Joe Mauer's Lone High School Strikeout
Paul Feiner isn’t one to bring it up. The 32-year-old digital marketer loves talking sports, just not about himself, not that day. His boss at Go Kart Labs didn’t find out until Feiner had worked there six months, and then teased him, “That would have been the first tihng out of my mouth when I shook your hand, ‘I’m the guy who struck out Joe Mauer.’”
Mauer, the three-time AL batting champ with a career batting average of .306 over 15 seasons with his hometown Minnesota Twins, was fanned by many big league pitchers. But Feiner is the only one with the distinction of striking out Joe Mauer in high school, when the St. Paul prep star batted .567 over his career and struck out exactly once in 222 high school at-bats.
It happened in the second game of the 2000 Minnesota State High School League state tournament, Feiner’s senior year, when his Elk River Elks played Mauer’s Cretin-Derham Hall Raiders. Wasn’t such a big deal then but once Mauer made it to the major leagues and started winning batting titles, people began trotting out Feiner’s accomplishment.
Instead of parlaying his newfound sliver of fame into free drinks and a slick pickup line, Feiner displayed Mauer-like humility and went mum. He turned down an interview with USA Today because he had other ambitions than to be pigeonholed as “the guy who struck out Mauer.” Feiner traveled Europe, married, settled into his career. These days he’s more willing to indulge those who ask him about that day. “I don’t shy away from it any more when people bring it up,” he says.
Feiner had never faced Mauer before that game, but he knew who he was. How could you not? Even as a high school junior, this kid who would be the Gatorade National Player of the Year the following season, was already legend. “He was a presence,” Feiner says. “Different than any other player.”
So when Mauer stepped into the box for his first at-bat, Feiner lobbed an Eephus pitch. It missed wide. Mauer cracked a smile and smoothed the dirt with his foot. Then lashed a single.
Next time up, he lofted Feiner’s pitch over the opposite field fence to give Cretin-Derham its only run.
Mauer batted a third time in the sixth, the score knotted at 1-1. The game had become a pitching duel between Feiner and–Mauer, awundekindnot only with a bat but also with an arm. He offset his 92-MPH fastball with a curve and a knuckleball. Feiner hadn’t managed a hit off him, though did reach on a fielder’s choice.
So with runs coming sparingly, the game was on the line, both teams facing the end of their season, when Mauer batted with two runners on, two outs, top of the sixth. He worked the count to 2-2.
Caught up in the competition, Feiner didn’t feel intimidated facing the nation’s best young hitter in a pressure situation; he cruised on the adrenaline of the moment. He knew he was on that day. So he reached for his money pitch, the hard curve, a pitch he had been throwing since before the rules allowed it. He deliverd it perfectly: the broke twelve to six, down to Mauer’s shoetops. Mauer swung–and missed.
Mauer’s teammates, who had never seen that happen, asked their star if he was feeling okay, only half-joking.
Feiner ran off the field, heard the couple hundred Elk River fans above the first-base dugout cheering, exchanged high-fives with his teammates and thought,Yes! We can win this.
But the excitement was short-lived. Mauer on the mound kept the Elks from scoring again, and his team rallied for six runs in the eighth to eliminate Feiner’s team.
Forgive Mauer for letting the memory of that at-bat go fuzzy–he has tallied 6,930 MLB at-bats since–but he, too, has people bring it up to him. Mauer has never met Feiner but appreciates his modesty as “a good old Minnesotan” and figures if their paths did cross they would “have some laughs over it.”
For Feiner, his baseball career ended that day 14 years ago, after pitching one of the finest games of his career. He hasn’t played competitively since. But he’ll always have the memory, do with it what he will.