.373

I do not believe in hyperbole. I don’t even really believe in praise.

On July 22 after an 0-3 performance in a 16-1 loss to the Oakland A’s, Joe Mauer’s batting average dipped to a season low .357

In his first 45 games Mauer hit .417 with 14 home runs and 42 RBI, he was slugging .744 and his OPS was 1.229.

It was a historic stretch of hitting by any standard.

But from June 21 through that 0-3 performance in Oakland, Mauer struggled. He hit .253 with 1 home run and 7 RBI in 25 games, and the idea of a .400 season - along with Sports Illustrated covers questioning as much - fell out of the public consciousness.

While the next .400 season - along with the breaking of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak - may be the Atlantis of the baseball world, it is important to note that Mauer is still staring straight in the face of baseball history.

After that month long slump Mauer has hit .414 with 5 home runs and 17 RBI in 17 games, slugging .714 with a 1.182 OPS.

Those numbers bring to mind his insane start to the season, but more importantly they have raised his batting average to .369, and that puts him in a unique position.

Since 1930 only six American League hitters have finished the season with a batting average over .372.

Al Simmons hit .381 and .390 in 1930 and 1931 for the Philadelphia Athletics.

Luke Appling hit .388 in 1936 for the Chicago White Sox.

Joe DiMaggio hit .381 in 1939.

Ted Williams had the last .400 season in 1941 hitting .406 and, without question more impressively, also hit .388 16-years later in 1957.

It would be another twenty years before another hitter would hit higher than .372 when Rod Carew did it for the Twins in 1977.

Three years later George Brett hit .390, and that’s it.

Since 1980 no hitter has ever reached .373.

Two hitters have come close. Nomar Garciaparra hit .372 in 2000 and Ichiro Suzuki, Mauer’s only competition for the AL batting title this season, hit .372 in 2004.

Simmons, Appling, DiMaggio, Williams, Carew and Brett.

It’s an absolute murder’s row (Simmons and Appling may act as the deans of armed robbery) of some of the most complete hitters in the history of baseball, all of them in Cooperstown - and Ichiro and his .372 in 2004 will certainly be there, and Nomar, with his.372 in 2000 and his 791 hits before his 27th birthday was on the path before a fastball to the wrist derailed his career.

You can’t say that Mauer is underrated in any sense. Listen to any national broadcast of a Twins game or the broadcast of the opposing team and the accolidic verbal streams that come with every Mauer at-bat are almost without comparison.

Pujols draws similar raves, but whenever a former baseball player is in the booth they talk about Mauer’s game with an almost with freakish sense of reverence.

It is most likely because while power-hitters come along often - and Pujols is redefining the bar for a power-hitter in the post-testing-era - a player like Mauer, because of his position, has the chance to be once in a lifetime.

He already has his stake in the annals of baseball. His .347 average in 2006 made him the first catcher in the history of the game to lead both leagues in batting average.

But if Mauer, at 26, can secure a third batting title in four years and creep that average up a mere four points - a daunting task, I understand - he will most likely secure the American League MVP, regardless of the Twins record, and move into the rarefied air of having the potential to be the greatest player to ever play one of the nine positions on the field.

It’s not hyperbole or false praise and all apologies are due to Johnny Bench, but its true, and its historic, and even if everything else about the Minnesota Twins looks awful, it’s happening right in-front of our eyes.