Rocco Baldelli said he could envision a scenario where he would let a player play in all 162 games of the regular season. But, the Twins manager added, it would take a “very special, unique” player.

Could that be Willi Castro?

The Twins’ versatile utilityman had appeared in the team’s first 74 games before getting a day of rest on Thursday. That lasted until the eighth inning, when he entered the game to pinch hit for Trevor Larnach.

Castro had started in 70 of 74 games to begin the season. In the other four games, he appeared later as a replacement. Before Thursday, the last game Castro did not start came on April 15.

“He recovers great,” Baldelli said. “He takes care of himself great, but there was going to be a day where it was coming.”

The manager said he talked to Castro on Wednesday night about taking a day off but didn’t actually tell him which day it was going to be.

While it’s unlikely he’ll go the entire season without a full day off, should he stay healthy, it’s possible that Castro sets a new record of most games played in a season for the Twins with Baldelli at the helm. The fact that he is a switch hitter who can appear at multiple positions certainly helps his case.

Currently, Jorge Polanco holds that distinction, playing in 153 games for the 2019 Twins. Last season, no Twin played in more games than Carlos Correa, who appeared in 135 of 162.

“The harder you play, the more intensity you play with, the more explosive you are on the field, both offensively and defensively, the harder it is to stay out there,” Baldelli said. “That’s a fact. That’s part of it. And the guys that run hard all the time and are playing in the middle-of-the-diamond positions and diving all over the field and sprinting constantly, it’s really hard. It’s hard to play 150 games, you know? 162 is really something.”

After Baldelli got done speaking about how impressive — and nearly impossible it was — to play 162 games these days, he turned to Twins legend Justin Morneau to ask him if he had ever done it.

“163,” Morneau responded.

Scoreboard fixed

The entire ribbon board in left field was up and running on Thursday afternoon, a day after Royce Lewis busted a section of it with a home run ball.

The board displayed an image of two Band-Aids crossed in an X and read, “Don’t worry, Royce. We fixed it!”

“If I had to pay for that, that would be a lot,” Lewis said on Wednesday night.

Thursday, the Twins posted a picture of the third baseman smiling in front of the repaired board. Lewis said he noticed a section of the board was out on Wednesday night, but he didn’t realize that it had come from his home run.

“I was thinking, ‘Man, they have to be really (ticked) off that it’s not working,’ ” he said.

Briefly

Austin Martin got his first major league start at second base on Thursday. … The Twins will head to the Oakland Coliseum one last time for a three-game series over the weekend. Chris Paddack is on tap to start Friday night.

Federal prosecutors have secured their first guilty plea from an alleged drug smuggling ring they say mailed pills of fentanyl hidden inside stuffed animals.

Cornell Montez Chandler Jr. (Courtesy of the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office)

Cornell Montez Chandler Jr., 25, of St. Paul, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul to conspiracy to distribute the drug.

Eight others from the Twin Cities have pleaded not guilty to the same charge. Federal authorities say the defendants were involved in mailing fentanyl from Arizona to Minnesota from August 2022 to Dec. 14, 2023.

The charges followed the seizure of 280,000 fentanyl pills that were sent in six packages through the U.S. Postal Service from Phoenix to the Twin Cities metro area. Authorities called the fentanyl seizure, which amounted to 66 pounds with an estimated value of over $2.2 million, the largest ever in Minnesota.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, just 2 milligrams of fentanyl can kill a person.

“With this seizure, we know that hundreds, if not thousands of lives have been saved,” Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry said in January, when charges were announced. The investigation involved law enforcement from Washington, Dakota and Ramsey counties, along with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations.

Disguised as birthday presents

Authorities say six people are jailed and charged in U.S. District Court in St. Paul in connection with the seizure of 280,000 fentanyl pills — described as the largest fentanyl seizure in state history — that were sent from Arizona to the Twin Cities metro area in stuffed animals between August 2022 and December 2023. A joint investigation between local and national agencies led to the seizure of over 66 pounds of counterfeit fentanyl pills with a combined estimated value of over $2.2 million. (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

According to his plea agreement, Chandler admitted he flew to Phoenix to buy fentanyl from one or more suppliers and that he and others mailed packages through the U.S. Postal Service to the Twin Cities for distribution. He also admitted they had mailed other packages that were not seized to the Twin Cities and that the pills then were passed to others for further dealing.

The drug ring disguised the stuffed animals as birthday presents and lined them with dog treats in an attempt to prevent drug-sniffing dogs from alerting them, the plea agreement says.

Federal prosecutors have agreed to pursue a prison term for Chandler of no more than 15½ years. He remains at the Sherburne County Jail ahead of a sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

Chandler’s co-defendants are: Quijuan Hosea Bankhead, 30; Amaya Tiffany-Nicole Mims, 23; Fo’Tre Devine White, 30; Robiel Lee Williams, 24; all of St. Paul; and Shardai Rayshell Allen, 25; Stardasha Christina Davenport-Mounger, 24; Da’Shawn Natori Domena, 24; and Phyu Win Jame, 27, of Minneapolis.

Minnesota had 1,002 opioid-involved overdose deaths in 2022, according to the state Department of Health, and fentanyl contributed to 92 percent of them.

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By JULIA FRANKEL (Associated Press)

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said Sunday that it was establishing a new safe corridor to deliver aid into southern Gaza. But days later, this self-declared “tactical pause” has brought little relief to desperate Palestinians.

The United Nations and international aid organizations say a breakdown in law and order has made the aid route unusable.

With thousands of truckloads of aid piled up, groups of armed men are regularly blocking convoys, holding drivers at gunpoint and rifling through their cargo, according to a U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media on the issue.

