Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to LaTroy Hawkins, pitching with Angel Hernandez behind the plate was an attractive proposition.

Hernandez, who retired on Monday midway through his 31st season as a major league umpire, had become the go-to punchline for criticizing MLB’s on-field officiating — a reputation earned over time but exacerbated by advances in technology that place the official strike zone behind every batter in every telecast.

His greatest hits made the rounds on social media almost as soon as USA Today broke the story of his retirement late Monday, but Hawkins — who pitched parts of 21 major league seasons, the first eight in Minnesota — never had a beef with Hernandez.

In the wake of his retirement, a lot of current and former players have noted that they liked Hernandez, 62, personally, including Twins catcher Ryan Jefferson on Tuesday. But Hawkins, 51, said what he liked about Hernandez was his work behind the plate.

“Because he was consistent. I tell people that,” Hawkins said before joining the telecast for Tuesday night’s Twins-Royals game at Target Field. “They say, ‘Yeah, consistently bad.’ I say, ‘But he was consistent.’

“The only thing I hated as a pitcher was (umpires) that changed what a ball and a strike was depending on who was hitting or pitching. I didn’t like that. That didn’t matter with Angel.”

Justin Morneau was due to join Hawkins and play-by-play man Cory Provus, said he never considered Hernandez different from any other MLB umpire, but he noted an interaction with the veteran umpire that has always stuck with him.

In the first game of a series in Toronto, Morneau, the 2006 AL MVP with the Twins, took an outside pitch for a strike, then an inside pitch for a strike. He thought both were balls, “and I barked at him after.”

When the series was over, Morneau ran into Hernandez in the Toronto airport.

“He said, ‘Are you still (mad) at me?’ ” Morneau recalled. “And it took me a second. I was like, ‘What is he talking about?’ So, he was still thinking about it a couple days later, because it wasn’t the same day.”

Morneau, 43, was never tossed from a major league game and made spending money as a youth officiating baseball and hockey games in his native British Columbia.

“The way I looked at it was like, ‘Well, it’s never personal, it’s just that I didn’t agree with the call.’ But I think he took a lot of it personally, and the fact that he still cared about it showed me something. … I never had any problems with Angel.”

Hernandez was behind the plate when Jose Mijares threw his infamous purpose pitch behind Adam Everett during an 8-3 win in September 2009, and was at first base when the Twins won their 12th straight game early this month. He worked his last game on May 9 and, according to USA Today, negotiated his retirement with MLB through the Memorial Day weekend.

“Every umpire misses calls,” Jeffers said. “Did he miss more than others? Probably. But he was a good guy, and that’s what people should know.”

Twins add Castillo

The Twins selected the contract of Diego Castillo on Tuesday and added him to the 26-man active roster in time for the right-hander to pitch out of the bullpen Tuesday night’s game.

Castillo, 30, signed a minor league contract on March 30 and made 18 appearances for Class AAA St. Paul this season, fanning 22 and walking six in 18 innings. He has a career 3.22 earned-run average in

To make room on the 40-man roster, the Twins moved Justin Topa to the 60-day injured list. The key veteran piece in the January trade that sent Jorge Polanco to Seattle, Topa has yet to pitch for the Twins because of patellar tendinitis in his left knee.

Briefly

Royce Lewis played third base for the Saints in the first game of a double-header Tuesday in Buffalo. On a rehab assignment for a quad strain suffered on opening day, Lewis was 0 for 3 in a 6-2 loss and is batting .250 (3 for 12) with two runs scored and a stolen bases in three games with the Saints.

After a several-month consultation process, the Minnesota Historical Society has agreed to return the “Mankato hanging rope,” used to execute a Dakota man in 1862, to the Prairie Island Indian Community.

Tribal leaders filed a claim earlier this year under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a law that establishes tribal ownership over cultural items and requires federally funded agencies to return certain Native objects to the people or tribal lands they came from.

