Daddy day care needed a little help. For all of the things Joe Mauer does well – hit a baseball, rap, befuddle faux video-game pitchmen – handling his infant twin girls by himself one day this offseason was proving a smidge hairy. Assistance came in the form of a familiar face.

Glen Perkins has two girls of his own, so he knows the muck and mire of young fatherhood, and once the twins calmed down, he and Mauer got to talking. About their past and present and especially their future with the Twins, capital T, the team they grew up loving and were drafted by and today play for and never plan on leaving.

And the chances of that – of two kids who grow up in the same area, graduate high school the same year, end up in their hometown organization, make the major leagues and don't play anywhere else – aren't just unlikely. They're unprecedented. What Mauer and Perkins talked about that day, being start-to-finish Twins by finishing what they started with a World Series ring, was the onus behind Perkins' latest contract extension that ends with a team option in 2018 – the same year Mauer's mega-deal expires.

"We both want to win here," said Perkins, who debuted in 2006, two years after Mauer. "What came out of the conversation was losing sucks, but it's worth it if we get to win one here. We both saw Herbie do it here and thought how cool that would be."

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Herbie is Kent Hrbek, the Bloomington, Minn., resident who won a pair of World Series with the Twins alongside Kirby Puckett. Both were lifetime Twins, and even that – a pair of one-team standouts playing alongside each other – is today a rarity. Free agency hasn't killed the idea as much as made it an anachronism.

There were Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada alongside Derek Jeter, and Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio in Houston. Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell patrolled Detroit's infield together, George Brett and Frank White the Royals', Robin Yount and Jim Gantner the Brewers'. And even before free agency, longtime standout teammates – Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott – were far from innumerable.

The potential for others does exist today. Joey Votto and Jay Bruce may well spend their careers in Cincinnati. Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright should do the same in St. Louis. Even if Philadelphia blows up its roster, two of their core four – Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels – could stick around for the long haul.

"Not too many people wear just one uniform anymore," Mauer said. "For me, being drafted by my hometown team, when my grandparents come to every home game – those are the types of things that are important to me. All of those things factor in, and it made my decision pretty easy."

Four years ago, Mauer signed an eight-year, $184 million contract, the richest in Twins history and, at the time, the sport's fourth largest. Not only was the money befitting a catcher coming off an MVP season, it kept him where he wanted to be. His grandparents, in their 80s, have missed three or four home games during his 11-year career by Mauer's count. His grandfather, Jake, told him they pretty much go only two places these days: church and the ballpark, and compared to the Metrodome, Target Field is something of a cathedral itself.

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