He said lawlessness has emerged as the main obstacle to aid distribution in southern Gaza — where an estimated 1.3 million Palestinians displaced from Rafah, or more than half of Gaza’s entire population, are now sheltering in tent camps and cramped apartments without adequate food, water, or medical supplies.

Here is a closer look at the security challenges facing the U.N. and aid organizations.

Israel’s ‘tactical pause’ stymied

Israel said Sunday it would observe daily pauses in combat along a route stretching from Kerem Shalom — the strip’s only operational aid crossing in the south — to the nearby city of Khan Younis. Before the pause, aid organizations had reported that the need to coordinate trucks’ movement with the Israelis in an active combat zone was slowing aid distribution.

The U.N. official familiar with the aid effort said that there has been no sign of Israeli activity along the route. The U.N. tried to send a convoy of 60 trucks down the road Tuesday to pick up aid at Kerem Shalom. But 35 of the trucks were intercepted by armed men, the official said.

In recent days, armed men have moved closer to the crossing and set up roadblocks to halt trucks loaded with supplies, the U.N. official said. They have rifled through the pallets in search of smuggled cigarettes, a rare luxury in a territory where a single smoke can go for $25.

The surge in lawlessness is a result of growing desperation in Gaza and the power vacuum that left by Hamas’s waning power over the territory, said Mkhaimar Abusada, an associate professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza who is now in Cairo.

With the territory’s police force targeted by Israel, he said, crime has reemerged as an untreated issue in Gaza.

“After Hamas came to power, one of the things that they brought under their control was the lawlessness of the so-called big clans,” said Abusada. “Now, that’s left for the Palestinians on their own to deal with it. So once again, we are seeing shootings between families, there are thefts, all the bad things are happening.”

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, used to deploy local Palestinian police to escort aid convoys, but many refused to continue serving after airstrikes killed at least eight police officers in Rafah, the agency said.

Israel says the police are legitimate targets because they are controlled by Hamas.

Is any aid getting into Gaza?

The situation has largely paralyzed aid distribution to the south — particularly since Gaza’s nearby Rafah crossing with Egypt was closed when Israel invaded the city early last month.

The U.N. official said that 25 trucks of flour used the route Tuesday. Some private commercial trucks also got through — many of which used armed security to deter groups seeking to seize their cargo. An AP reporter stationed along the road Monday saw at least eight trucks pass by, armed security guards riding on top.

Before Israel’s offensive into the city of Rafah, hundreds of fuel trucks routinely entered the area.

The U.N. has now begun rerouting some fuel trucks through northern Gaza. Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman, said five fuel trucks entered Gaza Wednesday. The U.N. humanitarian office reported that these were the first fuel deliveries since early June and supplies remain scarce.

Aid groups say only a ceasefire and a reopening of the Rafah crossing could significantly increase aid flow to the area.

The military body in charge of coordinating humanitarian aid efforts, COGAT, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Security concerns also afflict aid from U.S. pier project

The U.S. installed a pier off Gaza’s coast last month, aiming to provide an additional route for aid to enter Gaza. But the ambitious project has suffered repeated logistical and security setbacks.

Cyprus, a partner in the effort, said the pier was up and running again Thursday after being detached for a second time last week because of rough seas. COGAT said Thursday there were “hundreds of aid pallets awaiting collection and distribution by the U.N. aid agencies.”

But there, too, security concerns are hindering distribution of aid.

The U.N. suspended its cooperation with the pier on June 9 – a day after rumors swirled that the Israeli military had used the area in a hostage rescue operation that left over 270 Palestinians dead. Photos of the operation have shown an Israeli helicopter in the vicinity of the pier.

Both Israel and the U.S. deny the pier was used in the operation. But the perception that the pier was used for military purposes could endanger humanitarian workers, and threaten humanitarian groups’ principles of of neutrality, the U.N. says.

Aid workers said they are working with the Israelis to find a solution, but that the security burden falls squarely on Israel’s shoulders.

U.N. and other humanitarian officials, including Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, met with Israel’s military chief and COGAT officials this week to seek solutions.

USAID said afterward that the meeting ended with promises of specific actions, but gave no details.

—-

AP correspondents Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report

The “Purple Rain” musical now has two Prince associates acting as music advisors and official run dates, the show’s producer Orin Wolf announced Thursday.

Robert “Bobby Z.” Rivkin, drummer of the Revolution, and New Power Generation keyboardist and onetime musical director Morris Hayes will advise producers on the production, which features a book by two-time Pulitzer Prize-finalist and MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (“Appropriate”), based on the original screenplay by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn.

The musical’s pre-Broadway world premiere will run April 10 through May 11 at the State Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, with an official opening night of April 30. Tickets are currently only available to Broadway on Hennepin season subscribers. See hennepinarts.org for details.

“Bringing in Morris Hayes and Bobby Z, two of Prince’s longtime collaborators, was extremely important as we move forward with the pre-Broadway premiere of ‘Purple Rain,’ ” said Larry Mestel, CEO of Primary Wave Music, which controls the Prince estate with three of his siblings, in a news release. “Having worked with Prince for years, they will ensure this production holds true to Prince’s vision and continues his legacy. Matching their history and musical contributions with Prince, alongside the creative team already in place, will surely bring magic to the stage.”

Jacobs-Jenkins, director Lileana Blain-Cruz and music supervisor Jason Michael Webb will join Rivkin and Hayes for a panel discussion at the sold-out Celebration 2024 event Saturday at Paisley Park.

The production will also be holding open casting call auditions in Minneapolis for all roles. Dates and information will be announced in the coming weeks and will also be available at purplerainbroadway.com.

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