Great success! After a few months of the intangibles crowd being threatened with severe online mockery by the rest of us, Minnesota's Joe Mauer(notes) was rightly awarded with the first American League MVP of his career on Monday afternoon.

The stud Twin Cities catcher received 27 of 28 first-place votes and it isn't hard to see why. Despite missing the beginning of the season with a back injury, Mauer won the AL batting title (.365) for the third time in the last four years while also leading the league in OBP (.444) and slugging (.587). That's a slash-line Triple Crown that hasn't been achieved in the AL since George Brett took it for the Royals in 1980.

Throw in some Gold Glove defense behind the plate, career-best totals for homers and RBIs and the Twins' late surge to take the AL Central from the Tigers and Mauer easily earned enough support to outpace the Yankees' tandem of Mark Teixeira(notes) and Derek Jeter(notes) that finished behind him. He's the first AL catcher to win the award since Ivan Rodriguez(notes) in 1999 and Thurman Munson in 1976.

The MVP award always seemed inevitable for Mauer, but it's not as if he needed this to validate his ascension into the league's elite. The 26-year-old has long been part of that top group and the rest of the league is already salivating over the sweet-swinging backstop possibly becoming a free agent after 2010.

Which is exactly why Minnesota should make plans for an escort of no less than 12 Brinks trucks when Mauer makes his way to the MVP's press conference.

Talk of a possible contract extension is certainly nothing new — whispers surfaced earlier this month — but Minnesota needs to follow Colorado's actions in the wake of Jim Tracy's NL manager of the year win and sweeten Mauer's win with a few more years, commas and zeroes.

Look, if terror-filled columns like this one continue to be published in the Twin Cities newspapers past Christmas, there's a huge problem. Mauer is a hometown boy who's on his way to becoming the greatest player in franchise history. He has said his personality doesn't fit New York and he doesn't seem like a guy motivated solely by dollar signs.

The Twins, meanwhile, are on the verge of opening up a new ballpark that will presumably generate more revenue and they'll have plenty of seats to sell. If there's a better time for the team to sit down with Mauer, ask him what would make him happy and then give it to him (so long as he's not requiring the lost city of Atlantis), I don't know about it. 

On a day when Mauer beat out the Yankees to create a bright day in Minnesota, the Twins need to respond in kind. Get it done and get it over with.

Pay that man his money.