A couple of MVP-related items to round out this day:

1) From a news release (our bold):

If Twin Cities residents could host a star-studded Thanksgiving dinner, they'd choose television chef Rachael Ray to do the cooking and invite hometown hero Joe Mauer to sit down with them for the feast. That's according to a survey of 500 shoppers at six Twin Cities Cub Foods stores, conducted from Nov. 9 to 11. Twins catcher Mauer squeezed past Vikings quarterback Brett Favre as the local celebrity whom shoppers would most like to have at their Thanksgiving table. Mauer was preferred by 32 percent, edging out Favre at 31 percent. Non-athletes lagged far behind in the top five, with comedian Louie Anderson landing 17 percent, rocker Prince preferred by 14 percent and sports columnist Sid Hartman scoring 3 percent.

2) Stu sent along a joke about translations, Perdo Martinez and a certain Star Tribune writer, but we'll just go with the facts on the only voter not to pick Mauer first on his MVP ballot:

Cabrera's first-place vote came from Keizo Konishi of Kyodo News, a member of the Seattle chapter, according to The Associated Press.

All in all, though, a terrific day for Mauer, with the Thanksgiving/MVP sweep. We'll be back tomorrow with another installment of Clearance Clarance and other goodness.

ALSO: Please note the comments seem to be working fairly swimmingly today. We don't want to jinx things, but we're told some major work was done over the weekend. Something about servers, tubes, hamsters on wheels and maybe even some duct tape. Bottom line is we're told things should be good now. We've heard that before, but we love to be optimistic so we'll go with it.