We arrived at the State Fairgrounds around 5:15, just in time for the shuttles. There were eleven school buses lined up (in reality there were probably 20 total, I even heard 40 buses thrown out at one point). We jumped on the first bus in line, which took us down to CDH. With all the traffic and stoplights we got to CDH (normally about 10 minutes from there) just before 6pm. The busses all lined up and one by one unloaded their passengers, so we sat on the bus from about 5:45 until 6:10. As we waited on the bus, I spotted Joe’s car in the parking lot across the street. I wouldn’t have spotted it if I hadn’t seen him in it before.
We joined the huge line of people in the hallway inside CDH, and the line moved fairly quickly for how long it was. It snaked all the way from the entrance down two hallways into the gym. In the gym hallway were the pictures of each class since 1988, so we got to see Joe’s high school picture up, and afterwards a lot of people stopped to take pictures of it. Security was fast and the moved us into the gym. Sadly there were probably 1,000 people already there, and we thought we were doing good on time! All the CDH students filled one half of the bleachers on one side of the room, and the rest of us filled in the bleachers on the other side. We were stuck up in the back corner, and unfortunately spent most of the night starring at the back of Joe’s head because he was facing away from us. They had lots of tvs around however so we could see more on those. The middle section of the gym was reserved for Special People, ie friends and family and former teammates. And corporations that paid money to have their people sit there. I overheard several conversations from people who had friends from Best Buy and the like that had been invited through work and were sitting in good spots.
Our stage manager was named Shadow and he was pretty good at telling us exactly what was expected of us. He told us that the show would be a 60 minute show when it is edited down, and will air sometime the second week of April. He will send us all an email just before it airs so I will let you know exactly the date and time later. He also told us that they expected the taping to be 90 minutes which was pretty fast so no one was allowed to leave their seats once we started taping. They would have short breaks, but we were only allowed to stand up and stretch and take photos during the breaks. I was bummed when he said this, because I wanted to be there longer! But I got my wish, a 90 minute taping quickly turned into nearly three hours! Towards the end, some people were just leaving at the breaks (mostly CDH students) and they kept asking us to please stay because they were almost done but everything took almost double what they estimated. Didn’t bother me one bit! I could have stayed there all night.
The Taping
The taping finally started just after 7pm. Joe’s family came and sat down in the front row, Rick Reily sat down in his chair, and then there was a very long, awkward silent pause before he shot the intro, which we had to do over at least twice because we couldn’t get it right. (“Usually people cheer for their school and hometown” he joked when he announced Cretin and St. Paul to dead silence, a five second pause, then half hearted applause—we were confused on what they wanted!)
Rick warned us that he was a writer, not a tv person, so he was going to make lots of mistakes and we’d have to keep doing things over, so bear with him. He was such a cool guy, and funny. After we shot the intro there was a long pause while we waited for Joe to come out. I mean, five minutes. The entire place was dead silent. Finally Rick said, “Well, guess Joe didn’t show up, so have a nice night everyone!”
We were getting super anxious, then finally Joe came out of the back corner of the room where his family had also come out. He made his way through the crowd as everyone cheered, slapping hands and greeting people. Then of course he hugged his mom and dad and shook hands with Grandpa Jake, Jake III and Billy and hugged Billy’s wife Stephanie who was there with their 1 year old daughter, and Jake’s wife who was childless and sitting on the other side of Stephanie. Oh, and Stephanie looked like she is pregnant again, at least a 4-5 months along.
Maybe they should fire wardrobe
So Joe appears in his classic “expensive looking” dark jeans which are not as baggy as he would normally wear and…a lilac sweater. My first thought when he walked out was, “Oh my God, what is he wearing??!!” Yes, a lilac sweater, with a white and lilac striped button down shirt underneath and a white undershirt under that. He didn’t look it, but he must have been practically dying of heat stroke. It was pretty hot in there, and he was under all the stage lights. Surprisingly, lilac is not a bad color on him, I just never would have put him in it because it looked totally gay.
