Joe Mauer was a shortstop throughout much of his childhood, until his father and grandfather pointed out something important to him. “They told me, ‘The quickest way to the big leagues is playing catcher,’ ” Mauer recalled on Target Field Plaza on Sunday morning. “So what did I do? I went and got some catcher’s gear.”
Turns out, it was the quickest way to become immortalized in bronze, too. A crowd of several hundred people gathered before Sunday’s game with the Tigers to watch Mauer’s children pull the shroud off the latest addition to the team’s entrance plaza: an 8-foot-tall statue of the Hall of Fame catcher.
The pose, which Mauer said he helped select, is of the St. Paul native coming out of his crouch behind the plate, where he was located 921 times during his 15-year Twins career.
“One of my favorite things to do on the baseball field is to throw runners out,” Mauer said. “And I’m looking at this right now — looks like I’m going to throw someone out.”
Mauer, a three-time batting champion who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame last summer, thanked sculptor Bill Mack for designing and casting the statue. Mack also created the other statues on the plaza, of Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Tom Kelly and former owners Carl and Eloise Pohlad.
Justin Morneau was among the former teammates who gathered for the 15-minute ceremony and told the crowd, “This is amazing to see my old roommate up here in bronze, in front of Target Field forever.”
Morneau imagined a parent and his child walking past the statue someday, “and the kid says, ‘Dad, who’s that?’ ‘Well, that’s Joe Mauer. He’s from St. Paul. He’s one of us. He was humble, he was competitive, he was kind, and he was the best catcher ever to put on a Twins uniform.’ ”
