The Improbable Redbirds

Image via WikipediaThe St. Louis Cardinals this season have been down, but never out.  They got into the post-season as a National League wild card on the final day of the regular season after the Atlanta Braves blew a 7 1/2 game advantage--a feat exceeded only by the Boston Red Sox' epic meltdown, handing the Tampa Bay Rays its American League wild card.  After that, the Cardinals took care of Philadelphia and Milwaukee, in that order.

Now the Cardinals are world champions for the 11th time, defeating the Texas Rangers in Game 7 of the World Series 6-2 at Busch Stadium.  It was an anti-climatic game compared to what else happened in this series that'll go down in the history books.  Three examples:

• The Cardinals' Albert Pujols hit three home runs in Game 3, becoming the first non-New York Yankee to do so (the others were Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson).  This could also be Pujols' St. Louis swansong, as he will soon test the waters of free agency.
• Manager Tony LaRussa sent the wrong relief pitcher to the mound in Game 5, which ended in a Rangers' victory.  Then LaRussa blames it on the noise at the Rangers' Ballpark at Arlington, meaning he couldn't hear his pitching coach on the landline phone.  Maybe Major League Baseball needs to realize it's 2011, and install special mobile phones in the dugouts.
• Game 6, won by the Cardinals 10-9 in 11 innings, was not the most artistic game ever played (five errors by both teams), but it did have one of the most dramatic finishes to rival other famous Game Sixes.  Twice the Cardinals came back from two-run deficits in the late innings to tie the game.  Twice did David Freese save his hometown team's bacon with timely hits, including an 11th-inning home run that puts him in the Game 6 pantheon with Carlton Fisk and Kirby Puckett.  For that, Freese was rewarded with the World Series' MVP award.

Up until Games 6 and 7, the ratings on Fox had been abysmal because neither of these teams are the Yankees, Red Sox or Philadelphia Phillies, the only teams that seem to matter in baseball any more.  Why, to most of America, the Rangers were the Texas Strangers.  But as this World Series proved, you don't need to be from New York or Boston with billions of dollars' worth of talent to put on an exciting show for the nation, whether you're a baseball fan or not.  All the St. Louis Cardinals had to do was to ride a hot streak from out of nowhere to the summit of baseball, and take its fans along for the ride.

Vikings Stadium: Two Minute Warning

Image via WikipediaFor what seems like forever (but really, it's been at least a decade), the Minnesota Vikings have been lobbying the state of Minnesota for a new football stadium.  Now that the lease on the Mall of America Field at the Metrodome is almost up, the time has finally come for some answers.  Or not.

Governor Mark Dayton is currently entertaining proposals on where the stadium should go, and how it should be paid for.  Then he will decide if any of them are worthy of being put into a bill to go before a special Legislative session, scheduled to take place the week of Thanksgiving.

The Vikings have already made up their minds.  It is the site of the former army munitions plant in Arden Hills, or nothing.  Recent studies have found, though, that the project would take much longer and be much more expensive (over a billion dollars) than when it was first proposed.  But they did catch a break when Ramsey County commissioners rejected a proposal to put a county-wide tax up for a vote.

Minneapolis, the Vikings' current home, has finally weighed in.  According to reports, the city is ready and willing to offer three sites that they believe are much more accessible and less costly than the one in Arden Hills:  the current Metrodome property, the Farmers Market area next to Target Field, and some land next to the Basilica church owned by Xcel Energy.  Oh, and the state might want to throw a little extra money to renovate Target Center, where the NBA Timberwolves play.

As for how to pay for all this, revenues could come from a new casino in the Block E section of downtown Minneapolis.  The Native American tribes who already run casinos in Minnesota might not like it, but what else are you going to do with an area that's become a block of broken dreams?

But the Vikings aren't interested in anything Minneapolis has to offer, not even for the dollar being offered to buy out the Metrodome.  Why is that?  There has to be more going on here than simply preferring Arden Hills to anywhere else.  They also say they don't have a Plan B if their choice is rejected by the Legislature.  Maybe they do have one, but they haven't made it public just yet.  Could it be . . . Los Angeles?