Niece didn’t enjoy the intros
In the first three seconds of taping another few takes of an intro, Joe’s niece started wailing and had to be carried out by a family friend. Joe started laughing and said “I don’t think she liked that one. That’s my little niece Lucy, actually,” (I think it was Lucy, I am nearly positive) and he waved at her and smiled.
We’re the Mauers, and we’re related to everyone
So next they introduced his family. Theresa, Jake Jr and Grandpa each had mics at first. Theresa joked that they were related to half the people in the room, she’d called a lot of them to get them there. She explained that she and Joe personally go through all the fan mail and respond to it. She recounted the story again about how bad Joe’s temper was when he was a kid, but he’s mellowed out in his “old age.”
“He used to growl at the kids,” Theresa said.
“Can you growl for us now?” Rick asked Joe.
“Uh, I haven’t done that in years,” Joe grinned. “No,”
“Just one?”
“No,” Joe chuckled.
Theresa recounted the story about Joe smashing his hands through the glass window in the bathroom to get after Billy. She actually wasn’t home at the time, she was at work and Jake III had to call her and ask her to come home.
“Did that hurt?” Rick asked.
“You know at the time, I didn’t really feel it, but I got all these scars from it,” Joe held out his hands, pointing to his wrist and knuckles, “one here, here, one here…my football coach at Jimmy Lee [Rec Center] was pretty mad actually, because it was so bad I couldn’t play for about two weeks,”
“So Joe, you have three Jakes in the family,” Rick said, after they listed off everyone’s names. When the producer had thanked everyone earlier, she forgot Billy, added him later, and then he smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up.
“Actually, they’re Donalds,” Joe said dryly. He said it so flatly that he completely caught everyone off guard and it was almost 20 seconds before people realized he was joking and started laughing awkwardly. It was funny, I just felt bad that people totally didn’t get it at first. I think he felt a bit stupid.
“We have Jake Sr, Jake Jr, and Jake III,” Rick explained. “So Joe, do you think you’ll continue the Jake thing?”
”Uh, no,” Joe shook his head. “I’m going to stay away from that one. It was pretty annoying when people would call the house, ‘is Jake there?’ ‘Sr., Jr., or III?’ No, I’m not gonna do that,”
Grandpa Jake, Joe, and the colored boy
Then Rick made the grave mistake of introducing Grandpa Jake. Everyone in Minnesota knows Grandpa Jake. He’s a total loose cannon. Never know what he’s going to say. I guess no one warned Rick about this. Everyone was supposed to just stand up in front of their chair and talk nicely to the camera.
Not Grandpa Jake.
He gets up, walks to the center of the set and from there on wanders all over the set, rambling, half the time with his back to the camera. Everyone was laughing. At first Joe looked a cross between slightly annoyed and embarrassed, but after a bit he was smiling.
“How about this kid!” Grandpa shouts, before Rick can get a word in edgewise. “You know he is not only a great athlete, he is a great person! He works so hard, he tries to help people anyway he can—“
More cheering, more applause.
“You know, everyone of you is witnessing history here!” Grandpa Jake insists sternly, looking around and making sure he points his chubby finger at each one of us as he crosses the front of the stage again, “He is not only the American league MVP, but the best baseball player in the American and National league, and the greatest baseball player in the world, ever!”
More screaming, more applause. He’s got the whole crowd rocking.
Poor Rick looked at his watch.
“I’m just noting what time I lost control of the show,” he joked, to everyone laughing.
“You can actually just stand by your chair,” Rick said in a very nice voice, borderline begging, trying to cut Grandpa off. “We have a camera trained on you there,”
“Oh yeah, I know, I’m tired of that camera!” Grandpa laughs. “We’re well acquainted,”
“But you can actually just go stand by your chair,” Rick begs.
“Here?” Grandpa goes within about five feet of the chair.
“Closer,” Rick begs. He finally coaxes Grandpa within about two feet of the chair, but Grandpa doesn’t really stay there.
“So Jake Sr., I hear that you were almost in the majors? Tell me about that time?” Rick asked, to his own detriment.
“Well ya know that was a long time ago!” Grandpa says, wandering out from his chair again. “I always say my problems were I liked booze and I liked women!”
