Friday, May 6, 2011

Does Joe Mauer have a child, or is he secretly gay? (unedited)

If I had to bet $100, I'd bet that Joe Mauer is not gay.

As noted previously, Joe Mauer is most likely just a guy who likes his privacy, but even if people claim they don't care whether or not he is gay, they do. And if he is gay, it matters to a segment of society.

That being said, Joe did nothing to diffuse my theory that he might be gay. Here in Minnesota we have a local talk show called Twin Cities Live. It's about what you expect from a local talk show, lots of lame segments, the occasional celebrity in town to promote a book or movie and a cast of local celebrities who don't deserve the title of celebrity.

A few weeks ago TCL featured a segment on our boy Mauer filming another one of his fraudulent commercials for a local line of dairy products. (I doubt that his family has been loyal to this brand of dairy products for the past 100 years, but I'm a skeptic, what do you want?)

The wacky out-and-about reporter they subject us to periodically was granted the royal privilege of behind-the-scenes access to this fascinating world of television commercial production. During an interview of Baby Jesus and his mother, who appears in the dairy company endorsements, the TCL imp asked Mauer if he has a girlfriend. After hemming and hawing for a moment he said he is seeing someone.

He didn't answer yes. That may simply be because he doesn't consider this "someone" to be a girlfriend at this point. If you date somebody several times, it doesn't mean you've entered a committed relationship. During the baseball season I doubt Mauer has a lot of free time for dating, so perhaps he recently started dating a woman but hasn't had time to cultivate a relationship. Therefore he can't say he has a girlfriend, since he doesn't.

But the skeptic in me can't help but wonder if Mauer is playing the pronoun game. Instead of acknowledging that he has a girlfriend, he pauses long enough to admit he's seeing someone and leaves it as that, because that someone is a man. It's possible.

I hadn't thought a lot about this until last night, when my friend, a woman in her 20s who has long been infatuated with Mauer, told me that he has a child. I was quite surprised to hear this, so I asked her what her information source was. It turns out that she read about an alleged 1-year-old daughter, and fiance, on Mauer's Wikipedia page the previous week, and had printed out the page as evidence. She showed it to me, and I have a copy of it.

The information about this 1-year-old daughter and child has since been scrubbed from the Wikipedia page. My friend was unaware of how easy it is to post anything about anyone on a Wikipedia page. For a woman in her 20s, it's mildly impressive how detached she is from the Internet. She has a Facebook page and logs into it, but she's not nearly as Internet dependent as most people in their 20s. It's nice to see.

The Wikipedia reference to a fiance and child suggested that the woman was an on-again, off-again girlfriend who is now Mauer's fiance. It also named her and suggested she is a former Edina High School basketball star. (Edina is a Minneapolis suburb, and a wealthy one at that.) I searched for her name several times and several ways, and I am of the conclusion that the posting of this information is the work of a prankster. Never mind the fact it would be mildly remarkable if Mauer is able to keep the birth of a daughter a secret from the world for more than a year. The only other reference I could find to the alleged fiance and child was a variant of the info in the printout. Some website archived Mauer info from Wikipedia that showed similar information, although it had a different birth date for the child.

I won't say it is impossible for Mauer to have a child and keep it a secret from most of the population, but given that parenting children out of wedlock is practically celebrated in the NBA, the social stigma of having a child and not being married is long gone, and therefore makes for an illogical secret. If it's true, it whitewashes Mauer's squeaky clean image, but big deal. All that does is make him more human, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm convinced the reference was either a prank or the wishful thinking of a delusional stalker who wants to be the mother of his child. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps he is the father of a 1-year-old daughter. That would make me wrong twice.

But until I'm proven wrong, there's a chance I'm right. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joe Mauer is not gay. My husband and I met him a few years ago in a professional office type of situation. The husb talked to him for quite a while. Joe was impressed by my DH's epic knowledge of baseball. Seriously for the amount of time my husband spends on things connected to baseball, he better be an expert. Married for 15 years and he has yet to miss a baseball trivia question on radio or at a game.

But I digress.

Joe flirted with my secretary and asked her out but she said no b/c she was dating a guy who played in the NFL. He was very respectful to my secretary and did not dog it up with her. When she said no, he said something like "okay - my loss." Very classy. My secretary btw is naturally pretty, wears very little makeup, is slender, and dresses conservatively.

But talking about the GAY thing. Do you remember back in 2000, the editor of Out Magazine said that he was in a relationship with an "every day MLB player on an east coast team?" The MLBer was never outted but there was lots of speculation. Red Sox, NYY, Mets, Baltimore, and the Marlins, I guess.

I'm pretty sure I know who the guy is but I wouldn't state it here.

...I have to say, though, Joe Mauer kind of reminds me of Nomar Garciaparra when he was with the Red Sox. Nice single guy but never seen out with a girl in Boston or on the road. If he was spotted in Boston he was usually with a group of guys and girls and you couldn't really discern who he was with. Nomar was just a private classy guy. I think that Joe is pretty much just like him.

Arthur Fonzarelli said...

I am unclear what your husband's knowledge of baseball or his personal interaction has to do with Joe Mauer's sexual preference.

As I have stated before, there's no significant evidence to suggest that Joe's vague description of "seeing someone" is code for "I'm gay." It adds to my conspiracy theory, but it's still circumstantial evidence, at best.

I don't, however, buy into the idea that he couldn't possibly be gay based on the alleged experience of a secretary you claim to know. (I have no reason to assume you're making it up, but I won't assume it to be a legit story, either.)

I have read claims that Mauer dated somebody's friend from high school years ago, etc., and that doesn't mean much to me. I worked with a man who gave birth to his first child during his tenure with my company. He moved on after the birth of his child. A couple of years later he changes jobs again and runs into one of my coworkers. He tells my coworker that he is now divorced, and gay.

That's a common story. Most married men do not divorce their wives and announce they are gay, no doubt. But given that it's a very real possibility, I refuse to accept anecdotes that somebody flirted with a secretary or asked her out on a date as evidence that the guy is 100 percent heterosexual, regardless of how little makeup the woman wears or how conservative she dresses.

I like your comparison of Mauer to Garciaparra, that's a very likely scenario. As I'm sure you're aware from reading the columns I wrote on the topic last year, I would bet $10 on the idea he's a private person who doesn't like being a celebrity outside of baseball, lame Kemps commercials aside.

But his offseason activites, or lack thereof, leaves the door open to the [sarcasm] unthinkable horror that he might be gay. [/sarcasm]

I refuse to dismiss the possibility based upon the allegation that he asked out a slender, naturally pretty secretary. Personally I don't find the story to be plausible.

Thanks for your insight.

Anonymous said...

JOE MAUER ISN'T GAY!!!! God, Where the hell do you get this information?!?!?

Arthur Fonzarelli said...

Thank you for not reading my blog. I appreciate people who visit my writing, don't read it, then make an unintelligent comment. It makes me laugh.

If you had read my blog you'd know I don't think Joe is gay, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility either. You'd know that the idea that Joe might be gay is actually a compliment to how he lives his life.

But you didn't read my blog, because in your world reading should be limited to 140 characters at a time, I'm guessing. (Why were you doing a Google search of "Joe Mauer gay" anyway?)

So go back to sending text messages to all your Justin Bieber loving friends and enjoy the rest of your summer vacation.