Then there are the same old arguments for and against the stadium, from the same old politicians and activists who have been wrangling over this for years.  Can we do this without adding or raising taxes?  Aren't we just subsidizing a billionaire owner and his millionaire players?  How can you even think of building a stadium at a time when the economy's so bad, and people are out of work?  And so on.

This is another tired question, but it bears repeating.  Do you want the Vikings and the NFL to stay in Minnesota, or not?  Within the next few weeks, we should have an answer that helps determine which direction this state wants to go:  the cultural mecca of the Upper Midwest, or just a cold Omaha?

Death On The Speedway

Image via WikipediaWhile most of us were watching pro football on Sunday afternoon, there was an auto race held at a track outside Las Vegas that was televised on ABC.  It was the finale of the IndyCar racing season, and it was memorable for the wrong reasons.

Eleven laps into the race, there was a fiery pileup involving 15 cars, some of them flying over one another along the wall.  The only one not to survive the wreckage was Dan Wheldon.  A popular figure on the IndyCar circuit who had just won his second Indianapolis 500 last spring (the other was in 2005), Wheldon was 33 years old and left behind a wife and two children.

With all the safety precautions being taken by IndyCar (also known as open-wheel racing) and NASCAR in its cars and the tracks they race in, drivers getting killed during a race doesn't happen as much as it used to.  But when it does, it comes during a major event in front of a quarter-million spectators and a worldwide TV audience.  The last time this happened was when Dale Earnhardt died during the final laps of the 2001 Daytona 500.

Some people within the world of auto racing believe what happened at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was a tragedy waiting to happen.  The track was a high-banked oval that's more typical for NASCAR events, but dangerous for IndyCar, whose vehicles are normally racing on long, flat ovals like the one at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Auto racing of all types have been run on speedways, road courses and city streets.  All of them possess their own share of dangers, but one type of track isn't any more dangerous than the other.

To combat the image that auto racing is all left turns all the time, the major organizations (IndyCar, NASCAR, Formula One) promote personalities (Danica Patrick, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Gordon, etc.), tradition and the American way of life as they see it.  But let's be honest.  The real reason people stop their clickers on an auto race is when a crash occurs at 200 mph and the TV networks show several replays of it from different angles.  Bad for the drivers, who almost always survive these accidents, but great for "Sportscenter".

Sometimes accidents affect the outcome of the races.  How many times have you seen a close race come down to the wire before some other car in the back of the pack skids into a wall, forcing the final laps to be run under the yellow caution flag?  NASCAR tried to fix the problem by tacking an extra couple of laps at the end, creating its version of overtime to find a winner.  But some of these cautions seem to be suspiciously timed, as a way to enliven a boring race for the sake of ratings.

How will auto racing react in the wake of Dan Wheldon's death?  Oh, they could add a few more safety measures to the point where the sport becomes about as stimulating as your commute to and from work (assuming, of course, you have a job to go to).  But NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula One built their empires on the need for speed.  Too much of it, however, results in accidents that sometimes leads drivers like Wheldon to an early grave.

Al Davis, 1929-2011

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAl Davis, the owner of the NFL Oakland Raiders until his death Saturday at 82, was many things during his long career, which culminated in his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992.  He didn't get to where he was without stepping on a few toes along the way.

First, Davis was a winner.  He turned around a struggling Raiders franchise when they began in the American Football League in the early 1960s, first as a coach, then as managing general partner.  He used slogans such as "Just win, baby" and "Commitment to Excellence" to motivate his team, which must have worked because they won three Super Bowls and made many playoff appearances.  He never stopped running things on the field after he moved to the front office, often clashing with players and meddling with his coaches' decisions.

Davis was an innovator.  He wasn't like other NFL owners, not in the way he dressed (usually variations on silver and black) or how he ran his franchise.  He was the first to hire African-American and Latino head coaches, as well as a woman to be a team executive.  The Raiders were populated by players who either didn't fit in anywhere else, or whose circumstances made them liabilities.

Davis was a troublemaker.  Serving briefly as AFL commissioner in 1966, he tried to push his league forward through bidding wars with the NFL over players until the two leagues merged (which was done behind his back because he never supported it).  Then he started using the courts to get out of his commitments to the NFL and the Oakland Coliseum, resulting in the Raiders' move to Los Angeles in 1982.  By 1995, however, the team returned to Oakland under the cloud of more lawsuits, most of which have now been settled.

