WARWICK, R.I. _ Everything Rocco Baldelli ever needed to know, he learned in high school. Bishop Hendricken Catholic School, in Warwick, R.I., where an understated schoolhouse fronts the complex of pristine baseball diamonds upon which big-league scouts belatedly discovered an athletic outlier.
In high school, Baldelli learned that he could dominate in any sport he chose, winning championships as a sprinter even before he mastered the starting blocks. He learned to handle unexpected fame and daunting expectations. He savored time with those closest to him, the ones by his side later in life when his body failed.
Two decades later, Baldelli is the Twins' new and unlikely manager. At 37, he has never run a team before and is only seven years removed from being forced to retire as a player because of a mysterious ailment he still struggles to describe, one that friends worried would kill him.
In Rhode Island, Baldelli is seen not as an inexperienced manager but, as his father says, "an old soul."
"He was one of the great athletes in Rhode Island history," said Paul Danesi, the Bishop Hendricken CFO. "Yet he's completely devoid of ego. He always tried to shine the spotlight on kids who couldn't do what he did.
"He was a great student who tutored other kids in physics. He was the perfect kid but wasn't a braggart. That's why people are so endeared to him."
Allowed to leave campus during free periods, Baldelli instead camped in Danesi's small office and tutored friends or talked baseball. Baldelli didn't even earn his driver's license until his senior year, when he was on his way to becoming the sixth pick of the 2000 MLB draft.
Baldelli's parents had enrolled him at Hendricken, a private school and athletic powerhouse, even though the school was 40 minutes away from the family home. So Dan "Rocky" Baldelli, Rocco's father, drove his son.
"We had a chance to spend time together and listen to a little classic rock," Rocco said. "Those were good times, important times for us."
As the Twins begin their winter festivities, Baldelli, who grew up in Cumberland and Woonsocket, R.I., will fly in from his current home in Providence to introduce himself to fans, starting this week at TwinsFest. The kid once described as the next Joe DiMaggio will instead emulate Joe Maddon, one of his managers with Tampa Bay.
Baldelli's ascension to a managerial job surprises only those who viewed him as merely a superior talent or a tragic figure. Those close to him say his intellectual curiosity and natural empathy qualify him to lead.
"He was always reading _ Audubon, animal books, baseball books, whatever he could get his hands on," said his father, Dan. "When he was injured, he'd sit home and work on the Princeton Review or his SAT prep."
Minh Pham befriended Rocco playing youth baseball in Woonsocket, a city of about 40,000 halfway between Boston and Providence. Pham's family had escaped from Vietnam in the early 1980s.
When Pham was 9, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and his father felt unable to properly care for him. Pham moved in with the Baldellis and when his mother died three years later, the Baldellis unofficially adopted him.
"Rocco had that unique ability of being the best of everything," Pham said. "Growing up, it made you jealous. You wanted to be everything that he was."
Mike Quigley, who coaches and teaches U.S. history at Hendricken, said Baldelli would sneak into the back row to audit his classes even after he was drafted.
"When he was a senior, he decided to run in a big track meet," Quigley said. "There was a young man from Cumberland who was a guaranteed gold medal winner but couldn't compete for some reason. So Rocco won the gold and gave the kid his medal."
Baldelli was Rhode Island's version of Joe Mauer, a too-good-to-be-true natural athlete raised on Dunkin' Donuts instead of Caribou Coffee. And like Mauer, his career was too often defined by injuries.
