Mauer’s boyhood friends and mentors say he’s ‘the same old Joe’

In honor of Joe Mauer’s roots and in memory of another St. Paul legend, the late, unforgettable Don “The Eye” Riley from the Pioneer Press sports pages, here is a “Zim, zam, zoomy, zow” collection of items on the Saintly City’s latest Hall of Fame drama:

• Jim O’Neill, Mauer’s baseball coach at Cretin-Derham Hall, decided to check officially on the proximity of the locales where Mauer, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor and Jack Morris grew up in St. Paul. So, he checked off the distances from their family homes to Dunning Field (now named Toni Stone Field), which was a primary location for youth, American Legion and senior amateur ball when the Hall of Famers were developing their baseball skills.

Winny to Dunning — 0.4 miles. Mollie to Dunning — 0.8 miles. Mauer to Dunning — 0.9 miles. Morris to Dunning — 1.6 miles.

Also: Long-time big-league umpire Tim Tschida, 2.1 miles.

“Our Hall of Famers were closer together than I thought," O’Neill said.

• Aside: O’Neill played two years of American Legion with Morris for Christie de Parcq in the Highland Park area of St. Paul.

Me: “How was Jack’s personality as a teenage ballplayer?"

O’Neill: “How do you think it was? Just like when he was in the big leagues. Fiery."

How so? “When he would get wild, which was most of the time, he would lose his temper, and I’d have to come in from shortstop to relieve him. And he would just glare at me.

“Jack’s dad, who was a great guy, was sitting behind home plate and Jack’s pitches kept going to the backstop. Dad said something to our catcher, and he said, ‘Pardon me, Mr. Morris, but go (ahem) … tell him to throw it over."

At least, the polite Christie de Parcq receiver used “Mr. Morris."

• Tony Leseman is among Mauer’s closest friends. He was also a favored receiver when Mauer was the quarterback (and No. 1 national recruit with a commitment to Florida State) at Cretin-Derham Hall, and a baseball teammate.

Tony’s got young kids, Joe’s got young kids, and now those kids are joined at the hip — as were Tony and Joe going back to the sixth grade. Tony’s Mauer bond is so close that he’s running human resources for Mauer car dealerships, which Joe’s brother Billy started, and brother Jake gave up baseball managing in the Twins system to now run Mauer Main in Anoka.

“All the success, all the honors … Joe’s personality hasn’t changed," Leseman said. “He’s still just Joe."

Leseman was on the phone around noon Tuesday, several hours before the Hall of Fame voting results would be announced. “I’m not nervous; I’m excited," he said. “We think he’s going to make it."

And if he doesn’t? “Won’t change Joe," Leseman said. “He’ll handle it better than the rest of us."

He made it. We could hear the clatter of kids in adjoining rooms as Mauer did his Zoom call with 60 reporters near 7 p.m.

One disappointment: Mauer had to head to New York State for a couple of days, and warmer temperatures were moving in, so the weekly hockey games on the rink Joe built in his yard could be in jeopardy.

“We might have struggled around a pond on skates a few times as kids, but we weren’t hockey players," Leseman said. “But now eight of us — Cretin guys — get together around 10 o’clock at night, after we help put the kids to bed at home and play 4-on-4 for maybe 90 minutes."

How’s Joe? “He’s dang good at hockey, too," Leseman said.

• That would come as no surprise to Sean Sweeney, now a veteran NBA assistant coach — currently a right-hand man for Jason Kidd with the Dallas Mavericks. Sweeney, Mauer and Steve Sir were the three-guard combination for an excellent Cretin-Derham Hall basketball team back in the day.

“I’m happy for Joe, and I have to admit a little surprised he was able to get in the first time on the ballot," Sweeney said. “I’m only saying that because I asked a person I know connected to the Hall of the Fame if Joe was going to be a Hall of Famer and he said, ‘Yes, but he’s right on the border. It might take two or three years."

My previous conversations with Sweeney have not included a great deal of smoke blowing. He’s a very candid fellow, and generally with adjectives.

And he said this of Mauer, with whom he played basketball and baseball at Cretin-Derham Hall:

“As a senior, he was the best high school baseball player in America, he was the best high school football player in America, and he was the best high school basketball player in Minnesota."

Really on the basketball? He was that good?

“Yes," he said. “He was tremendous."

Sweeney added this: “Obviously, I’ve been around a large number of high-level athletes in the NBA, and most are putting it out there, that they are great.

“With Joe, you would never know how good he was as a player … unless you were watching him play."

• OK, this was advertised as a Mauer/Hall of Fame opus, but Riley’s zim, zam, zoomy, zow was known to drift, and I ran across this lede on another great St. Paul-ish sports character the late, great Doug Woog, South St. Paul, then Gophers’ hockey coach — from late March in 1996:

“On the morning after the family dog was put to sleep, and his hockey team lost a one-goal game in the quarterfinals of the national tournament, and the flight home was seriously delayed by bad weather, and trainer Bob Broxterman’s car would not start and he needed a lift home, Doug Woog rose at 6:30 a.m. Monday — after a couple of hours of sleep — and made the short drive to his father’s home to clear the driveway and sidewalks with a snowblower.”

That was a darn good first graph. Glad I wrote it, peons (another Riley-ism).