A first-ballot Hall of Famer? By a four-vote margin, Joe Mauer became just the third catcher in Hall of Fame history to gain entrance to Cooperstown on his first try, following Johnny Bench in 1989 and Iván Rodriguez in 2017. Mauer was the last of the top eleven catchers according to JAWS to be named a baseball immortal (Ted Simmons, eleventh on the list, was inducted in 2020).
The Writer's Journey 