Just checking. ‘Cause some in this community are drinking Uncle Fester’s poison Cool Aid through the Evening Drive Time on KFAN. That man knows nothing about baseball.

Mauer has hit and thrown and feels great! However, when it comes to running, his back gives him problems. He can hit and throw and has been doing it all spring, its just the running that he cannot do at this time.

Relative to what many people fear (some sort of career-threatening kidney problem), this is good news. Relative to what many people hoped (that this is nothing more than a little scar tissue), this is bad news.

As back injuries go, this is about as mild as they come. It’s not a disk problem. It’s not a dislocated rib (ouch). It’s not a stress fracture. It’s fairly normal inflammation. Probably most people suffer from some variation of this. But most people don’t do the things Joe Mauer does for a living. So it will need aggressive management and regular treatment for this condition, probably for the rest of his life. I think of it as a condition rather than an injury because he probably will never be rid of it. It’s like arthritis, you can minimize its effects, but you can’t cure it. I have it and I manage just fine. It flares up from time to time and I have to step up treatment. But a lot of the time, I don’t even notice it. Course, as I said, I don’t arn my living as a major league catcher.

I think this could lead to a position change as early as next year, If he has trouble managing this condition as a catcher. I can see him moving to third. In the past, I vehemently resisted the calls for him to move because the Twins didn’t have a starting catcher in the system besides Mauer, so it made no sense to move the best catcher in baseball off his best position just because he’s tall. But if Ramos continues to progress, I can see a move to third as early as next year, especially if this injury limits him more than it did last year. But I wouldn’t move Joe until Ramos is ready.

Until then, he’ll just have to suck it up and deal with the pain. We’ll see how that translates into performance. Catchers play in pain every day. This isn’t much more difficult to play with than sore hands, knees, ankles, and shoulders. It’s probably the least of his worries after he takes a foul ball off the cup.