MINNEAPOLIS -- Justin Morneau always has undisguised pride in his voice as he recalls how he spent what felt like his whole career watching Joe Mauer from the on-deck circle -- from the day the onetime No. 1 overall Draft pick took his first Spring Training plate appearance after a standing ovation in 2002 to the day Morneau was finally traded away from the Twins in 2013.

After they’d been all but joined at the hip and nearly inseparable for a decade as the two MVPs who defined an era of Minnesota baseball as the “M&M Boys,” Morneau still gets a bit emotional as he remembers how he wasn’t there for what was perhaps his friend’s most poignant moment of all.

• Top 10 moments of Mauer's HOF career

On Sept. 30, 2018, Morneau was flying back from Reykjavik, Iceland, after a family vacation. The plane Wi-Fi wasn’t working, so it wasn’t until he got to baggage claim that Morneau got to watch highlight videos on his phone with tears trickling down his face as Mauer donned the catcher’s gear for the first time in five years as part of an emotional final career game.

“To have one last image of a Hall of Fame catcher playing his last time for his hometown team walking off with the catcher’s gear on, I think that was a perfect ending,” Morneau said.

On Sunday, that’s officially what Mauer will be: a Hall of Fame catcher, the 20th backstop to be enshrined in Cooperstown and the third to make it on the first ballot. He’ll go in alongside Adrian Beltré, Todd Helton and manager Jim Leyland after earning 76.1 percent of the vote to clear the threshold for induction back in January.

• Mauer just the 3rd catcher to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer

The pride of Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, from which he was selected with the No. 1 overall pick, Mauer dazzled for only his hometown Twins over 15 years as he won three batting titles -- making him the only American League catcher to win even one -- and the 2009 AL MVP Award as he hit .306 with an .827 OPS for his career with 2,123 hits in 1,858 games.

Because of Mauer’s low profile since his retirement -- which tracks with the persona he established throughout his career -- there haven’t been many opportunities for Minnesotans to come out in force, as they’ll do on Sunday, to cheer for that storybook career from their hometown hero, the likes of which they may never see play out again with their own eyes.

Perhaps that final game in 2018 was the last time many Twins fans really got that chance to reflect, to appreciate, to remember.

***

Until recently, the Twins stayed at the InterContinental Hotel near Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza when they’d make the trip south to play against the Royals at Kauffman Stadium -- and it’s at the outdoor bar area at that hotel that the chatter began in earnest about an idea that team travel director -- and former PR director -- Mike Herman had been floating for a while.

Derek Shelton, then the Twins’ bench coach and now the Pirates’ manager, was already several drinks in with Nate Dammann, then the bullpen catcher and now the quality control coach.

Shelton asked Dammann, who had been one of Mauer’s closest friends throughout his career, what he thought Mauer would want to do before his career was over. In the final season of an eight-year, $184 million contract extension and at age 35, there wasn’t certainty if that would be Mauer’s final season -- but there was certainly some thought around him that it could be it.

“[Dammann] said, ‘I think he'd like to catch again,’” Shelton said. “It kind of stunned me a little bit. I said, ‘Really?’ And he's like, ‘Yeah, I really do.’”

It would be Mauer’s first time donning the catcher’s gear since 2013, when concussion issues had forced the six-time All-Star and five-time Silver Slugger Award winner at catcher to swap to first base -- and his catching prime had been unlike many the sport had ever seen.

Mauer had been selected at No. 1 overall by the Twins in 2001, when they forewent the opportunity to select more highly touted talents like USC pitcher Mark Prior or Georgia Tech’s Mark Teixeira to pull the transformational talent from the organization’s backyard, coaxing Mauer away from the opportunity to play quarterback at Florida State.

He wore the brunt of those expectations as he debuted in 2004 -- expectations that only magnified when the Twins traded away A.J. Pierzynski ahead of that season to clear a path for the then-21-year-old Mauer to become the franchise cornerstone.

Mauer’s full arrival came in 2006, when he made the first of his All-Star teams and hit .347 to become the first AL catcher to win a batting title. He won another in 2008, when he hit .328, and then another in ‘09, when he overcame a season-opening injury to hit a remarkable .365/.444/.587 with 28 homers to win MVP, a season that marks the highest average and second-highest OPS by any qualified catcher in the expansion era (since 1961).

Mauer anchored three AL Central championships and playoff runs from behind the plate and was the stabilizing force around whom Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, Michael Cuddyer, Torii Hunter, Morneau and other franchise icons of that era revolved.

“Joe's such a pure hitter,” said Mike Redmond, his backup for five seasons. “It seemed easy for him. I know it probably wasn't, but it just always seemed easy. I don't ever remember him having to work on his swing. … He took what those pitchers gave him, and that was a lot of hits. He got a ton of hits and won a lot of batting titles.”