The noose in question was used to execute Wicanhpi Wastedanpi (also known as Chaske), one of 38 Dakota men imprisoned and hanged in December 1862 in Mankato following the United States-Dakota War of 1862, according to the historical society. The hanging of the Dakota men remains the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history.

Historical society officials said the rope was donated to the organization’s collections in 1869.

“This is a harmful and painful object that does not reflect the mission and the values of MNHS today,” officials said in a statement Tuesday.

The Prairie Island Indian Community is about 40 miles southeast of St. Paul, almost entirely within what’s now the city of Red Wing.

The rope likely will be repatriated to the reservation this summer, but the transfer can’t happen immediately. Under the terms of the repatriation law, historical society officials first must submit a public notice to the Federal Register. They can begin the return process 30 days after that notice is published, an MNHS spokesperson confirmed, assuming no competing claims to the item arise.

As part of the repatriation law’s consultation process, officials determined the noose had a protected affiliation to all 12 federally recognized Dakota tribal nations in the U.S., including the Prairie Island Indian Community. Each tribe supported Prairie Island’s specific request that the rope be returned to them, according to a statement from the historical society.

In the 1850s, before Minnesota officially became a state, the population of homesteading settlers skyrocketed from about 6,000 to nearly 170,000 by 1860. To make room for them, the U.S. government pressured local Dakota leaders into a series of treaties to give up much of their historical farming and hunting land in exchange for payments and food relief.

By 1862, with the federal government focused on the Civil War, the payments and food were not arriving on time. Facing forced relocations, starvation and hostility from the settlers, a small Dakota uprising turned into a five-week war between tribal leaders and U.S. troops led by Col. Henry Hastings Sibley, according to the historical society.

The 38 Dakota men ultimately hanged after the war ended were among 303 people initially given death sentences in what some historians consider to be shoddy military trials that, in some cases, lasted no more than five minutes apiece. Wicanhpi Wastedanpi himself, the man hanged with the rope currently in the historical society’s collections, likely was executed by mistake, historians believe.

During the war, Minnesota’s governor, Alexander Ramsey, declared all Native people “must be exterminated or driven forever” from the state — a statement not officially repudiated until 2012, when then-Gov. Mark Dayton commemorated the 150th anniversary of the war.

Previously, as a territorial leader, Ramsey helped found the Minnesota Historical Society.

From 1879 to 1915, the historical society publicly displayed the scalp and other remains of Little Crow, a Dakota chief who led the war effort. The remains were returned to his descendants in 1971.

A MNHS spokesperson said Tuesday she is not aware of any other items in the museum’s collection that are currently under review by the organization’s NAGPRA compliance committee.

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BAXTER — A 22-year-old Stacy man was severely burned May 20 when the electric vehicle charging station he was working on exploded at a Holiday Stationstore on Dellwood Drive.

The Baxter Police Department identified the man as Zavier Chevere. Friends and family said Chevere, 22, grew up in Forest Lake and works as a high-voltage technician.

Brainerd Fire Chief Tim Holmes said the department responded at 12:01 p.m. to a report of an explosion and fire at the Holiday gas station. Holmes said Chevere was working to install the system when there was an electrical explosion.

Holmes said bystanders extinguished the fire and were caring for the severely burned Chevere when the Baxter Police Department arrived on scene.

The Brainerd Fire Department assisted with patient care and helped the Baxter Police Department establish a landing zone for North Memorial Health Air Care along Golf Course Drive, behind Mills Motor Company.

Assisting at the scene were Crow Wing Power and North Memorial Health Ambulance.

A GoFundMe account has been set up to support Chevere and his family as he recovers.

Chevere, a member of the Army National Guard, “possesses various attributes of strength and courage, and we are all here to support him in his recovery,” according to the GoFundMe post.

As of Friday, the GoFundMe had raised almost $17,000 of its $200,000 goal.

The Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating, officials said Tuesday.

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