"Torii Hunter hasn't been a Minnesota Twin since 2007. He's in his third year with his second big-league team. He's moved to the West Coast and to right field. But he still can't let go.

His teammates notice this, and they don't let it slide. They'll catch Hunter in the Angels' clubhouse, watching a Twins game on television.

"They actually tell me, 'Get over it!' " Hunter said Friday. "They're screaming at me and everything."

Walking into Target Field — his first glimpse of a ballpark he helped stump for, one his voice, his presence and his play helped build — Hunter realized that his teammates are right. His time in Minnesota, without a doubt, is over, left behind on the other side of downtown Minneapolis.

"This is almost better — this is better than Yankee Stadium," Hunter said of Target Field. "Wow, this is definitely a dream. They dropped me off in the players' parking lot and I was walking up, I was like in shock — could not believe how beautiful this stadium was on the outside. And then I walked inside, just walked through the home side, the clubhouse, I was in tears. I was like, 'Man this is like night and day compared to when we were playing.'

"That was a different era, man, that's all, a different era. This is a new time."

It certainly is for Hunter, who earlier this season moved to right field in an effort to improve the Angels' defense via the addition of speedy center field prospect Peter Bourjos and to save his 35-year-old legs for offense, and for the Twins.

Coming to Target Field on Friday afternoon rather than the Metrodome made Hunter's time in Minnesota feel like a lifetime ago, he said. Seeing the ins and outs of the Twins' new ballpark made him realize just how different this organization, with its $97 million Opening Day payroll, really is from the ballclub that drafted him in 1993.

"When I go in the Metrodome, when I came back and I was an Angel, it was sad because this was where I played, this was my home. I come here and I see the finished product, but at the same time I'm like, 'This ain't my home,' " Hunter said. "They got a video room now. They got nice batting cages, not made out of fishnet, a real weight room and not the pieces that we bought to bring in."

Wait. When Hunter played for the Twins, he actually purchased weights himself and brought them into the makeshift workout room there?

"Yeah, we bought pieces and brought them in. I wrote my name on some of the stuff. It was cutthroat," Hunter said. "Just to see what the Twins have done, this is definitely a different era."

A different era with different money. Hunter hit free agency, perhaps, just a few years too soon. If the Twins had the resources of Target Field to count on, they might never have let their beloved outfielder slip away to another team. Hunter listed a number of impressive contracts given out by the Twins in recent years — to Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and even Denard Span.

"Span got (a long-term deal) after a year. We had to play four years for a deal back then," Hunter said with his trademark grin. "I'm going to tell Denard, say: 'You blessed. You don't know how blessed you are. You better be thankful. Y'all better stop complaining.' " "