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From neighborhood playgrounds to Cooperstown, St. Paul has produced four baseball hall of famers

betsy helfand, pioneer press
·10 min read

Maybe it was the coaches, the ones who invested in the youth of the city and poured so much of themselves into ensuring those kids learned important life lessons both on and off the baseball diamond.

Perhaps it was the all opportunities they had to play ball, competing on multiple teams a year and spending as much time as possible on the field once the snow had cleared and the harsh chill of another Minnesota winter had dissipated.

Or, it could simply be that four special talents just so happened to be born and raised within the same few-mile radius of the same city.

Likely, St. Paul’s knack for producing hall of famers is some combination of all of the above.

The city, already home to three members of baseball’s Hall of Fame, gained another one on Tuesday when Joe Mauer was elected on the first ballot by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. When inducted in July, Mauer will join Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor and Jack Morris in Cooperstown, N.Y., where the four St. Paul baseball legends will be bonded together forever by their shared hometown.

Only a select number of cities — like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Mobile, Ala. — have produced more members of the Hall of Fame. Those cities are either substantially bigger than St. Paul or in a climate more hospitable to baseball — or, in some cases, both.

“It’s an unlikely place to produce four hall of famers,” Molitor said. “… That’s kind of unique, and we are glad that it was for St. Paul because you always will maintain that fondness for the place where you grew up.”

The first: Dave Winfield

At age 72, Winfield is the elder statesman of the group, the one whose footsteps both Molitor and Morris followed.

The house that Winfield and his older brother, Steve, grew up in on Carroll Avenue was just half a block down the street from Oxford Playground — now the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center — where the multi-sport athlete would spend his days.

In the moment, he didn’t realize it, but what he has come to understand after the fact, he said, is that St. Paul had one of the best parks and recreation departments in the country. Couple that with his natural ability, what he called “parent volunteerism,” in the city and a coach whose impact he felt throughout his career, and it was a recipe for success.

Winfield still remembers piling into Bill Peterson’s Volkswagen, kids chirping at each other and singing tunes on their way up to Cold Spring, where Peterson’s father had a cabin, to play games.

“Kids today will always remember their worst coaches and their best coaches,” Winfield said. “Bill’s right up there as the best coach.”

Peterson, who also coached Molitor on the Attucks-Brooks American Legion team, imparted the values of fundamentals, discipline, teamwork and fun, Winfield said.

The outfielder would go on to play high school ball at St. Paul Central before matriculating to the University of Minnesota, where he was on both the Gophers baseball and basketball teams. A coveted athlete in multiple sports, Winfield was selected by the San Diego Padres fourth overall in the 1973 draft. He was also drafted by the Vikings, Atlanta Hawks and the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association.

Winfield skipped the minor leagues entirely, collecting 3,110 hits and swatting 465 home runs during an illustrious 22-year major league career that earned him admission to Cooperstown on the first ballot in 2001and made him the city’s first inductee.

The second: Paul Molitor

Less than a mile south, over on Portland Avenue, there was another young budding star, this one almost five years younger than Winfield.

The two often seemed to just miss each other at their stops — when Molitor was in junior high, Winfield was just finishing high school. When Winfield was playing at the University of Minnesota, Molitor was in high school at Cretin-Derham Hall.

But Molitor, now 67, was well aware of what Winfield was doing, and Steve Winfield, who umpired and also refereed basketball in St. Paul, kept his brother apprised on the kid who eventually became the city’s second hall of famer.

My brother “was always in tune with the young kids in the community and he’d tell me, Paul Molitor, he’d say, ‘This young guy, man, he can play. He plays like us,’ ” Winfield said. “Because he hustled, headfirst slides, he could just make stuff happen.”

That style of play — Molitor would later be nicknamed ‘The Ignitor’ — was on display from a young age when Molitor, during his youth, sometimes played for three different teams in a given season.

Molitor, who like Winfield collected more than 3,000 hits in his career and became a first-ballot hall of famer in 2004, recalls weekends growing up when he played on Friday night for one team and Saturday afternoon for another.

“All I know is we had plenty of opportunities,” he said.

Molitor grew up in a large family with seven siblings, but credited his parents, Kathleen and Richard, for working hard to ensure he was able to attend Cretin, which provided him with a formative experience.

With Mauer set to be inducted into Cooperstown this summer, the school will be one of just nine high schools to boast multiple MLB hall of famers.

“For Joe and I to share that journey, that was a huge part of our foundational ability to grow as young men as well as play the game,” said Molitor, who managed Mauer at the end of his career with the Twins. “I think it’s pretty special for both of us to say that we both came out of the same high school program.”

