The only person who struck out Joe Mauer in high school is really chill about it
Only kid to strike out Mauer in H.S. tells his story
Joe Mauer was a high school titan. He was recruited to play quarterback by top-tier D1 schools, he played basketball against other future pro athletes, he looked like this:
Perhaps most impressively, Mauer only struck out once in his entire high school baseball career.
For a moment, though, forget Mauer's adolescent accomplishment -- can you imagine being the one kid to strike a future MVP out? But it turns out that the pitcher who pulled off the singular feat doesn't like to make much of it.
John Rosengren tracked down Paul Feiner for Sports Illustrated and found the former Elk River Elk quite modest:
The two faced off during the second round of the 2000 state tournament, in which Mauer's Cretin-Derham Hall Raiders ultimately prevailed, 7-1.
Feiner does remember Mauer's looming talent, though, even as a teenager: "He was a presence … different than any other player," Feiner told Rosengren.
In 2006, Feiner told Minneapolis City Pages that talking about his famous strikeout "makes my stomach cringe with feelings of extraordinary self-indulgence at this point, six years later." But that didn't stop him from writing his one-game high school rival a tribute in verse:
Swing like a machine?
call in now at the bottom
of your t.v. screen"