She puts the 'Ma' in Mauer

Teresa Mauer is her sons' biggest fan, a busy baseball mom and a skilled athlete in her own right.

Sometime today, the First Mother of St. Paul baseball expects to settle into a box seat at an Iowa ballpark with her husband to watch a game.

If she's lucky, their middle son will pitch in the game. If she's really lucky, the eldest and youngest will call during the game.

"I just hope they call during the break between innings," Teresa Mauer said.

If not, well, they know the drill. After all, today might be Mother's Day, but it's also baseball season.

"We always say we'll do whatever she wants to do on Mother's Day," said her youngest son, Twins rookie catcher Joe Mauer. "She usually wants to go to the ballpark."

"Can you think of a better day?" she said.

Forget the flowers. She'll buy those for herself when she wants them. Breakfast in bed? "With the schedules around here, our breakfast has usually been cereal," she said.

The best days for Teresa Mauer are filled with baseball, usually involving games played by any or all of her sons.

And with all three sons playing professionally for the Twins' organization, that means that right now almost every day is Mother's Day for her.

It also means today might be the best one yet, with Joe in the big leagues, eldest son Jake at Class AA New Britain after a big-league spring training, and Billy pitching for Class A Quad City in Davenport, Iowa — where Teresa and Big Jake are spending the weekend.

"I'm so excited they're all following their dreams," she said.

But it's not like Teresa Mauer has been an idle passenger on her sons' roads to pro ball.

Often appearing overshadowed by the rest of her family's athletic feats, the former Teresa Tierney might be as accomplished an athletic figure as any of them.

"One thing I remember that really amazed me," said Joe, "was in the sixth grade when we played a parents-vs.-the-players game. She was one of the only moms out there. She was out there running things, shooting... . She was probably the MVP of the game."

Joe, who was well aware of his mother's basketball talent from the stories he'd heard and read about her high school days, said he was reluctant to even take the court in that game. "They told everybody to guard their parents," he said. "I didn't want to guard my mom."

Nobody in high school did, either, when Teresa Tierney was a guard on St. Paul Central High's first girls basketball team in the 1970s. She was a key player on Minnesota's first Class AA girls basketball championship team in 1976, hitting a jump shot with 3:46 left in the title game to give Central the lead and hitting another at 3:13 to extend the lead on the way to a 49-47 victory over Benilde-St. Margaret's.

One of nine kids in her family, playing sports was second nature to her by the time she began seeing the benefits of Title IX legislation late in high school — too late to give her a place to play one of her first loves, baseball, it turned out.

With no girls baseball or softball while she was in high school — Central started a softball team the year after she graduated — Teresa tried out for the boys baseball team. She handled herself well in the field but had trouble hitting and didn't make the team.

"Looking back at it now, I realize I put that baseball coach in a tough situation. He couldn't win," she said.

She might have done things differently if she could do it over, she said, but she was in a tough spot, too.

No place to play. No way to sit it out. And no way she was going to play on some of those tea-party social teams that were forming for girls at the time.

"I guess I'm not geared that way," she said.

What she was geared for was involvement in almost every sport, playing as a kid, coaching as an adult.

She coached girls basketball and volleyball along the way. And she was always involved in the three boys' teams, along with Big Jake.

"We were always busy, helping with this team and that team," she said. "I'd much rather be doing that than home doing the laundry."

In fact, by the time it's all said and done, she could wind up a part of Twins history — as one of Joe's first Little League coaches. With Big Jake coaching Jake and Billy's team, Teresa took the reins of Joe's teams his first two years of pitch ball.

"She still asks me after almost every game," Joe said, "if I had fun playing."

She also can coach. "She knows the game," Joe said.

And she can play — still occasionally putting on the glove and heading out to the yard.

As recently as two years ago when Joe was getting ready to return to Arizona Fall League after hernia surgery, she played catch with him to help him stay ready.

"I like playing catch," she said. "It's much better than lifting weights."

And almost as good as watching all three of your sons follow their dreams into professional baseball. Almost as good a Mother's Day gift as Teresa Mauer could imagine.

What could be better?

"I suppose one thing," she said. "That they all three get to play in the big leagues — and the same team would be nice. Then there'd be only one ballpark to go to."