On the very last day of the regular season in 2019, a playoff spot well in hand, manager Rocco Baldelli handed off some of the responsibilities of his job to utilityman Ehire Adrianza.

Adrianza took Baldelli’s chair in the Kauffman Stadium visiting manager’s office and fielded questions from the media. He exchanged the lineup card with Baldelli, Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost and the umpires, and later he emerged from the dugout in the sixth inning to make a pitching change.

His playing career was nowhere near complete — he played five more seasons after that — but even back then, it was apparent to those around him that he was destined to stay in the sport one way or another once his playing days were over.

When the Twins reached out to Adrianza early this offseason — he said Baldelli texted him and mentioned there might be an opportunity to rejoin the organization that he played for from 2018-20 — it came at just the right time.

Adrianza, “with no doubt in my mind,” said he was open to learning more, eventually accepting a job this offseason to return to the Twins as a player development assistant. After spending parts of 12 years in the majors and dealing with injuries over the past few years, Adrianza, 35, was already thinking about retirement when the Twins came calling.

“I didn’t think it was going to be like this, so fast,” he said. “That’s why when they offered me this job, I didn’t think too much about it. … There’s a lot of opportunity here for me to grow and to learn. I’m just enjoying it right now and making the most out of it.”

With infield coordinator Tucker Frawley departing for the New York Mets and Tyler Smarslok, the Triple-A St. Paul Saints defensive coach, joining the Miami Marlins’ major league staff, the Twins had a real need for infield experience and expertise on the minor league side.

Adrianza didn’t feel, at that point, he was ready to be the organization’s infield coordinator, but he was eager to get involved in a different way.

“Sometimes players, as they’re finishing up their careers, sometimes they want to spend time with their families,” general manager Jeremy Zoll said. “Sometimes they’re hoping that they can have a very specific type of role, whatever that may be. But AD was super open to a wide variety of roles and really just wanted to work his way up and get exposed to as many things as possible.”

Though he hopes to wind up in more of a front office than a coaching-type role, right now he’s doing a lot of hands-on work with infielders and will spend this season traveling to all of the Twins’ minor league affiliates, from the Dominican Republic to St. Paul, to work with young players.

There’s a learning curve — working with Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint are among the new challenges thrown his way — and the days in Fort Myers, Fla., are filled with planning, on-field work, meetings and more planning, making for a busy time. But Adrianza said he’s just trying to take in as much as he can each day.

“We feel fortunate that this is a path that he was open to and now he realizes there’s a whole other world out there when it comes to developing major league talent and learning how the other side of the game functions,” Baldelli said. “He could do virtually anything. Anything he wants to do, he could do. Now, it just comes down to putting in the same type of work that he put in as a player.”

By MATTHEW BROWN and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah will become the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water, despite widespread opposition from dentists and national health organizations.

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Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said he would sign legislation that bars cities and communities from deciding whether to add the mineral to their water systems.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

Government researchers have found that community water fluoridation prevents about 25% of tooth decay.

“We’ve got tried and true evidence of the safety and efficacy of this public health initiative,” said American Dental Association President Brad Kessler, of Denver. Cavities could start emerging in children within months or years of Utah stopping fluoridation, Kessler said.

The ban comes weeks after federal health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has expressed skepticism about water fluoridation, was sworn into office.

“It’s not a bill I care that much about,” Cox added, “but it’s a bill I will sign.”

Utah lawmakers who pushed for a ban said putting fluoride in water was too expensive. Its Republican sponsor, Rep. Stephanie Gricius, acknowledged fluoride has benefits, but said it was an issue of “individual choice” to not have it in the water.

Cox said that like many people in Utah, he grew up and raised his own children in a community that doesn’t have fluoridated water — or what he called a “natural experiment.”

“You would think you would see drastically different outcomes with half the state not getting it. We haven’t seen that,” Cox said in a weekend interview with ABC4 in Salt Lake City. “So it’s got to be a really high bar for me if we’re going to require people to be medicated by their government.”

Already, some cities across the country have gotten rid of fluoride from their water, and other municipalities are considering doing the same. A few months ago, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate fluoride in drinking water because high levels could pose a risk to kids’ intellectual development.

A Utah teenager who urged lawmakers to pass the bill described suffering a medical emergency when the fluoride pump in Sandy, Utah, malfunctioned in 2019, releasing an excessive amount of the mineral into the drinking water. The fluoride sickened hundreds of residents and led many in Utah to push for its removal.

It’s rare to find high levels of fluoridation in water, according to the National Institutes of Health. The agency said it’s “virtually impossible” to get a toxic dose of fluoride from water with standard levels of the mineral.

Kessler said the amounts of fluoride added to drinking water have been reduced over time and are below levels considered problematic.

“The science proves that it is effective at reducing cavities with little to no risk of other problems,” he said.

He added that a ban in Utah could have a domino effect with other legislatures being encouraged to follow suit with fluoride bans in their states.

Opponents warned it would disproportionately affect low-income residents who may rely on public drinking water having fluoride as their only source of preventative dental care. Low-income families may not be able to afford regular dentist visits or the fluoride tablets some people buy as a supplement in cities without fluoridation.

