Joe Mauer: ESPN Homecoming with Rick Reilly

It's going to take me a while to get back into the swing of things with this blogging business, so please bear with me if these start off rather disjointed and difficult to read.It's only January, but with the Vikings out of the playoffs, Gopher basketball and hockey middling along and the Timberwolves... well, I won't even go there, Twins fever is slowly starting to catch hold. Thursday night, I went with a few friends to watch the taping of ESPN's "Homecoming" with Rick Reilly, featuring the Hometown Hero himself, Joe Mauer.ESPN crammed almost 4,000 people into Cretin-Derham Hall's new gym (which is pretty nice, by the way) and the event was definitely a worthwhile one. Some of the recognizable faces in the crowd included Twins' GM Bill Smith, former GM Terry Ryan, longtime Mauer teammate (and on-field mentor) Mike Redmond, agent Ron Shapiro and nearly the entire Mauer family.Despite the length (over 3 hours in bleacher seating you couldn't le...