The place erupted, with cheers and whistles. He waved his hands around, encouraging us to cheer louder. “I was just a kid, you know, and not much of a student! I went to Cretin…Cretin High school!” He pauses for applause, acting as if he’s Jerry Springer or another talk show host. “But you know, if they’d have had pretty girls like this when I was in school, I’d have been the number one pupil!”
More cheers.
“All right, but what happened to your career in the majors?” Rick asked again.
“Well I got drafted by the Chicago White Sox,” Grandpa explains. “Ended up getting traded to the Rockies to play AA ball. You know in those days, we didn’t have planes, we traveled by bus…and train!” He paused for drama, so all us youngsters could think on that.
“I wasn’t all that special, couldn’t run fast, didn’t have real quick feet, played short stop. But I was a power hitter, yeah, I hit about .320,”
“So what happened?” Rick grinned patronizingly, trying to push him along.
“Oh yah know, I got the polio,” Grandpa huffed, finally going back to his chair.
“All right, so Big Jake, I heard that you were the babysitter for the boys,” Rick said. Grandpa looks like he’s about sit down, but when Rick says this he pops back up again and resumes wandering.
“Oh yeah,” he said enthusiastically. “You know, my wife died 31 years ago,”
There was another dramatic pause as he looked at the floor dejectedly.
“So when Jake III was born, I just grabbed onto him,” Grandpa motioned as if he was squeezing a baby into his chest, “he was everything to me, as a single guy, he was my whole world, he was just everything.”
At this point poor Jake started to look rather uncomfortable and Billy and Joe just looked a bit stunned.
“And then Billy came, and I had Jake and Billy and then Joe came! And I remember it clear as anything, when we lived down on 671 Lexington Parkway North [yes that is the actual address he said, to which everyone cheered] we were out in the yard and Joe was in diapers, standing by the tree, and he was swinging around a plastic bat and hitting a big balloon ball, and he was hitting it left! And I said, ‘why we’ve got a leftie here!’ And I was happy because I was a leftie and now I finally had a leftie!”
“Okay, that’s—“
“But you know, Joe was a good kid! He’s such a good person,” Grandpa interrupted Rick suddenly. “We had this colored boy that lived across the street, and one day he came over to me and he said, ‘you think Joe would talk to me?’ And I said ‘yeah Joe will talk to you!’ And Joe did talk to him for a whole thirty minutes!”
At this point everyone (including Joe) is kind of looking at him like, “did you really just say colored boy? Why are you telling this story??”
It didn’t end there.
“And you know that boy went on to become a doctor and I see him in Florida, I just got back from Florida yesterday, been there since November! And I see him and he still says Joe’s got to be the nicest person he’s ever met,”
And then they finally cut Grandpa off.
Joe also played the other “football”
Rick then asked Joe what other sports he’d played, and how he got started in football. Joe admitted that he’d grown up not only playing baseball, basketball, hockey—but soccer as well! I just about swallowed my tongue on that. He started football in 5th grade because his friends were on the Jimmy Lee rec team, and the kid who was supposed to be their quarterback was too fat to carry the ball, so his friends recruited him, knowing he was very talented at everything. He wasn’t sure about it at first, but his mom just told him to go out there and have fun. And it turned out (shocking) that he was good at it! Then they showed some video clips of him playing t-ball, and a photo of his first trophy, which happened to be in basketball. So here’s Joe (4th grade at least) standing in front of the house, wearing zebra striped Zubas with a gray t-shirt tucked into them. People laughed pretty hard at that. I guess the lack of fashion sense started way back. Then it turned out a kid in the audience had nearly the exact same pair, and when they cut back from the picture, the camera focused on the kid.
“Nice pants there,” Joe joked to him.
What Happens if He Loses?
When Joe was sixteen, he was invited to the Metrodome so the scouts from Team USA could see him. One of his coaches had arranged it. They measured him doing all kinds of things, said they liked him and asked him to come to Florida to try out officially. (Through Jake and Theresa, who were protecting him from dealing with these things).
Since about half the kids who go to Florida for tryouts get sent back home, the scouts and coaches were concerned about what Joe would do if he was cut.
