Twins teammates remember Joe Mauer’s qualities, quirks as he enters Baseball Hall of Fame

On Sunday, Joe Mauer will become the seventh player to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame as a member of the Minnesota Twins. A local legend even before the Twins made him the No. 1 pick of the 2001 MLB Draft, Mauer’s been a fixture in the lives of Minnesotans for more than two decades.

Mauer is set to join Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett, Bert Blyleven, Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva as Twins with plaques in Cooperstown.

In the leadup to induction day, The Athletic caught up with several of Mauer’s teammates from the final years of a career that spanned 15 seasons to see what they remember. From leadership to rap to the passion with which he played, here’s what they think of Mauer.

On leadership

Byron Buxton: (I learned) you can still be a leader and not be vocal about it. Everybody’s different. You ain’t got to be a loud, obnoxious person to be a leader. That was more of who I was coming up in the league and I kind of gravitated towards that. It showed me and also gave you a sense of relaxation that it’s OK to not be that outspoken leader.

Caleb Thielbar: People always think every clubhouse needs this vocal leader. We’re all professionals here. We go and get our work done. I don’t think this clubhouse has a vocal rah-rah guy every day. That’s not how it works a lot of times.

Everyone looked up to him. Everyone always knew what he was doing. Whether that’s a vocal thing or not, it doesn’t have to be. There’s other ways guys go about that stuff. He always took care of business and went out there and performed. What more do you want from your Hall of Fame guy?

Trevor May: We didn’t try to follow him around, but we tried to parrot the things he did like ducklings following their duck mom around. He would have a tuna melt every day, so (Taylor) Rogers started having a tuna melt, then I started having a tuna melt, (Tyler) Duffey started having a tuna melt. … For a couple years there that’s all we ate. That can seem boring, but it’s also the most consistent person. We were just looking for consistency. How did we be consistent? There’s no one that was more consistent than Joe Mauer.

Denard Span: He treated everybody the same way. He was one of the guys you would follow because you saw his actions and the way he went about his business. It didn’t matter if you were the 25th man on the roster or the other superstar on the team, or a mainstay guy, he treated everybody the same. He would take time to try to connect with you. Always just positive and always with a kind word of encouragement to try and uplift everybody.

Joe Mauer and Denard Span played together in Minnesota from 2008-12. (Brace Hemmelgarn / USA Today)

Taylor Rogers: He was the ultimate lead-by-example guy. He was the guy you looked at like, how do you act? How do you treat people? How do you prepare? He kind of showed the whole organization, ”This is how you do stuff.” I still do stuff like that. I don’t think he quite understands how many people he impacted that way just because it’s now what he was trying to do. But he had that effect.

Ryan Pressly: I didn’t really know what professionalism was until I saw Joe. The way he carried himself on and off the field, you can kind of tell he was a true professional.

Who Mauer was

Trevor Hildenberger: The attention to detail he gave in his approach and the preparation of his body when I played with him was really, really impressive. The dedication it takes to get to the field early to stretch his back, to stretch his legs. He had these special Nike glasses that would flash one eye closed at a time. He’d get in the cage and prep his brain and his eyes and then study the pitcher that night. He was very, very prepared and stuck to his routine. That’s really hard to do, especially as you get old and try to cut down on effort and time. He really got longer and that was inspirational.

Joe Mauer works out prior to a game in 2016. (Kim Klement / USA Today)

Thielbar: I learned the guy that he was, was the guy that was actually portrayed. Everyone wanted to portray him as the nice Minnesota guy who went up and did his thing. That’s what it was. From the first time I met him and he introduced himself. I’m like, “Yeah, I know who you are, man.” (Laughs). That’s just who he was. He wasn’t going to assume you knew who he was just because of who he was. He made an effort to go around and say hi to everyone and see how their day was going. I don’t know, maybe that’s something he picked up from a guy like Torii (Hunter) and that’s been passed on because that’s how (Buxton) and Carlos (Correa) are, too.

May: He’s exactly what I expected, almost to a T. He comes off as a professional and low-key and laid back. He seemed like he knew what he was doing at every moment of every day every time I saw him. I can’t think of a single split-second where Joe Mauer looked like he was maybe out of his element or even angry. Yeah, he argued calls sometimes. Never saw him where he was out of control and everyone goes that direction at some point and I never saw it one time out of Joe.

Span: It came off (easy). I would like to think it had a lot to do with his upbringing, the way that his parents raised him. He was definitely born to be a leader. He was a quarterback in high school. I don’t think I ever met anybody that had a negative thing to say about him. It’s always been all positive. That’s just a testament to who he was character-wise and how he treated everybody. He always seemed to have the right thing to say, even in tough situations.

Funniest recollection

Span: He was just so humble. I’ve heard him get cocky or boast like maybe one time in my entire six years that I was with the Twins. It was in spring training. I can’t remember the conversation, but somebody was talking trash. Most of the time he would find something witty to say to kind of wiggle out of it.

We all started laughing because we were in shock that he even fired back like that, it was so uncharacteristic for him to fire back. Normally he would take the high road and smirk it off or laugh it off and give you a look like, “I could say something, but I’m not going to.” That one day he finally did say it and we all loved it because it was like, “Yes, that’s what we want to hear from you, Joe.”

Joe Mauer was Mr. Consistency, but every so often he would surprise. (Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)

Hildenberger: The thing that surprised me the most is he’s a huge rap music fan. Eminem came out with an album in 2018 and he knew I listened to rap. He stopped me in the clubhouse one day and was like, “Hildy, you listen to that new Eminem album yet?” I said, “No, not yet Mr. Mauer, but I’ll listen to it tonight and I’ll get back to you.”

Mitch Garver: My favorite thing about Joe was his simplicity and humbleness. He is just a good human who happens to be going into the Hall of Fame. We used to joke on the plane about Joe’s quirks. He loved to eat cheese and crackers on the plane, and despite being the man who has everything, he would watch movies on his tiny iPhone screen instead of buying an iPad or something bigger. I always thought that was funny.

May: Classic Joe Mauer. He comes up and says, “Hey Trev, how you doing?” “Good Joe, how are you?” Everyone said, “Good Joe, how are you?” He would say “Just another day in The Show” to everyone. “Another day in The Show” was a quintessential Mauerism.