Cooperstown bound: Joe Mauer headed to baseball Hall of Fame
Updated 9:22 p.m.
Joe Mauer spent Tuesday hanging out with his 5-year-old son, who was off from school, trying not to think too much about getting into the National Baseball Hall of fame.
“It was nice to have him be a nice distraction, you know, throughout the day, so we played a lot of wiffle ball in the basement,” Mauer said. “He had me running around today.”
As the day went on, his family began to show up. He says he’d heard rumors that he might make it on this ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he wasn’t going to believe it until his phone rang.
“So to receive that call was amazing. And the emotion started to really flood after receiving that call,” he said.
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The 40-year-old played 15 seasons with his home state Minnesota Twins. In those years, Mauer was a six-time all-star, an American League MVP and a three-time batting title winner — the only catcher to ever do that. Players Adrián Beltré and Todd Helton joined Mauer in winning election to the hall on Tuesday.
LaVelle E. Neal III, a columnist with the Star Tribune who was the Twins beat writer throughout Mauer’s career, voted for the St. Paul native to get in the hall.
“Three batting titles — is something that no catcher in history major league baseball has done. He has won five silver sluggers. Been named to six All-Star teams, three gold gloves, three batting titles,” Neal said. “During his prime he was the gold standard behind the plate. If you include throwing out runners controlling the runner game, handling pitchers, pitch framing, plate blocking — he did everything well. He was a moving clinic In all aspects of the game. His 10 years behind the plate were superlative.”
Neal said it's not just a great day for Mauer, but for his hometown.
“This is a great day for St. Paul. Now [Dave] Winfield, [Paul] Molitor, Jack Morris and Mauer could be the Fab Four from St. Paul in the Hall of Fame. And of those four, Mauer's the only one who played there his entire career with the Minnesota Twins,” he said. “And it's great for anyone in St. Paul who ever played at the Jimmy Lee Rec Center, at the Griggs playground — that’s what Mauer was at as a kid — shows you well how the path to greatness could start in the most obscure places.”
Jim O'Neill was Mauer’s baseball coach at Cretin-Derham Hall. He remembers people crowding around the fences at Cretin's field at Randolph and Hamline avenues to see Mauer hit home runs over the wrought iron fence.
“Our ballpark is one that is in the middle of the city, you can walk to it. And that happened a lot. Obviously, we had a lot of scouts, probably 15 to 20 scouts there pretty much every game,” he said. “It was good times for St. Paul baseball, no doubt.”
Mauer wasn’t only in the spotlight for baseball at the time. He was the 2001 Gatorade Player of the Year in football and was committed to playing football at Florida State University. It was a lot of pressure for a young kid, but O'Neill said it didn’t seem to bother Mauer.
“The fact that he was able to be the number one pick of the Twins and to produce for the twins as he did throughout his career. The only way you could do that, in his hometown, is to have the great mental side,” O’Neill said. “I think he kept a lot in, but he was very strong and never felt that he had to prove anything to anybody other than himself. And it’s really remarkable when you think about that.”
Former Twins General Manager Terry Ryan made Mauer the number one pick in the 2001 draft.
Ryan remembers there was debate about whether to take future Cubs pick Mark Prior, who had several more years of experience and would fill a much-needed pitching position or take the hometown favorite Mauer straight from high school.
Ryan said he saw Hall of Fame talent in Mauer as a rare catcher who could play both defensively and was a great left-handed hitter. Some fans were a little apprehensive about taking the hometown favorite over Prior, a more proven talent at the time.
“He went out and he hit right from the get-go,” Ryan said about Mauer’s first games in the minors. But then Mauer got injured, just a couple of games into his Major League career.
“Once he got healthy, there was no doubt that his swing worked. And he had a good idea what he wanted to do with pitchers and never really was off balance in his swings or approach — just had a knack,” Ryan said.
In Mauer’s MVP season with the Twins, he had a .365 batting average, hit 28 home runs and knocked in 96 RBI. But injuries began to creep in, and soon the Twins decided to move him from catcher to first base. He retired in 2018.
Steve Penz is a co-director for softball at Highland Ball, a youth baseball organization in St. Paul.
Penz says Mauer getting into the Hall of Fame is huge for kids playing baseball anywhere in the Twin Cities.
“It’s just so fantastic to have somebody like that connected to our neighborhood and to our city,” he said.
It goes beyond just being a local tie. Mauer has also coached his daughters’ softball team for Highland Ball. He said many of the kids don’t have any idea who he is.
“We’re happy to have him as part of the program and as a coach and a dad,” Penz said. “It’s funny to think that the players who he coached last year probably really don’t understand what it is that just to have Joe Mauer is our coach he’s just a nice dad who’s helping out.”
There are 273 players among 346 people in the Hall. Beltré, Mauer and Helton will be inducted at Cooperstown on July 21 along with Jim Leyland, elected last month by the contemporary era committee for managers, executives and umpires.