Hundreds of Twins fans congratulate Joe Mauer on Hall of Fame selection

The line began forming before the sun came up, and included several hundred Twins fans by the time TwinsFest opened its doors Saturday, stretching from Target Field’s skyway entrance all the way to Target Center’s. The chance to get Joe Mauer’s autograph just four days after he became a Hall of Famer, in exchange for a $60 donation to the Twins Community Fund, was obviously irresistible for a large population of Minnesotans.

Don’t tell anyone, but there was a way to skip the line and avoid the expense. All you had to do was … well, be a member of the Twins.

“Joe, would you mind signing this for my grandpa?” righthander Louie Varland asked politely, pulling a vintage baseball card out of his pocket when Mauer arrived in the team’s TwinsFest clubhouse. “It’s not a rookie card, but it’s pretty old.”

Mauer obliged his fellow St. Paul native, one of perhaps 2,000 times he affixed his signature to photos, cards, baseballs, jerseys, caps and other collectibles on Saturday. Talking to the throngs who wanted to congratulate him on the game’s highest honor was as moving for Mauer, he said, as it was rewarding for the souvenir-hungry fans.

“It was very emotional today, walking through” the sold-out event, Mauer said, and seeing “the excitement of Twins fans, how happy and excited they are for me. I hear a lot of people are going to make the trek [to Cooperstown, N.Y., for his induction ceremony in July]. I’m excited to share that moment with them.”

That moment, and especially the speech he will make to the more than 50,000 in attendance that day, is already on his mind.

“You get one crack at it, and you want to make sure it’s good,” Mauer said. “Hopefully I can articulate the feelings that I’ve been having, especially over the last couple of months.”

Jim Thome advised him to rehearse it by himself several times, which Mauer plans to do. But he knows there is no way to prepare for the emotions he will feel when he stands on that dais.

“I’ve heard you can try to time your speech, but when you start giving it, it somehow takes a lot longer,” Mauer said. “Everybody that had a huge impact on you is right in front of you, staring at you. That press conference [on Wednesday] in Cooperstown, seeing my mom there and my family, [wife] Maddie, the girls and [son] Chip, it was tough because you’re so thankful for the support that is needed for me to go out and play Major League Baseball.”

But that’s six months off. For now, Mauer said he’s happy to be back in Minnesota, after a week spent accepting congratulations and giving interviews. “I’m going to go get some sleep,” he said. “That’s No. 1.”

Perhaps he will dream about that moment the phone rang on Tuesday afternoon, about 10 jittery minutes into the one-hour period when Hall of Fame officials had told him they would call if he was elected.

“You just kind of wait. Thankfully for me, I was the second call of the three,” after Todd Helton, Mauer said. “I think they made Adrián [Beltré] wait a little bit, which I appreciate because he was tracking very well” among ballots revealed before the announcement.

Once he got the good news, Mauer couldn’t share it, in order to keep the Hall’s announcement a surprise. When the election results were finally revealed around 5:30, Mauer’s first call went to Dr. Walter Wilson, “who took care of me for a long time at Mayo Clinic.”

Then his phone began buzzing with text messages of congratulations, hundreds of them.

“It’s amazing. I’ve had phone calls and texts from guys that I talked to two or three days before, and some from about 20 years ago. Guys I played with in the minor leagues. Coaches I had along the way,” he said. “It’s been so much fun to go back and see those names pop up. I’ve got a lot of thank-yous ahead of me.”

And plenty more autographs to sign, too. At the Hall’s request, Mauer has so far resisted writing “HOF” next to his name, as is traditional, because he hasn’t been inducted yet.

But he made one exception.

“I’ve done it once, for my son’s bat at the Hall of Fame,” Mauer said. “That was kind of a neat moment.”