“What will he do if he doesn’t make it?” one of the coaches had asked.
“We just looked at him, ‘what do you mean if he doesn’t make it?’ We’d never experienced that, we didn’t know,” Jake Jr. laughed.
“I was listening to them,” Joe confessed. “When he asked that, I went ‘what?’ The team I was playing for was in the State Tournament, so I saw it as a win-win. I either got to stay in Florida and play for Team USA, or I got to come home and play in the State Tournament,”
So You Think You Can Dance?
There was a very long discussion over if Joe could dance or not, and Rick begging Joe to dance and Joe saying no. Of course everyone said he could, said that Jake always played Michael Jackson when he had friends over. Joe named off “Beat It” and “Billy Jean” off the top of his head as some of the songs that stuck out to him. So when Jake’s friends were over they would put Joe in the middle of the room and make him dance for them—for money! If he would get in the middle of their circle and dance, Jake’s friends would give him a dollar.
“Well it’s because when I was a kid I could do the moonwalk,” Joe explained.
“Can you do it for us now?”
“No.”
“Well we need money, obviously! Who’s got some dollars?” Rick joked, to which people started waving their hands in the air. “Can we please see you dance?”
“No,” Joe grinned.
Well they’d polled his family in a separate video interview and everyone had their own opinion on his dancing. (Mostly all yeses, with a couple nos and well he thinks sos). Then Rick asked the audience who had ever danced with Joe. Some people raised their hands but their stories couldn’t really be heard because they weren’t mic’ed up.
The Katie story
“You must have had a lot of girls in high school,” Rick said, “I bet you had your pick of them!”
“Uh,” Joe scratched his head, “nah, I was pretty shy,”
“So did you go to the actual Homecoming dance?” Rick asked. [This actually occurred during his conversation about his senior year, when he went to Homecoming, but I thought it fit better here.]
“I did,” Joe nodded.
“And who did you take?”
“I took Katie Plummer,”
“Is she here?” Rick asked, because as they’d mentioned people throughout the night, if they were there they stood up.
“Uh no, she’s definitely not here,” Joe said shortly, to which everyone howled and hooted. When Joe realized how that had sounded, he quickly corrected it. “That’s not what I mean,” he begged, “I meant that I still keep in contact with her, and she’s out of town right now,”
“Well we got a hold of your yearbook [now I’m thinking they’re going to spill something big about Katie] and it said you were voted most likely to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated,” Rick said.
“Yeah, I guess they were right, huh?” Joe smiled.
Senior Slide
They began to get into Joe’s senior year, and he talked about how his parents protected him from the agents and madness because they wanted him to enjoy his senior year. His parents were the buffer between him and the coaches and agents, fielding all the questions for him. [Here was the discussion when they brought up Homecoming and Katie] Ron Shapiro got up and talked about getting to know Joe that year. He first tried to meet up with Joe in Florida during Spring Training; Jake and Theresa were both there for Jake III. But Joe wasn’t there! “You’ll have to come to Minnesota,” they told him. So Ron and his partner came to Minnesota a few weeks later to meet Joe. Instead of going out for a big fancy dinner, Joe and his family had picked a nice quiet coffee shop to meet in. And much to Ron’s dismay, Joe was not there again!
“Where’s Joe?” he had asked after appearing at the coffee shop to see just Jake and Theresa sitting there.
“He’s finishing some homework, he’ll be here later,” Theresa had said.
“And that was when I knew here was a real family, with real values,” Ron told us. Joe did show up, and they had a nice chat. Joe asked him about his other clients like Kirby and Cal Ripken, wanting to know what they were like. “He reminded me of [an old time ball player whose name I didn’t catch], he spoke softly and carried a big stick,” Ron joked. “I could tell he really wanted to play baseball.”
Later, Coach Bowden from Florida State would call Ron, mispronounce his name, and offer the moon if Joe would come play there. Basically said he could do whatever he wanted, he could play football and baseball! Ron said thanks but no thanks.
“Did you think about being a two sport athlete?” Rick asked.
“Yeah, I did, but baseball meant more to me,” Joe replied.
