At the end of a day in the life of Marty Cordova, the Twins' rising star idles in a half-empty joint on The Strip.
Hair slicked, muscles bulging, accompanied by a small entourage, Cordova winds down 12 hours of cavorting in the city that never weeps by reaching for silver and flashing a calculating gaze across the table.
Woo-hoo! Cordova knows how to live.
Unfortunately for his 'entourage' - a lifelong buddy and a weary reporter - Cordova's motto must be 'per diem,' not 'carpe diem.'
For on this Wednesday evening in Sin City, it is sweat that has dewed Cordova's hair and torturous exercise that has pumped his arms. He is culminating his adventures not on Vegas' neon-and-dreamscape Strip but in a chain restaurant in the parking lot of a strip mall, and the silver he fingers is flatware.
'If you order salad dressing on the side and dip your fork into it, instead of having it dumped on your salad . . .' he says, nodding at the reporter's honey-mustarded roughage, '. . . you save a lot of fat.'
On this, a typical winter day for Cordova, he pushes himself through two weightlifting sessions and a grueling boxing workout, discusses his lofty ambitions and partakes of a diet that would have made Gandhi scream for a Snickers.
You come to Las Vegas expecting a muscular Mick Jagger. Instead, you find a Sugar-free Ray Leonard.
Woo-hoo.
8:45 a.m.
Cordova answers the door of his Spanish-style duplex on the outskirts of Las Vegas. He has eaten a low-fat breakfast and is munching on a sports bar. He wears a brown Nike T-shirt and gray shorts.
His new digs, part of a planned community that rests on land where Cordova, as a youth, took unsuccessful potshots at rabbits, are stylish but snug. His living-room furniture has not arrived. He spends his waking hours at home in the kitchen-and-den area, where a large television dominates one wall and bottles of Creatine, a sports drink, line another.
Plaques and posters are strewn in a small workout room, and the baseball that teammate Paul Molitor struck for career hit No. 2,991 last August rests on a shelf in his den. In fact, Cordova, 27, displays Molitor's memorabilia more prominently than his own.
Apparently, he'd rather contemplate a Hall of Famer's career than celebrate his own.
'Time to hit the gym,' Cordova says, and hops into his Blazer.
9 a.m.
Cordova bustles through 24-Hour Fitness, a gym tucked into a strip mall near his house, and begins slipping 45-pound plates onto a weight machine.
Cordova has lifted weights since he was a football star for Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas, but he never dedicated himself to intensive, year-round conditioning until after the 1991 baseball season.
That year he hit .212, and found himself on the verge of being released. That winter, he cut the long hair that symbolized underachievement to his minor league coaches, and told himself he had one last chance to make a career of baseball.
In 1992, Cordova hit .341 with 28 homers and 131 RBI in Class A. Three years later, he was the American League Rookie of the Year.
'People ask me if I wish things had gone better, sooner, and I say, `No,' ' Cordova says. 'I'm glad they went that way, because I was [awful] for a long time and now I know what it's like to have nothing.'
Before his second season with the Twins, Cordova signed a four-year deal worth $6.3 million - a tremendous amount, but less than he probably would have made had he taken advantage of arbitration and baseball's continuing salary inflation.
Why sign that deal? Because Cordova has spent many more hours working at Vegas' casinos than gambling at them. When he was making less than $6,000 playing minor league ball, he worked as a parking valet at Palace Station, an off-the-strip joint frequented by locals.
'I know what it's like to have to work for your money,' Cordova said. 'I don't blow my money. I have the same car as when I was in Triple-A. If I can't pay cash for it, I won't buy it.
'People call me a millionaire, but I made $500,000 last year, and I'm not going to go out and get into debt. I realize that if I get hit by a car walking out of this place I'll never have another contract.'
Last season, Cordova hit .309 with a team-record 46 doubles and 111 RBI, but he was disappointed with his home run total (16, after 24 as a rookie) and steals (11, following 20.)
So he embarked on a workout program that, every week, includes 10 weightlifting sessions, one boxing-aerobics class, four boxing training sessions and two stints of batting practice.
Cordova doesn't take days off. He quit gambling after recently losing $100 playing blackjack, broke up with his girlfriend, and has abstained from alcohol since December.
'I don't really miss drinking,' he said. 'I never was a heavy drinker, but I've felt really good since I stopped.
'We'll see how this is going in June. If I'm hitting .220 and having trouble sleeping nights, maybe I'll have to have a beer.'
10 a.m.
