FORT MYERS, Fla. — The first time Loek Van Mil played something like baseball was in primary school in his hometown of Oss, Netherlands. Directly translated, the game there is called ‘hit ball.’ There were cones for bases, a tennis ball in place of a baseball, and no pitcher, an interesting twist considering the 25-year-old is now a pitching prospect in the Twins’ system.

Van Mil was interested, nonetheless. He never adored soccer the way his countrymen did, and so he picked up club baseball. He started as a catcher, but one large obstacle forced him out from behind the plate — his height.

By the time he turned 12, Loek Van Mil (pronounced Luke Van Mill) already was 6 feet 1. His parents (his mother is 6-1, his father 6-7) took him to the doctor, where a bone scan led to the prediction that he’d end up about 6-6. Van Mil went back to the doctor when, at 14, he hit that mark.

‘I kind of banged the whole catcher thing then,’ he said.

He moved to first base, then to the pitcher’s mound, and all the while, he just kept growing. After another scan, doctors adjusted their estimate — he’d be no taller than 6-10. But at 16, Van Mil hit that threshold, too.

“I thought I was going to be 8-foot,” Van Mil said. “I’m kind of freakishly tall.”

This time, doctors said no way would Van Mil ever be taller than 7-1. Finally, they were right. At 17, he hit his peak, 215 centimeters, one centimeter shy of 7-1.

When the Twins signed him in 2005, he became the tallest player in baseball. Now in his first big-league camp, he’s working to add more than just that tallest-man distinction to his rÃ©sumÃ©.

Last season, he pitched well enough for Class A Fort Myers to earn a promotion to Class AA New Britain. Another good sign came this offseason when the Twins placed him on the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft.

For Van Mil, who recalls that he hit the first batter he ever faced, it’s all a reminder of how far he’s come and that the Twins have always held hope for what he can be. As Twins minor league director Jim Rantz summed up, “With that kind of body, if he gets going, he’s almost shaking hands with the hitter when he releases the ball.”

So when the 7-1 Van Mil was 17, Twins international scouting director Howard Norsetter started paying attention. He and then-Twins scout Larry Corrigan began checking in with the right-hander on the phone every few weeks and eventually invited him to attend a baseball clinic in Amsterdam, a two-hour drive from Oss.

Fluent in German, English and Dutch, and able to hold a conversation in French and Spanish, Van Mil loves to learn. Before signing with the Twins, he was accepted to law school in Holland; he says that if baseball doesn’t work out, he’d like to be a teacher. And when he showed up at that clinic, he went straight to the front row and took a seat, holding a notepad and pen.

“I didn’t know a whole lot about baseball,” Van Mil said. “I remember throwing like a second baseman as a pitcher, just short-arming it. … I was just eager to learn, and I knew there was a lot to be learned. I wrote a lot of the stuff down that Larry Corrigan wrote on the big board. I still remember it.”

Van Mil appreciated the Twins’ attention but didn’t think much of it. He kept up with his schoolwork, figuring his baseball career would, soon enough, be through. Then in 2005, when he was 20, a group of Twins scouts took him out to dinner — Chinese food, he recalls. The scouts asked him if he’d like to sign a contract. One week earlier, the Seattle Mariners had approached Van Mil and offered slightly more money, but the right-hander already had developed a loyalty to the Twins’ way.

“They would call me and not just ask me about my baseball,” he said. “They would ask me how my mom was doing, how my dad was doing. So I told the Twins straight up that I wanted to sign with them, which probably wasn’t the best, but I was just honest. I thought my best chance of making it to the big leagues was with the Twins.”

When he debuted with the Gulf Coast League Twins in 2006, his fastball was clocked at 86 to 87 mph. It’s now up to about 92 to 93 mph, and the Twins are happy with how his hard slider and changeup have progressed.

But lately, Van Mil’s biggest hurdle has been health. Late in the 2008 season, he partially tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. He rehabbed and came back in late May 2009, pitching in 25 games out of the bullpen for Fort Myers and compiling a 2.86 earned-run average. He finished 2009 with New Britain, where he had a 2.45 ERA in eight games.

“He’s gotten better and better,” manager Ron Gardenhire said of Van Mil, who has been slowed this spring by right shoulder tendinitis. “Last year, he was winging the ball pretty good, set himself up to be a prospect, and a pretty good prospect, because his velocity got up in the 90s — and you’re talking a different type of person 7-foot, 7-1.

“He’s still got stuff to work on, but he’s come a long ways.”