When Terry Ryan was asked about going the “cheap” route by picking Joe in the draft, he had this to say:
“Well I wouldn’t say he was cheap, Theresa can be a real bulldog in negotiations,”
“Damn straight,” Theresa grinned proudly.
This Cannot Be Happening
The talk about Joe’s time in the minors and the 2001 draft was pretty redundant and flew by. When the Twins traded AJ in January of 2004, people started calling Theresa and asking for tickets, knowing that Joe would be moved up.
But Joe didn’t know this.
“You know, everyone told me, ‘they traded AJ, they made a spot for you, you’re going to be the catcher!’ But I didn’t want to take it for granted,”
“So wait,” Rick stopped him. “They drafted you number one, paid you millions of dollars, traded the spot open, and you didn’t think the job was yours?”
“No,” Joe said sheepishly. “I knew I would have to work for it. I would have to work hard every day and go out there and show them that I was ready. I didn’t want to take it for granted,”
Joe then recalled everything he said on his FSN Spotlight story when he talked about being nervous his first day out, and being worried about getting the first warm up pitch back to Brad Radke. Then they showed video of his first hits and defense, etc.
Then they brought up the knee injury two days later.
“I still remember the play, actually,” Joe scratched his ear. “Cocoa Crisp was at the mound, believe it or not he was our number one pitcher then and Santana was number two. Anyway the ball popped up and I thought, ‘Oh I got this, I’m gonna make this play,’ and I was running back to the warning track, and I went to slide for the ball…only I didn’t slide. I knew right away something was off. I walked back to the plate and got back in my stance and I knew something did not feel right at all. And I just kept thinking, ‘this cannot be happening, this cannot be happening.’ I got through the last batter, but guess who was up to bat right away? And I got through that at bat, got a single and made it to first, but as I was going around the bases it just kept getting tighter and tighter, and by the time I got to third I told our third base coach Al Newman that I thought something was wrong and I better come out. It was a rough year,”
Rick then attempted to shoot 2 different commercial segways, screwing them both up, but not how he thought. He repeatedly referred to Joe’s 2004 season “so here you are, 22 years old—“
He said that in two different takes and Joe just sat and watched it. I think everyone wanted to yell out with me, “he was 20!” They’d just pointed that out a few minutes before, Joe hadn’t even turned 21 yet at this point.
Finally, when Rick is about to do his third take, Joe pipes up.
“Not to correct you or anything, but I was actually 20, it was before my birthday,” Joe smiled, rubbing his ear. Rick started laughing and made a big deal of being a “dumb sports writer who couldn’t get his facts straight” then re-shot it correctly.
Scared to Death
“But only two years later, you have an amazing season where you win the batting title!” Rick points out. “You go to the All Star Game!”
“Yeah, that was weird…I looked at everyone around me and I thought, ‘what am I doing here?’
“And you got to catch for Mariano Rivera, how did that feel? Could you get used to that?” Rick teased.
Then the entire gym erupted in boos. Nearly booed him off the stage. I can’t remember what Joe said, but he brushed it off. Rick said something like “do you like the attention?” meaning playing in New York would bring way more.
“No,” Joe said staunchly. “I don’t like the attention at all, actually. I’m pretty laid back,”
Somehow the conversation went from that into this:
“So if you were in New York would you immediately start dating some starlet?” Rick teased.
“Well I wouldn’t argue with that,” Joe laughed. [Not his exact words, but the jist was that if people thought he should date one, he wouldn’t say no.]
Then they went back to 2006.
“So you lived with Justin Morneau,” Rick said.
[They also went through all his past and current roommates, interviewing them (Larry was asked if Joe was a good roommate, Larry said “yeah, he’s never home!”) and they also showed 2 video clips from high school, one baseball and one football, the baseball one was hilarious and featured Joe picking up Larry after getting the game winning out and then jumping on him “crushing him” as Rick said, then they teased Larry for being tiny, Joe saying they had a football play for Larry they called LL, short for Little Larry.]
“Yup, I tell my buddies that have lived there they have some big shoes to fill because an MVP had that room,”
“It’s probably the only house that can boast it had two MVPs living there,” Rick laughed.
