Thursday’s Minnesota Twins home opener will sound a little different this year. Longtime broadcaster Dick Bremer stepped down at the end of last season after 40 years as the TV voice of the Twins. Now in a special assistant role in the organization’s front office, Bremer threw out the first pitch Thursday. Before that, he got behind an MPR News microphone to talk baseball with Minnesota Now host Cathy Wurzer. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.   How strange has it been to not be on the air for spring training and for the home opener?Yeah, it’s been strange in all the predictable places, I felt a little bit out of sorts, I guess, or unsure what to do with my time in January when I wasn’t on the Twins caravan, which is a uniquely Minnesota Twins thing for the first time in four decades. And then like everybody else in the Upper Midwest, I dealt with a snowstorm at the end of March instead of being in Fort Myers. And now here we are an opening day and that’s all part of it right? When you retire you it’s an adjustment for everybody, regardless of his or her walk of life.What’s your current role with twins?I’m doing some special projects. I’ve actually been doing some writing for the Twins magazine, recording some things for the Twins radio broadcasts, making public appearances emceeing events and all that. It’s an interesting role that I have with the Twins, and one that I’m very grateful for because of whenever the time was going to come, I still wanted to be connected to the team as someone who was really connected and intimately connected with the team for 40 years.Describe the dance for folks done between the play by play person and the color analyst. What’s that like?Well, for the longest time, it was just one guy for 25 years. It was Bert Blyleven, it was me and Harmon Killebrew for a few years and Jim Kaat. In recent years they have rotated Justin Morneau, Torii Hunter, LaTroy Hawkins, Glen Perkins, Roy Smalley, so on and so forth. It’s a bit of an adjustment, I suppose. But it really hasn’t been that much of an adjustment because I’ve always taken the attitude that whether it was Bert Blyleven, or Paul Molitor, Jim Kaat, or, you know, whoever, that they really were the stars of the show, and I was just kind of a traffic cop and tried to draw out of them their baseball wisdom, and their baseball personality, if you will. It is no reflection at all on my abilities or lack thereof as a broadcaster, but I am the answer to a trivia question, who is the only major league announcer who’s been privileged to work with five Hall of Fame players and that’s meIt’s been one of the great blessings of my 40 years. I won’t ask your listeners to name them all. I’ll try to do them all. Paul Molitor did games for a year Jack Morris, Jim Kaat, Herman Killebrew and of course Bert Blyleven, and they’re all in Cooperstown.Who was the person to help you really move forward in broadcasting?Well, I don’t know that any conversations were held or anything like that, but I, as you know, grew up in this area. So I was privileged to listen to Herb Carneal, Al Shaver, Ray Christensen, people like that. And when we lived in Missouri, listening to Jack Buck and Harry Caray do Cardinal games and the one thing they all had in common was they were very wearable if you will. There wasn’t anything controversial about them. They did their job, night after night, year after year and as a result, they had long careers in one city, one region. And at least for me, that was always the goal to be able to say that you know what, I did a job. Hopefully I did it well, but I was able to have a long career with one team. And I guess 40 years later, you could say I guess that I succeeded.Tell us about the players you’re gonna be watching for this season.Well, the team is very good. And some of their better players are very young