. So I think they have to understand that you're not trying to teach them the game when you played it. There are some parallels, but a lot of it is a lot different. They want to see that you understand that."

Even as the Twins skew younger around the board with their coaching and development staffs, they've also always placed an emphasis on giving their players access to the brains of big league lifers like Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Johan Santana, LaTroy Hawkins, Justin Morneau and, now, Molitor among others. They offer a variety of perspectives in addition to the trove of data and targeted coaching that might be helpful to some players wanting to seek it.

In the limited time Molitor spent with the Twins' affiliates last season -- a dozen or so games with Triple-A St. Paul, a handful of trips to Double-A Wichita and one excursion to High-A Cedar Rapids -- he found himself able to help on baserunning and other fundamentals, and thought his input was valued and effective.

But in the area of his specialty as a player -- hitting -- he actually described his first year of instruction as "educational" for himself, as he actually needed to catch up to the methods and tools of modern hitting to put himself in a position to help, with the level of advancement in the field apparent to him even in the few short years following his departure as the Twins' manager. He took as much out of his conversations with the Twins' young development staffers as he hopes they took from him.

"I'm not an old curmudgeon who insists that the old way was better," Molitor said. "I see a lot of things in the new game that I find really challenging that I'm willing to learn, to understand -- that's instrumental to your players."

And as Molitor goes through his fifth decade of professional baseball (he estimates the number of Spring Trainings he's attended during that time to be in the mid-30s), he's hoping his second go-around will put him in a better position with regard to the modern, more analytical game.

"Once you kind of develop and they see you multiple times, the trust level kind of increases," Molitor said. "But not surprisingly, they don't have a lot of interest unless they find that you're saying or doing something that's actually helping, so you've got to kind of earn your keep."

It might take a bit of work to evolve with the game, but Molitor still enjoys the pursuit of making young players better. He'll spend about a week down at Spring Training, make the rounds to the affiliates again during the summer in his limited role, and is happy to keep making a small mark on his hometown team.

"Getting to know Rocco [Baldelli, manager] the way I do, the Twins understand my desire is to stay in the organization in some capacity," Molitor said. "While it's a smaller role, it's something that seems to be a good fit. I think they got some good feedback about the limited time I was able to spend with coaches and players last year. I'm just going to try to keep that on the continuum [as] best we can. We'll see how long the body holds up."