“Probably,” Joe chuckled.
“Tell me about that,”
“We’re really boring. We were good for each other, I think. I never went out, ever, I was scared to death to go out of the house…if I got in trouble or something, I didn’t go out for years, …and Justin, well, he liked to go out. So he got me to go out some and I got him to stay in. A lot.” Joe smiled.
Everyone laughed.
“Who cleaned?” Rick asked.
“Um, we were both pretty messy,” Joe confessed, which surprised me, since everyone else has said he’s pretty clean (he’s even said he tries to be as clean as he can be).
“Who cooked?”
“Neither?” Joe smirked. “Well I tried…but we weren’t home much so it was mostly fast food and eating out all the time,”
“We know you didn’t do the dishes,” Rick laughed.
Back to Grandpa
“So we heard there was something special you did for your grandpa,”
“Yeah,”
“Tell me about that,”
“Well he’s got some problems with his eye sight and he said all he wanted to do was watch me play ball, so I got him a big t.v.,”
“And you took him to the [2006] All Star game,”
“Yeah, you’re allowed to bring a guest, and me being a single guy, I didn’t have anyone to bring so I asked him and [his girlfriend].”
By this point, Grandpa is completely choked up and wiping away tears. Joe doesn’t seem to notice, or he is purposely not looking at Grandpa.
“How is the eye sight?”
“Um, well...we’re looking into it…kinda the same,” Joe hesitates over this, making it very clear it is not better at all and is probably in fact getting worse. He muttered a few other things about treatment options and exploring those but it couldn’t be understood.
At this point (not exactly this point, they talked about lots of other things after Grandpa, he got to hold his 2006 bat from the Hall of Fame that he won the title with, they made him wear white gloves), we take another “break.” They film it as if it’s live, and we only get to get up to stretch. We are allowed to take pictures during this time. Mostly, Joe and Rick get their makeup touched up (getting the sweat off the face) and Joe gets lots of lip gloss/chap stick. I wasn’t sure what she was giving him, but it was in a lip gloss pot and he grabbed it every break and put more on. At first I was confused because he was using his finger to put it on but since he was facing away from me I couldn’t really see what he was doing. Finally, I figured it out. During our second to last break he got to leave to go to the bathroom (but we didn’t! haha) and we weren’t sure if he’d left, but he came back and we were happy. On that trip he shook lots of hands and talked to people. On another break, he signed an autograph for a kid who came up to him, only to be told by Shadow, “no more autographs, that rule came down from the top!” Shadow also yelled at the kids behind Joe, saying they were making signs at the camera and if they kept it up, he’d boot them out because there were lots of people who’d love to be sitting there. I know it seems like Shadow was a jerk, but he was pretty cool actually.
Squish Ball
When we came back from the longer break, they had a video clip shot outside the Mauer’s old house on Lexington yesterday in the freezing cold. They were explaining how to play “squish ball,” a game they invented. They would take stress balls (those balloons filled with cornstarch) and hit them with bats. Of course, they usually hit the neighbors windows and broke them.
“Did you break that one?” Rick pointed next door.
“Yes,”
“That one?”
“Yes,”
“That one?”
“Yes,”
“How about we play a round?”
“Really? Gosh, I hope I don’t break a window,” Joe grimaced, and then proceeded to nail a squish ball straight into his neighbor’s window, breaking it.
“I can’t believe it! We better get out of here,” Joe gasped.
10 Questions
“Somewhere, ESPN is paying for that window,” Rick laughed when the video ended. “What I love is that you said ‘let’s get out of here.’”
“Well I didn’t know they called my shot,” Joe said meekly.
“Did you have a lot of experience with that as a kid? Running off?”
“Well we’d run off and then argue about who had to tell them. ‘You tell them, no you tell them…’ And we’d always try to keep it between us and the neighbor, but somehow Mom always found out,”
To which Theresa nods vigorously.
“So now we’re going to play a game that we play here on Homecoming, called 10 Questions. You have 2 seconds to answer each questions, first thing that comes to your mind, you can’t think about it.” Rick informs him.
