Facts: Mauer is awesome. Mauer is highly compensated. He was born here, but has chosen to live in FL. The team is awful. The marketing campaign has been built around him a few times. Opinions: A player whose success (runs, rbi, wins) is driven by his teammates, will be more criticized when he is in the spotlight, than a player who can create more success on his own. When you build your marketing campaign around a player, and the team sucks BAD, that player is going to get more criticism than the other guys on the roster. Asking that every article about him contain positive stuff is silly, sorry, it just is. Sometimes people are going to write other stories about him. Should they really be required to also provide positive information about him? bottom line for me: Mauer is awesome. Mauer has added pressure on him because he is the face of the franchise. The franchise SUCKS right now. Ergo, he is getting hammered, fairly or not, that's the price you pay for being the face. Personally, someone that chooses to live here is more MN than someone that was born here (no more choice than a piece of furniture has) that chooses to live someplace else. I don't get the obsession with him being born here, frankly. Baffles me, totally.