• Joe Mauer, Hall of Famer and king of breaking up 9th-inning no-nos

But that consistency came to a screeching halt on Aug. 19, 2013, the day Mauer took a foul ball off the bat of the Mets’ Ike Davis off the mask. The concussion symptoms never went away that year, ending his season. He returned in ‘14 as a first baseman.

That’s part of what had to be on Mauer’s mind as he sat for 45 minutes in equipment manager Rod McCormick’s office with Dammann and Shelton as the 2018 season wound down, a few days after the latter pair’s conversation in Kansas City. They brought up the idea of Mauer strapping on the catcher’s gear for one pitch, enticing him by guaranteeing that there would be no swing -- and, thus, no risk to Mauer’s health -- and that fellow veteran Matt Belisle would throw the pitch.

Mauer would have to check with his wife, Maddie, of course, and manager Paul Molitor would have to call over to skipper Rick Renteria of the visiting White Sox to inform him of the plan -- but the pieces were in place, and Mauer didn’t need all too much convincing, Dammann said.

“One of the things Nate said that resonated with him is, ‘You're not doing this for you. You're doing this for the city,’” Shelton said.

“Hearing their reasons for it, hearing about it from [Molitor] and the guys around me, it wasn't about me,” Mauer agreed. “It was about a lot of people there that were able to experience my career and grow up with me. It was much bigger than me.”

***

When Herman walked into the Twins’ clubhouse that Sunday morning, he saw a familiar catcher’s equipment bag -- one he hadn’t seen in five years -- poking out of the corner of McCormick’s office.

That’s when the enormity of what was to come started to sink in -- even as Mauer had tried with all his might to push off the end-of-career question.

“That last day, it was, like, he didn't want to believe that it was his last game, but everyone kind of knew,” Herman said. “OK, the [twin daughters] are getting bigger. It takes him longer to get ready for the games. … Literally, as soon as he got [to the stadium every day], he would get changed and go into the weight room and start doing his stretching and all that stuff [for a] couple hours.”

When Mauer went out to his first-base position that day, he was greeted by his twin daughters, Maren and Emily, who gave their smiling dad a hug. He got a standing ovation before his first at-bat -- then his second, then his third, as his chances at the plate passed him by.

When the bottom of the seventh rolled around, it was perhaps Mauer’s final opportunity. Maybe knowing that, he swung at a 3-2 pitch off the plate and roped it to the gap in left-center, never breaking stride until he slid into second base just ahead of the tag for perhaps the most fitting final hit imaginable: a double that extended his Twins (1961-present) record total to 428 two-baggers, and with the type of opposite-field line drive that had always been his trademark.

That season, clubhouse motormouths Jake Cave and Tyler Austin had loudly referred to Mauer as “Player One” -- the best player on the team -- and as part of that, the Twins’ dugout would all hold up one finger towards Mauer after his hits that year.

“We did not get Joe to give a Player One until the double he hit his last at-bat,” Shelton said. “Everybody got up and gave the Player One, and he stood up and gave it. It was the highlight of the year for everybody.”

That is, until the lengthy pause before the ninth inning, after which Mauer emerged from the dugout with his catcher’s gear on for the first time since 2013 -- a final reminder of the incomparable prime that had perhaps been dulled by the passage of time.

As a crying Mauer received his standing ovation, Dammann caught the final warmup pitch from Belisle in the left-center-field bullpen, wrested off his catcher’s gear and sprinted through the tunnels in the bowels of Target Field all the way around the ballpark, threw open the wooden door to the first-base clubhouse and ran down the small set of stairs and up another into the dugout, where he joined the mass of Twins staffers gathered to watch.

Mauer crouched behind the plate -- the future Hall of Famer, back in his rightful place -- and caught the prearranged pitch, a ball off the plate that Yoán Moncada had graciously agreed to take to honor the moment.

Even all those years later, it looked as natural as ever -- fitting for the man who made everything look as effortless and natural as any to have played his position.

And then, it was over. Mauer went to the mound to hug Belisle and walked off the field to an army of bear hugs as music from “The Natural” played on the Target Field speakers.

“He never really told anybody, ‘I'm done,’” Herman said. “We just kind of knew that he wasn't going to go on. And then when he did that last game, it's like, how do you not walk away, right?

“Storybook ending? Yeah, 100 percent. Do you expect anything less when it's Joe Mauer?”

Even Mauer himself couldn’t deny the perfection of that ending when it did come time to make the decision to move on -- finally closing the storybook that, as it turned out, held within it a Hall of Fame-worthy tale, the baseball world has resoundingly agreed.

“I think, after that, kind of having some time to process what just happened, all those signs, it was basically just telling me that it's OK,” Mauer said. “It's OK to be done. You had a great run, and it's time to go on and enjoy your family.”