Fluoridation is the most cost-effective way to prevent tooth decay on a large scale, said Lorna Koci, who chairs the Utah Oral Health Coalition.

Utah in 2022 ranked 44th in the nation for the percentage of residents that receive fluoridated water, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About two in five Utah residents served by community water systems received fluoridated water.

In February, the city council in Riverton, a Salt Lake City suburb, unanimously passed a resolution to remove fluoride from the city’s public water systems. Voters in Brigham City, 59 miles (95 kilometers) north of the capital city, struck down by a large margin a measure in 2023 that would have removed the mineral from its public water supply.

Out of the 484 Utah water systems that reported data to the CDC in 2024, only 66 fluoridated their water, an Associated Press analysis showed. The largest was the state’s biggest city, Salt Lake City.

Rodney Thornell, president of the Utah Dental Association, began practicing dentistry in a Salt Lake City suburb before the city added fluoride to its water. His adult patients who grew up locally continue to get lots of cavities but younger patients who grew up with fluoride in the water get fewer, he said.

“If we’re going to keep eating sugar, we need fluoride.” Thornell said, noting that Utah residents consume more than the national average of candy and sugary drinks.

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

White Bear Lake United Methodist Church and AARP have partnered for a free upcoming class on preventing fraud and identity theft.

The course will be from noon to 2 p.m. on March 30 in the church’s sanctuary at 1851 Birch Street in White Bear Lake.

It will be led by John Schmidt from the AARP Fraud Watch Network and is open to the public and all ages.

Resources and tools will be provided on spotting signs of identity theft and fraud, understanding fraud trends and steps to protect yourself and others.

For more information, contact event coordinator Peteria Cochran Routt at (612) 251-3861 or peteria.cochranroutt@wblumc.org or go to wblumc.org/event/23952318-2025-03-30-the-scam-landscape-staying-safe/.

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By DAVE COLLINS

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Despite finding “improprieties” were committed by a prosecutor, the Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday upheld the murder conviction of a man found guilty of killing his wife in a case that drew wide attention because the victim’s Fitbit exercise tracker contradicted his statements to police.

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The justices ruled in a 6-0 decision that Richard Dabate was not deprived of a fair trial because of four missteps by the prosecutor they called “troubling,” including referring to one of Connecticut’s most notorious crimes while cross-examining the man.

Dabate, 48, was convicted of murder and other charges in the fatal shooting of Connie Dabate, 39, at the couple’s home in Ellington two days before Christmas in 2015 while their two young sons were in school. He’s serving a 65-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors said Dabate wanted his wife dead, in part, because he had a yearslong affair with another woman who was pregnant at the time of the killing and later gave birth to their child.

Dabate staged a phony crime scene, including tying himself up loosely with zip ties and stabbing himself with a box cutter, and told police an unknown intruder in camouflage broke into their home, killed his wife and assaulted him, authorities said.

State police said Dabate gave them a timeline of events that conflicted with data on his wife’s Fitbit, which showed she was moving around for about an hour after the time Dabate said she was shot.

Dabate testified in his defense and maintained his innocence, saying a large masked man with a voice like actor Vin Diesel was the killer.

Part of Dabate’s appeal questioned the reliability of the Fitbit evidence and whether the trial judge was wrong to have allowed it, but the Supreme Court upheld the data and its use.

Dabate also accused Tolland State’s Attorney Matthew Gedansky of multiple instances of impropriety, including Gedansky mentioning a notorious home invasion in Cheshire in 2007 while cross-examining Dabate. The home invaders killed a woman and her two daughters, ages 11 and 17, after terrorizing them for hours, while the woman’s husband survived a vicious beating.

Gedansky asked Dabate if he was trying to create a “little mini-Cheshire scene” in his own home. The trial judge upheld an objection by Dabate’s lawyer and asked Gedansky to rephrase the question, but Gedansky asked nearly the same exact question. The Supreme Court found Gedansky violated the judge’s order to rephrase.

“In referring to a ‘mini Cheshire,’ the prosecutor’s question was unnecessarily inflammatory because it compared the defendant to other notorious offenders or infamous figures,” Justice Joan Alexander wrote in the decision.

Gedansky did not immediately return an email message seeking comment Monday.

Dabate’s lawyer, Trent LaLima, said he and his client were disappointed with the court’s ruling.

“We believe we put forward strong issues supporting a new trial for Rick Dabate,” LaLima wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “We are evaluating the best next steps for Rick, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence for nearly a decade.”

The Supreme Court also found that Gedansky committed three other improprieties, including suggesting that the jury would have to be unintelligent or lazy to agree with the defense theory of the case.

“We disapprove of the improprieties committed by the prosecutor during the trial of this case in strong and unqualified terms and expect our message to be taken with the utmost seriousness by prosecutors,” the decision said.

The court said it agreed with Dabate that “the prosecutor engaged in multiple acts of impropriety at trial that we consider troubling.”

Justices, however, said the state’s case was very strong and Gedansky’s missteps did not overshadow testimony by 130 witnesses and the 600 exhibits presented during the five-week trial.