Backstory: Not your average Joe

Veteran baseball players usually scan younger players with a flinty professionalism that rarely leaves room for flattery. When they see Joe Mauer, that attitude more or less evaporates. First, it's the way he swings the bat. Some great hitters attack the ball ferociously in a kind of personal vendetta – an Albert Pujols of the Cardinals or David Ortiz of the Red Sox. Mauer's swing by comparison is almost lyrical. Its movement is controlled but fluid, covering the plate, never awkward. Beyond that is his temperament, which to most of his teammates seems beyond his years in its judgment. He's a catcher, yet fast and nimble on the bases and mechanically sound behind the plate.

"You look at Joe," says the Twins' scrambling third baseman, Nick Punto, "and you see a guy who's a leader even at his age. I don't mean yelling and take-charge, but by the way he plays the game and reacts to pressure. He's all about team. A walk for him is as good as a hit. He's the guy you want to see up there, standing at the plate calm and patient, and you feel good seeing him there."

Mauer was asked if some of the emerging larger-than-life stories about him, the expanding mythology, actually happened. When he was not far beyond diapers, one of them goes, his grandpa Jake Mauer kept nudging him to swing his plastic bat lefthanded.

"From what I remember," Mauer says, "he actually did. The whole family knew baseball, and our family is close. My grandpa thought if I was going to be a hitter I'd have a better chance hitting left-handed."

So drop the rattle, kid. What Grampa says, goes.

And what about the offer from Bobby Bowden, the iconic football coach at Florida State University, to keep a scholarship warm for Joe up to 12 years if he needed that long to get the baseball bug out of his head?

Mauer smiled tolerantly. Bowden might have been the story's architect, and in Mauer's code of conduct, embarrassing his elders is on the list of things to shun. In high school at St. Paul's Cretin-Derham Hall, Mauer not only dominated the baseball field, but as a quarterback tore up practically all existing records for touchdown passes. "I thought seriously about taking the football scholarship at Florida State," he says. "I loved football as much as baseball. I don't know about 12 years...."

A teammate on the Twins, outfielder Josh Rabe, does remember the letter. "I played with Joe in the minors and we roomed together," he says. "He showed me this letter from Coach Bowden, and there's no doubt that he wanted Joe to quarterback Florida State. He told Joe to take his time deciding, coach could wait."

The Minnesota Twins couldn't. They chose Joe No. 1 in the first round of the draft in 2001. Mauer became a big leaguer three years later. He has led the league in hitting through much of the 2006 season, and in July made the All-Star team. No catcher has won the league batting title. Catchers take a pounding. Mauer tired in late August and slumped. But the stretch drive is here, and he will be playing and swinging.

So here is a gifted, churchgoing kid down the block in St. Paul, a town that has already produced Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, and Jack Morris, telling millions of other kids: You can be a star, and still be a family guy and keep your head on straight. You can also date a former Miss USA which, incidentally, he has also found time to do.

Wouldn't you know.

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