Now that Davis is gone, what will happen to the Raiders?  The team isn't anywhere near the powerhouse they once were after their last Super Bowl appearance in 2003, sometimes performing badly enough to qualify for a Number One draft pick.  Ownership is in question, even though it's been reported that Davis' son Mark would run the team.  And, of course, there's always the possibility of returning to Los Angeles.

Still, without the man who embodied the Silver and Black as much as his teams did, the Oakland Raiders and the NFL became a little bit duller.

P.S.:  The day after Davis' death, the Raiders defeated the Houston Texans 25-20 to advance their record this season to 3-2.  They just won, baby.
   

No Longer The Weakest Lynx, Take 2

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe Minnesota Lynx are the 2011 WNBA champions.  Coached by Cheryl Reeve, they had the best record in the league during the regular season, then sprinted through the San Antonio Silver Stars, Phoenix Mercury and Atlanta Dream in the playoffs to claim the franchise's first title.

In defeating the Dream 73-67 Friday night at Atlanta for a three-game Finals sweep, Seimone Augustus scored 16 points to lead the Lynx and was named the Most Valuable Player.  Maya Moore, already named Rookie of the Year, scored 15 to continue her run of championships that began in college at Conneticut.  The Dream rallied behind Angel McCaughtry's 22 points, but fell short.

The connection to all of this is native Minnesotan Lindsay Whalen, the woman who popularized the game in this state.  She was partly responsible for bringing the Gophers to the Women's Final Four, and remained popular even after she moved to Conneticut to play for the Sun.  When the deal was made to bring Whalen back to the Lynx, she became the playmaker they needed to augment Augustus, Moore, and Candice Wiggins.  Plus the crowds started coming to Target Center, which was a nice bonus.  Now Whalen has a championship in her home state.

This is the first professional sports title for Minnesota since 1991, when the Twins beat the Atlanta Braves in the World Series, and the first basketball title since the Lakers won the NBA crown in 1954.  Coming as it does when the fortunes of the Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, Wild and football Gophers are in the tank, the Lynx were a breath of fresh air with star players who were healthy and winning. 

Though the WNBA season may be over, many of these same players will be going to Europe to play for teams that pay far more money than the summertime league ever could.  Also, this will probably be the last professional basketball we see in this country for awhile, with the NBA lockout reaching crisis proportions as games start to get canceled.

Now comes the hard part for the Lynx.  With an Olympic break scheduled for next season and every other team in the league gunning for them, the Lynx are going to learn what it's like to try for back-to-back championships, rendering what they accomplished this season all the more remarkable.

NHL 2011-12: Highs and Lows

Image via Wikipedia As the Boston Bruins hoist their Stanley Cup championship banner to the rafters of TD Garden and the Vancouver Canucks still wondering why they lost Game 7 last spring, the National Hockey League opens another season with reasons to celebrate and reasons to give pause.

• The return of the Winnipeg Jets after a decade-and-a-half absence, caused by the Atlanta Thrashers deciding to migrate north.  However, this will result in a complicated realignment setup for next season (the Jets will spend this one in the Eastern Conference), in which the possibility exists that the whole East-West thing might be blown up.  And the fate of the Phoenix Coyotes, for whom the league is still trying to find a buyer, could complicate things even more if the team decides to move.
• Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the face of the NHL, has not played a game since a concussion injury in January.  If Crosby ever plays again, will he be as effective?
• Three players died over the summer:  Derek Boogaard (drug and alcohol overdose), Rick Rypien (suicide) and Pavol Demitra (plane crash in Russia which also killed his teammates).  How the NHL deals with the issues that caused these tragedies remains to be seen.
• A new 10-year TV deal with NBC and Versus (soon to be renamed NBC Sports Network), kicking off a spate of similar long-term deals that so far include the Olympics, "Monday Night Football" and the pro golf tour.  Could the NFL and Major League Baseball be next?

And now, our playoff Top Eights . . .

EAST:  Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, New York Rangers and Buffalo Sabres.

