Growing up, Sherm Lollar was my Joe Mauer
I am holding my 1958 Sherman Lollar Sport Magazine All-Star baseball card. "Sherm Lollar, Catcher, American League."
He's wearing an uncomfortable smile-as if he doesn't think himself worthy of being an All-Star. Or maybe someone left the cold cuts from the clubhouse lunch table out a little too long and they turned on him.
If I hold the card just right and squint through my reading glasses hard enough, I can still see the halo around Sherm's head where I used to worship him.
Nine All-Star selections. Three gold gloves. To me, he was Joe Mauer long before there was a Mauer -- a lion in an unexpanded American League, and a simpler time.
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I turn the card over and read from the back.
"Sherm's great strength lies in his ability to handle pitchers," some overworked, down at the heels public relations man wrote on the back of the card. "His experience of the hitter's weakness is invaluable to members of the Sox staff."
Alas poor Lollar had a well known hitter's weakness all his own. He was slow afoot and tended to ground into inning ending, rally killing double plays.
Even Joe Mauer goofs up and hits into a double play now and then.
I see Mauer ground one to start a double play and I flash back to Lollar running to first as hard as he can, still out by fifteen feet.
"It's his knee tendons," my father would say sadly. He'd shake his head, "All those years catching."
It may have been Lollar's lack of speed that cemented the bond between us. I, too, was a lead-footed catcher. I, too hit into far too many double plays.
"It's my knee tendons," I took to telling my Little League coaches.
I'd shake my head. "All these years catching..."
Tonight, when Joe Mauer takes the All-Star field, I'll be in my groove on the sofa. And Sherm Lollar's 1958 Sport Magazine All-Star card will be propped up at the base of the lamp on the end table.
"Do a couple of old catchers and their knee tendons proud, Joe," Sherm and I will be thinking. "Swing for the fences. And no double plays."