"The sun had just appeared on the desert horizon last week when Justin Morneau climbed into his white Chevy Suburban for a 30-minute drive from his home in Paradise Valley.

Using side streets to avoid Phoenix's plodding freeway traffic, the Twins first baseman zipped past the airport and pulled into an obscure industrial park filled with faceless gray buildings.

Here, a concrete contractor and an electrical engineering firm share the same driveway with another repair establishment. Morneau parked at Fischer Sports, a physical therapy and conditioning center to which ballplayers such as Joe Nathan, Carl Pavano and Kerry Wood have turned to rebuild their careers.

Morneau knew this was where he must turn after a miserable 2011 season that can be summed up like this: four surgeries and a concussion. It sounds like another bad Steve Guttenberg sequel, but that was Morneau's life in a year that brought as many surgeries as home runs.

Now, after three consecutive seasons derailed by injuries -- including the past two because of concussions -- Morneau faces widespread doubt that he will ever regain his MVP form. But after sweating through a five-hour workout Tuesday, he described how far he has come from the dark days of last winter, when he himself wondered if he was finished."