WEST:  Detroit Red Wings, Vancouver Canucks, Chicago Blackhawks, Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks, Nashville Predators, Calgary Flames and Colorado Avalanche.
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The Minnesota Wild and San Jose Sharks made a couple of headline-making deals over the summer, with the Wild getting Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi while the Sharks got Brent Burns and Martin Havlat.

This reminds us of all the trades the New York Yankees made with the old Kansas City Athletics in the late 1950s.  The net result was that the Yankees continued to win championships while the A's got worse.  Likewise, the Sharks will continue to be Stanley Cup contenders while the Wild continue to struggle, missing the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.

Under new coach Mike Yeo (promoted from the Houston Aeros of the AHL), and with many of the same players who haven't left via trade or free agency, the Wild might be a better team this season.  But still not enough to alleviate the doldrums other Minnesota sports teams are currently facing.

Twins 2011: Reversal of Fortune

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Minnesota Twins finished with a 61-99 record this season, the second-worst in Major League Baseball behind the Houston Astros (which crash-landed with a 56-106 mark). 

How on earth did this team, which won the American League Central Division title last year, fall so far and so fast this year?  Oh sure, the Twins were briefly in the pennant race before the Detroit Tigers pulled away from the rest of the division.  Francisco Liriano pitched an unexpected no-hitter at Chicago against the White Sox,  Jim Thome hit his 600th career homer at Detroit, and Bert Blyleven entered baseball's Hall of Fame.  But then again, Harmon Killebrew passed away, and there were reminders of him all over Target Field.

Where to begin?  Nearly every regular on the roster spent time on the disabled list, whether it's for injury or illness.  Take Joe Mauer, whose hometown halo got tarnished this season by charges that he wasn't tough enough to withstand "bilateral leg weakness" or pneumonia, and that he's starting to believe his own press clippings.  Because it's physically hard to be a full-time catcher, Mauer went a few games substituting for Justin Morneau at first base while he worked out his own health issues.  But the questions linger with several years to go on Mauer's new contract.

The offense?  Barely there.  The Twins found more ways NOT to score than any other team.  Many is the time that they loaded up the bases with nobody out, and they don't score.  Or they get caught in baserunning mistakes.  Thome and Michael Cuddyer aside, the Twins' bats give credence to the notion that Target Field  is not a home run park, though there are other teams that might dispute that.

Pitching has been a hit-or-miss proposition.  Liriano hasn't really proven himself beyond the no-hitter.  Kevin Slowey and Carl Pavano, among other starters, do well for several innings until the bullpen takes over.  Matt Capps gave away so many games in the late innings that Joe Nathan, returning from Tommy John surgery, was given back his closer role.

Because of all those injuries and illnesses, the Twins tended to resemble a minor league team for much of the season, while depleting the real ones in the process.  Guys like Trevor Plouffe, Alexi Casilla and Ben Revere--whether they're ready for the majors or not-- have been pressured into service with mixed results.  And you really needed a scorecard to tell which players were which.

All of which made manager Ron Gardenhire's job a lot tougher this year.  Throughout his tenure, Gardenhire has been one of those managers who have excelled at doing the most with the least.  This was not one of those years, and if the Twins tank again next season, then it may be time to change managers.

Speaking of change, there will undoubtedly be some this off-season.  Thome, shortly after hitting number 600, was shipped off to Cleveland.  Cuddyer, Nathan and Liriano could follow him out the door.  And Morneau will have to make a decision about his future. 

This is only the beginning, folks.  The days of division championships and other feel-good moments are over for now.  Soon the novelty of Target Field will wear off, and crowds of around 10-15,000 will become common.  Good free agent players will not want to come here, no matter how much cash the Pohlads have stashed away.  So be prepared for a long, cold winter of baseball..
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A word about John Gordon, who just did his last game as the radio voice of the Twins.  He may have been the epitome of the minor league-quality announcer who was fortunate enough to land a job with the Yankees before starting a nice, long career in Minnesota.  Gordon will not be mentioned in the same breath as Herb Carneal (even though he worked with him) and Ray Scott in the annals of Twins broadcasting legends.  But he will be remembered for his home run call in the course of describing division pennants and world championships:  "Touch 'em all, (fill in the blank)!".   Have a nice retirement, Gordo.
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One more thing.  Yankees versus Phillies in the World Series.