Cordova sits in a booth at the Rocky Cola Cafe, a '50s-style malt shop that he frequents because of its low-fat menu. He orders a turkey scramble (turkey with egg whites), strawberry yogurt topped with granola ('Make sure they don't put any of those fake strawberries on top'), dry wheat toast and water.
Other than this breakfast, protein shakes and sports bars, Cordova eats little more than plain chicken breasts, baked sweet potatos and salad. All of which begs a question: Is all of this necessary to play the game that Babe Ruth dominated while gorging himself on hotdogs and beer?
'I think it's very necessary, because a lot of the things I do in boxing are for agility and quickness,' he said. 'Weightlifting can give you raw power, but boxing gives you endurance, makes your feet quicker, makes you more agile.
'My shoulders are so much looser from throwing punches all the time, that I know my flexibility is much better. I know this will help my throwing.
'Spring training is going to be a walk in the park this year, and I'm going to find a gym in Minneapolis and train all year. I have a device that will provide resistance so I can shadowbox in hotel rooms on the road, too.'
Where might these efforts lead? 'I want to be an All-Star, as many times as possible,' Cordova says.
1 p.m.
Cordova pulls into the parking lot of a gym that in a former life must have been a garage or a store room. Time for the main event.
Once enamored of martial arts workouts, Cordova this winter bumped into a friend from high school named Dana White, a boxing and fitness trainer who runs Dana White Enterprises. White quickly gained a star pupil.
The regimen is a series of three-minute 'rounds.' Cordova jumps rope, then begins throwing punches while stepping to and from a wall-length mirror. Cordova insists a reporter do the same, and soon one of them can't lift his left arm.
Two hours later, Cordova has smashed the heavy bag, pounded padded mitts wielded by White, executed pliometric, table-top and headstand pushups, mixed in a few aerobic drills, and wrapped it all up by hanging from a bar and yanking his knees to his chin.
The reporter has been required to follow suit. After the reporter returns from revisiting breakfast, White tells him that he did well, which can only mean that there are a row of tombstones behind the gym, memorializing those who did less 'well.'
'My first week, I did three of these workouts, then sparred with Dana,' Cordova said. 'Dana doesn't look like much, but he used just his left hand and I could use whatever I wanted, and by the second round I thought I was going to die.
'The next day I felt like I had been in a car wreck. It's one thing to get into the ring and throw jabs and dance around. It's another thing when somebody's trying to hit you. It wipes you out.'
3:30 p.m.
Cordova heads to Palace Station. He figures that if his baseball career had fizzled, he would be in sports medicine, or running a casino for a friend who has made it big in the industry.
At Palace Station, Cordova chats with friends who still work as valets, then heads home. There, he works the phones, drinks a protein shake and rests, while one of his friends plays video games.
6:30 p.m.
It's back to 24-Hour Fitness for another lifting session, then across the parking lot to the Lone Star Steakhouse.
Over salad, plain chicken breast and baked sweet potato ('They're better for you than regular potatos,' he says), Cordova explains why he has remained in Las Vegas.
'I grew up here,' he said. 'My parents live across town, the weather's great, and there are no state taxes. And the nice thing is that nobody cares if you play baseball. I never get recognized here - neither does [Atlanta ace] Greg Maddux. He might be the greatest pitcher ever, and nobody cares about him.
'In this town, people go crazy over washed-up rock stars and old entertainers, but if Joe Montana walked through a casino, nobody would notice.'
Cordova has a chance to be a star in Minnesota. He's the best of a good crop of young players who could make the Twins contenders for years. He's well-spoken, confident and marketable, as his commercials with Kevin Garnett, Kirby Puckett and Molitor affirm, and this season could realize his on-field goal of becoming a key player on a winning team.
'I was on the Twins' Caravan, and I got asked that a lot - `How do you feel about being on the media guide cover last year and the McDonald's commercial and being one of the players they depend on?' ' Cordova said. 'That's fine by me. I want to be the guy who's up with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, with his team down by three runs.
'I like the pressure. That's how Kirby proved he was a great player, handling the tough situations.'
Cordova's friend mentions that they, as high school seniors, once saved children from a burning building by catching them as they jumped from a second-story window. Cordova further embellishes his youth.
'It's easy to get into a lot of trouble in this town,' he said. 'I never got arrested, but I would gamble. I'd save my lunch money and go play $1 hands of blackjack and try to win $15 so we could go buy a 12-pack.
'You could buy a Tom Collins for a quarter at the bar, so it was easy to get into trouble.'
Was that the same person who today won't even butter his sweet potato? 'What can I say?' Cordova says. 'I live a really boring life.'