The third: Jack Morris

There was another future hall of famer — this one a year older than Molitor — growing up a couple miles away on Saratoga Street, and the two would often face off.

While Peterson was one of the most impactful coaches in Winfield and Molitor’s childhoods, for Morris, that man was Wally Wescott, his coach on the Christie de Parcq American Legion team. Wescott, Morris said, was more carefree than Peterson, who came from a military background.

“(He was the) kind of guy that wanted you to have fun but he also wanted you to beat Bill Peterson’s teams,” Morris, 68, said. “In a way, it was kind of a fun thing for me to be playing against them. It made me better than if I was their teammate, probably.”

Morris, a pitcher who would go on to win 254 games as a major leaguer and earn his entry to Cooperstown in 2018 via the Modern Era Committee, starred at Highland Park High School before going on to play at Brigham Young University.

Unlike the three other St. Paulites, he wasn’t a first-rounder, drafted in the fifth round before working his way to become a five-time all-star. Over the course of his 18-year-career, he posted a 3.90 earned-run average and won three World Series rings. Most of his playing days were spent with the Detroit Tigers before coming home for one very memorable season in 1991 with the Twins and then finishing his career elsewhere.

The author of the best-pitched game in Twins history, Morris put the team on his back and threw 10 sterling innings against the Atlanta Braves in the winner-take-all 1991 World Series Game 7 to deliver a second World Series title to his home state.

“Dave was a gifted athlete. Paul was a gifted athlete. I think I had attributes that led to that direction, but we had a lot of ball and we had a lot of coaches that pushed us, and we all really thrived on that,” Morris said. “We really enjoyed that because we had aspirations to go somewhere beyond that level.”

The fourth: Joe Mauer

Joe Mauer, of Lexington Avenue, knew of those who came before him. And as Mauer grew up and stories of the ultra-talented catcher were passed around, they quickly learned of him, as well.

Winfield first heard of the three-sport star from his brother, Steve. Molitor received a scouting report from his high school teammate — and Mauer’s coach at CDH — Jim O’Neill.

“St. Paul, you know, it’s molded me into who I am today,” Mauer said. “… St. Paul is a close-knit community, and I’ve learned from each of them and watching their careers go.”

From an early age, it was apparent that Mauer could someday be the next kid from the city to follow in their footsteps.

Mauer, now 40, is the youngest of Jake and Teresa’s three sons — all of whom would have a professional career in the Twins organization — and the most athletically gifted. Not only was he the first overall draft pick by his hometown team, but he was also the nation’s top football recruit and he had committed to playing for legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden before the Twins came calling.

Morris, Winfield and Molitor all played for the Twins at one point in their careers — Molitor also managed the Twins for four seasons at the end of Mauer’s career — but none had the opportunity Mauer did to play an entire career just a few miles from where his career started.

Mauer played 15 seasons for the Twins, 10 as a catcher, during which he won three batting titles, three Gold Gloves, five Silver Slugger Awards and one American League Most Valuable Player Award. For that, St. Paul’s fourth baseball star earned his entry to join the first three in the sport’s most exclusive club.

“We all played down at Oxford Playground, Jimmy Lee Rec Center, we all grew up in that city block, really. It is amazing,” Mauer said. “… I just can’t wait to celebrate and really celebrate with St. Paul, Minnesota. It’s a special community.”

‘Source of tremendous pride’

There’s an old photo from 1985, and in it, Morris, clad in his Tigers, gear and Molitor, representing the Brewers, stare straight at the camera. Winfield, a New York Yankee at the time, stands in the middle of them, looking slightly off to the side. The three hometown heroes gathered at the 1985 All-Star Game, which took place at the Metrodome, for the photo opportunity.

More than three decades later, the three gathered for another picture. This one was at Target Field in 2018, and this time, there was another player standing alongside of them. Mauer, in his final season, was near the end of a career that would make him worthy of becoming their peer in the Hall of Fame.

Tuesday, St. Paul’s baseball royalty received another reason to come together for years to come — an annual July trip to Cooperstown. That starts this summer when supporters from St. Paul and across Twins Territory will make the trek to celebrate a remarkable feat for both Mauer and the special baseball city that helped raise him.

“St. Paul is the capital of baseball in Minnesota. Nobody can ever dispute that,” Twins president and CEO Dave St. Peter said. “… It’s something that I think is a source of tremendous pride and probably that’s something that I’m not sure will ever be replicated again. It makes you wonder who the fifth hall of famer is going to be. It allows you to dream that someday, somewhere there’s going to be another young man that grew up in St. Paul that finds his way to Cooperstown.”

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