“Oh geeze,” Joe grimaced. “This will be hard,”
“Okay, first question. How many hours do you sleep a day?”
”Um, a lot,” Joe rested his chin on his fist as he thought about this. “A lot,”
“Okay, how many proposals?”
“A lot,”
“Okay you can’t keep answering ‘a lot’!”
“Well I don’t know, what’s a proposal?”
“Joe will you marry me?”
“Okay, well…a lot,”
“Name one that sticks out,”
“Um, there was this one girl at Twinsfest once, she was like 15 and she just walked up and was like, screwing me to the wall [not sure of the exact phrase, but it definitely involved “screwing” and then at one point Rick asked for detail on something and Joe widened his eyes at him and said, “well is this supposed to be PG or R?”] Her mom was right there, like ‘are you really doing this right now?’”
“Name your favorite rap lyrics, that you wrote,” Rick threw the next bomb at him.
“What? That I wrote?” Joe gaped. “I can’t think of any, they’re not any good,”
“Come on, something?”
“Nah,”
“What do you rap about? ‘Hey I’m Joe, I’m the AL MVP’?” Rick tossed out.
“Yeah, sure, that sounds good,” Joe nodded.
“What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever signed?” Rick asked, realizing he’s not going to get an answer on the rap lyrics, which I really wish he would have!
“A pink flamingo,” Joe said right away, which I knew.
“Why is that weird?”
“Because he sent it to us, asking to get it signed,” Joe laughed.
“Did you sign it and send it back?”
“Yeah, actually, I think we did,” he looked to his mom for confirmation on this, and she nodded.
“Which pitcher do you hate to face?” Rick shot out.
“None,” Joe said confidently, almost instantly, with a self-righteous smirk. It was the most confident I’ve ever seen him. He had a look of a kid in a candy store, a kid who’d just bought all the candy. His eyes were glittering, his chin was tucked, he had this close-lipped smile…no pitcher could get him out and he knew it.
“Wow!” Rick blew out, knowing that it was rare to see Joe so…almost cocky.
“Yeah…” Joe back peddled his attitude a bit. “Yeah, none,”
“Pretend I’m Justin Morneau and trash talk me,” Rick asked next.
“Oh…” Joe paused. “Boy. Um…we say so much stuff…I might say ‘how’s your tan doing?’” People laughed at that.
“Pretend I’m you, and you’re Justin Morneau and trash talk me,”
“Um…” Joe bounced his foot against the chair leg, as he did repeatedly through the show. “He likes to tease me that I’m tight with money. But it’s really not true, I’m really not,”
“First thing you bought when you got signed,”
“Oh…well…it’s pretty crazy when you get signed…you get signed one day and then you’re down there playing the next. So it was pretty busy for a while…I played the summer and part of the fall and then I had some down time…I bought my first car, a Chevy Trailblazer,”
“Really? That’s not very flashy,”
“Well you know, everyone wants to know what you’re driving in the [ball] club, they all wanna know what you’re going to show up in ‘what kind of car did you get?’ …they were kind of surprised when I got a Chevy. But I felt that cars like those nice ones are major league cars, and I wasn’t in the majors yet. I thought I should have something more appropriate and work up to something nicer later. You should work for stuff like that,”
“But I saw you yesterday driving a truck,”
“Well yeah I guess I still like Chevy,”
“It helps that your brother is a Chevy dealer,”
“Yeah,” Joe and everyone laughed.
“What is your secret dream job?”
“Uh, to own a sporting goods store,” I was surprised he didn’t seem to have to think about this one much.
“Really? What would you call it?”
“Uh, I don’t know?”
“Joe’s Sports?”
“Yeah, that sounds good,”
The Girlfriend Issue
“So Joe, we asked all your family if they had one question for you, what would it be? And your mom won, so we’re going to show you her question,”
The video pops up.
“Joe, I was wondering if there was a special lady in your life that we should know about?” Theresa asked in the video.
There were lots of hoots and hollers, but about half the girls were holding their breath.
“Wow,” Joe shook his head. “Really?”
“Well we’re just wondering! We hear lots of things,” Theresa called out.
“That’s sad that your mom had to come on ESPN to ask you that,” Rick teased.
