FORT MYERS, FLA. - The sounds are soft and comforting as the Florida morning sun.
Joe Mauer stands in the batting cage in Hammond Stadium, waggling a Rawlings. While Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer try to knock fronds from the palm trees beyond fences, Mauer wields his bat like a sculptor gently chipping clay.
Mauer sends a soft grounder to short, pokes a liner to left, slaps a single to center. He might be on his way to becoming the best-hitting catcher in baseball history, yet many of his swings wouldn't break china.
"I have my routine," he said. "Actually, I learned it from Molitor."
That's obvious to anyone who watched Paul Molitor, his fellow Cretin-Derham Hall alum, take batting practice as a Twin in the '90s, when opponents would gather in the visiting dugout to see the artist at work.
Growing up in St. Paul, Mauer attended baseball clinics at Cretin-Derham Hall. One day, Molitor's friend and former high school teammate Jimmy O'Neil invited Molitor to speak to the kids.
Molitor, on his way to amassing 3,319 hits and the Hall of Fame, extolled a scientific approach to batting practice.
"I was in grade school," Mauer said. "Paul came and talked to us. I remember the one thing he talked about was how he took BP. He said he liked to spray the field. He liked to start with right field and work his way over. That's something I adopted as a kid and still do to this day."