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MINNEAPOLIS -- Angels interim manager Phil Nevin’s stint with the Twins was a short but memorable one that ended his 12-year playing career.

Nevin was 35 and in the last year of his playing tenure when he was traded by the Cubs to the Twins on Aug. 31, 2006, which gave him the chance to play in a pennant race and reach the postseason for the first time in his career.

Minnesota went 18-11 in September and won the division on the final day of the season on Oct. 1 with a 5-1 win over the White Sox. Nevin played in 16 games for the Twins and hit .190 with a homer and four RBIs, going 0-for-3 in the American League Division Series against the A’s. He said he still has fond memories of his time with Minnesota.

“It was a Deadline trade, and I loved my time over there,” Nevin said. “A lot of guys are still over there. Dick Bremer still does the TV, Dan Gladden does the radio. A lot of familiar faces. Even though it was a short time, I probably remember my time on that team the most out of all the teams I played on other than San Diego because we made the playoff run and it was my only opportunity to play in the postseason.”

Nevin said it was also around then that he started to think about what he would do after his playing career. He said then-Twins manager Ron Gardenhire was a mentor of his and joked that he felt more like a manager than a player late in his career because of injuries that kept him on the bench.

“If you asked some of the managers I played with the last few years, they’d tell you I was already on the [managing] side too much,” Nevin said with a laugh. “With the injuries, I would sit next to the managers on the bench and poke at them and ask them questions. Guys like [Bruce] Bochy, Buck [Showalter], Dusty Baker and Ron Gardenhire. Those were the last four guys I played for. So I’d ask them how they would do things.”

Nevin said his first job after playing was doing television work for college baseball games, but he was then asked to manage the independent Orange County Flyers and then started coaching in the Tigers’ organization. He managed Double-A Erie for a season before moving up to manage Triple-A Toledo before eventually moving on to managing in the D-backs’ organization in 2014.

Nevin then worked as the third-base coach for the Giants in 2017 before serving in that role with the Yankees from 2018-21. He joined the Angels as their third-base coach before taking over as interim manager after Joe Maddon was dismissed on June 7 of this season.

Nevin has called it a dream to be a Major League manager, but he also said he hasn’t had any talks with the front office about whether he’ll be retained next season.

“As soon as I managed, I knew I loved it and it was what I wanted to do,” Nevin said. “And now 14 years or so later, here I am.”