“I’ve heard I was engaged about five or six times,” Joe smiled. “Shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Mom,”
“And yet you still haven’t answered her question,” Rick presses.
“Oh, well,” Joe shifted in his chair quite a bit—visibly uncomfortable, but his answer seemed honest. “No, no, there isn’t. My dog, Lil Kim is the only woman in my life,”
Shooting
Joe does know how to use a gun. He has a trap shooter and they showed a video of him at the cabin, completely decked out in blaze orange (including hat), shooting clay disks and baseballs. You’ll just have to watch that one. It was hilarious.
MVP
They mentioned this briefly, talking about where he was again and what he thought, same old same old. Only this time when he said he waited to get into the shower for the call, Rick said “I bet you did some Michael Jackson moves in the shower.” To which Joe laughed and kind of agreed.
Free Agent
“You’re going to be a free agent in a year. The Yankees and the Red Sox are already talking about numbers…what do you think?”
“Honestly I’m just thinking about this season and getting ready for it,” Joe shrugged.
“You aren’t thinking about it at all?”
“No,”
“Well what do you’ve said that your factors are playing somewhere you’re happy, and winning. Which is more important?”
“Well I don’t see why I can’t have both,” Joe smiles.
Everyone cheers, realizing he means he thinks he can play in Minnesota AND win. They talked more about it, but there was so much shrieking that it was hard to make out what he was saying. He just seemed to keep implying that he would be happy to stay here.
Do You Suck At Anything?
“So Joe, I’ve been with you two days straight,” Rick said. “Honestly, do you suck at anything?
Joe shrugged. “I don’t know,”
“I bet your brothers know. Guys?”
Jake and Billy shrugged, completely lost.
“You can’t name one thing you’re bad at?” Rick says, and Joe’s chin raised in realization.
“Yeah. Probably this interview,” he grinned.
To which we all laughed.
All Choked Up
“So Joe, all these people are here to support you, we have a record crowd for this show, is there anything you’d like to say to them?” Rick asked towards the end.
“Yeah, just, thank you,” Joe nodded, turning around to look at all of us. “My family, who played a big role and everyone else who played smaller roles, the fans, for cheering us on, we really feed off that as athletes…wow, I’m getting choked up here. (You couldn’t tell, his voice was the tiniest bit tighter, but my cousin and I were melting when he said that) It’s just that I haven’t seen a lot of these guys in 20 years and it’s so amazing to see them, just…thank you so much,”
His thank you was longer than that, but after he said he was getting choked up I kind of lost focus.
Final Surprise
“We have one more surprise for Joe, it’s something you haven’t seen since you were nine, and your baseball coach Jim O’Neil is going to bring it out here,” Rick and Joe turned to the back of the stage to see Coach O’Neil dragging the original Quickswing onto the stage. His dad came right up to help set it up.
“Can you hit some balls for us?” Rick asked.
“Wow, really?” Joe gasped. “Am I really doing this right now?”
“Yeah,” Rick said, and there was some commotion that we couldn’t really hear, except for Joe saying again, “Am I really doing this right now? Can I warm up a little?” So he began doing some quick twists, then his dad fed him three small whiffle balls. He completely biffed the first two, then shot the third one out into the back of the audience.
And that was it. He and Rick hugged, said thanks, and it was over. He shook hands with a few more people, then they let him around the back of the stage and out the side door right below us. Of course there were lots of people standing up so we couldn’t get a great look at him, but he did look up at us for a couple seconds as he was walking out.
There is so much that I’m missing. I just can’t remember where it all belongs. Rick wore the fake Joe sideburns and donated them to the BHOF. They posed for a photo during one of the breaks pretending to strangle each other. It was an overwhelming three hours. I tried hard to remember everything for you guys, and I’m impressed with the amount of detail I could remember, but I know there’s stuff I’m leaving out. Mike Redmond was there. He pretended to be the catcher for Joe and the whiffle balls as a joke. They demonstrated the actual Quickswing inside the cabin (video).
I know there is so much more, but this is what I could absorb. I hope it made those of you who couldn’t be there feel like you were!
