All I Need to Know about Saint Paul Politics I Learned from Joe Mauer

[Young Zubaz Joe in Highland.]

Joe Mauer is Saint Paul's greatest hometown baseball player, and given the history of Saint Paul baseball, that's saying a lot. Sure Dave Winfield was great, as was Paul Molitor.  Jack Morris had a some good games. But those guys had most of their best years with other teams, and in Winfield's case, playing for the vile New York Yankees.

Mauer though? He literally did everything a local kid can possibly do to make his hometown team a success. He was a #1 draft pick and lived up to the hype with the Twins. He played the game's hardest position, hitting .300 through a host of injuries with an impossibly calm demeanor. Mauer epitomized "aw shucks" humility, and his sterling character was so boring and impeccable that it became a running joke. Surely nobody personified quiet Saint Paul excellence better than Joe.

(In fact, the most I ever heard of Joe getting angry during a game was when I saw him loudly say, "I don't know about that one, Ron" to an umpire after a called strike three out of the zone. Heck, he and his wife even had twin daughters just to please the team's marketing agency.)

In my experience chatting with baseball folks from elsewhere, say Los Angeles or Boston, they take a look at Joe Mauer's career, all played right in his hometown, they almost always think, "wow he must be the most popular guy in Saint Paul." That person is always astounded to find out that, in Saint Paul in particular, there remained to the end a loud, determined group of people who hated Joe Mauer and used every opportunity they had to let everyone know about it.

[You could always count on Skarda's Bar for some quality Mauer bashing.]

For the bulk of his career, in Mauer's hometown, there remained a virulent strain of Mauer-bashing that pervaded every dive and many of the Target Field bleacher sections.  You could not watch a Twins game at a Saint Paul bar -- and believe me, I've done so at dozens --  without some Neanderthal fan cursing Mauer and muttering every time he did not hit a home run.

(Of course, he was a line-drive and doubles hitter and an on-base machine, but there you have it.)

But booing Mauer was part of a much larger Saint Paul trend. Compare and contrast the following anti-Mauer and anti-Saint Paul phenomena:

• The almost instant disavowal of any kind of success (e.g. municipal services, a batting title)
• The refusal to let statistical or policy rationality take purchase (e.g. climate change or on-base percentage)
• The constant complaining about a contract that is a reasonable market value (e.g. paying for trash service or MLB free agency) 
• The rejection of anyone and any idea that comes from "outside" (e.g. the so-called experts)
• The notion that, if one person or policy does not solve every problem, it is a failure (thus blaming Mauer or the Mayor for larger, systemic problems like not winning a World Series or keeping taxes at historic lows) 
• The idea that people today aren't "tough enough" (when it comes to cops or concussions)
• And so on...

All this is to say that irrational hatred of Joe Mauer is a stupid Saint Paul thing. I call it "Joe-Misomia," which translates from the Greek as "hatred of one's surroundings." Booing Joe Mauer reveals a troglodyte psychosis with deep roots in the civic identity: the adamant refusal to acknowledge social obligations, no matter the situation. Basically, it's like the way Boston fans hate the Yankees, except that in Saint Paul, people simply hate the fact that they have neighbors.

(Like in Boston, however, this sentiment is often vaguely racist.)

[Just like Joe Mauer, people get angry at Saint Paul for "doing the little things."]

Even when Mauer was a perennial all star, and consistently one of the top three catchers in the Major Leagues, Saint Paul nabobs cursed his name. Bitter women shook their fists if he only went 2 for 5 in a playoff loss, or if Phil Cuzzi screwed the Twins again in New York. Each year the Twin did not win the World Series thanks to the usual crappy rosters, local knuckleheads became more enraged.

During Mauer's final seasons, at another poorly attended and uncompetitive end-of-season game, I remember some moron booing Joe Mauer each time he came up to bat. The guy occupied the perfect intersection of boredom, trolling, and ignorance along the third base line, and the first time Joe stepped into the batter's box, the guy began to boo. Joe grounded out, and the guy went nuts.

A few innings later, Joe came up and struck out, the guy booed even louder. "You suck, Mauer!" he yelled at the player who hit .300 for his hometown team his whole life.

Near the end of the game Mauer came up to the plate one last time. The anti-Mauer dude was was really enjoying himself, making a meal of being an asshole.

That's when Joe hit one of his rare late-career home runs, clearing the wall in left-center. As always, he put his head down and ran the bases. Everyone in the section, myself included, began jeering the Mauer hater. At some point, I flipped him off, while he sat there looking the the kind of d-bag who boos his own team at a ballgame.

This is the so-called "Garage Logic" conjured up by Joe Soucheray and Patrick Reusse, who write about Joe Mauer and bike lanes with equal disdain. This is as true in sports as it is in city governance. For them and their bitter talk radio cult, nothing is ever good enough. "$23 million dollars and only fifteen dingers" translates into "I pay taxes and all I get is are these potholes."

Let's ignore the fact that Local Government Aid was slashed by Republican governors and legislators for years, or the fact that zero of the Twins' top pitching prospects ever had major league careers.** Or that Saint Paul and the Twins salaries were dealing with persistent concentrated poverty. Or that the city's tax base or the team's television revenues are far below average.

The truth is that Joe Mauer will go into the Hall of Fame wearing a Twins cap, and Saint Paul has mostly wonderful elected leaders and city staff who are doing a fine job in often difficult circumstances. The angry haters are gonna hate, but they will continue to be proved wrong, again and again, until everyone ignores them completely.

That's all you need to know. So Saint Paul, be like Joe. Ignore the morons, put your head down, and keep doing your thing. Stay boring. Stay great.

Oh. And drink milk, of course.

* By the way, Mauer's contract is and was absolutely the going rate for a great catcher coming off an MVP season. He earned the money fair and square, after six years of playing lights-out baseball for league minimum and arbitration salaries. His contract was absolutely not the reason the Twins failed to field a competitive playoff team, which had everything to do with not drafting or signing good pitchers.

** Well, there was Matt Garza. But we traded him for Elmon Young.