Twins 2014: Wait 'til Next Year

English: Minneapolis, Minn. (July 17, 2006) - Minnesota Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire the Minnesota Twins vs. Tampa Bay Devil Rays game. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Minnesota Twins will not be worth watching this season.  Maybe in 2015 or '16, who knows.  But not this season.

The baseball experts say this team is a shoo-in for another 90+ loss season.  The Twins have plenty of young talent, but most of those players are simply not ready to make the big move up from the minors.  Until then, the Pohlads have opened up the checkbook to bolster the pitching staff, and they came up with veterans Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes.  They have also kept manager Ron Gardenhire and most of his coaching staff.

Joe Mauer, the Face of the Franchise, is moving to first base in a career-extending move.  Being an MVP catcher has its advantages, but he got knocked in the head once too often, which meant that he was often out on the disabled list with concussion symptoms.  Thus the move to first, where the Twins could use his bat for nearly every game.  Replacing him behind the plate is Kurt Suzuki

The rest of the offense does not inspire confidence, with Brian Dozier, Josh Willingham, Aaron Hicks and others struggling to put runs on the board.  But fear not.  Jason Kubel has returned to the Twins after stints in Arizona and Cleveland, and if he's anywhere near the ballplayer he was in the 2000s, then it's money well spent.  Don't you think?

The upgrade in the pitching staff might mean less need for the bullpen, now led by Glen Perkins as its closer.  But you have to wonder how effective starters Nolasco, Hughes and Mike Pelfrey are going to be against guys who can hit, as opposed to keeping the Twins in the game when their teammates' bats fail them.

Target Field is hosting the MLB All-Star Game this July, and that will be a great chance for folks to see so much talent in one game in one place.   As for the rest of this season, the only talent you're likely to see is the opposition while everyone else in Twins Territory twiddles their thumbs and waits patiently for the Team of the Future.

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Elsewhere in Major League Baseball:

Alex Rodriguez will not be in a New York Yankees uniform this season.  Or maybe ever.

The season has already started with two games in Sydney, Australia between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks, both won by baseball's newest highest-paid team.

Wrigley Field turns 100 this year.  The Chicago Cubs have been waiting longer than that to win a
World Series.

This is the last season for Vin Scully as the voice of the Dodgers.  The last season for Derek Jeter as a Yankee.  And the last season for Bud Selig as baseball's defacto commissioner.

There are new TV deals with ESPN, Fox and TBS.  There will be more games on cable (with the addition of Fox Sports 1) and fewer on broadcast.  But the All-Star Game and World Series will continue to be on Fox.

Our division projections:

American League

East:  Tampa Bay Rays

Central:  Detroit Tigers

West:  Oakland Athletics

Wild Card:  Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians

National League

East:  Atlanta Braves

Central:  St. Louis Cardinals

West:  Los Angeles Dodgers

Wild Card:  Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks

There's No "Me" In Sportsmanship, Is There?

On March 13, Hopkins defeated Shakopee 49-46 in four overtimes in the semifinal of the Minnesota Class 4A Boys Basketball Tournament in Minneapolis.  A Hopkins player hit the game-winning shot from half court at the buzzer in the fourth overtime, a play that has been run countless times on sports highlight shows.

What America didn't see was what led up to the big shot.  Toward the end of regulation and for the first three overtimes, a Hopkins player stood in the offensive zone with a basketball tucked under his arm, not moving until there were only a few seconds left so his team could take the last shot.  No attempt was made by Shakopee's players to come out of their zone defense, and at least try to foul the Hopkins player.  The Target Center crowd booed unmercifully.

This may have been bad sportsmanship on the coaches' part for using such a stalling tactic, but it's perfectly legal.  Minnesota is one of several states that do not use a shot clock for high school basketball.

But that wasn't all for Hopkins, whose reputation as a glorified all-star team of transfers took a big hit during this tournament.  Following a last-second loss to Lakeville North 84-82 for the 4A championship, some of the players who had just been awarded second-place medals immediately removed them in disgust.

We preach sportsmanship and fair play to so-called student athletes because of this fantasy we all have, sitting in the stands and on the couches, that playing sports will make us better people if we congratulated our opponents for a job well done and by accepting defeat graciously.

That's not how it is for the young athletes, for whom sportsmanship and fair play have long ago taken a back seat.  From the moment they are able to dribble or throw a ball, they have had their entire childhoods (with the exception of schoolwork) devoted to strenuous practice and pressure from coaches and parents to perform at the highest level.  How they develop is often the difference between a scholarship to a major Division I program that might lead to a megabucks pro contract, and a job flipping burgers at McDonalds.

If you are a young athlete whose home situation is so desperate that you need the scholarship and pro contract to help out your family and to get ahead in the world, second place is not gonna cut it.  Failure is not an option.  Nice guys finish last.

It is often said that kids imitate the behavior of the adults around them.  All they have to do is to turn on the TV or their smartphone.  Players who use performance-enhancing substances.  Racial and sexual slurs in the locker room and on the field.  Showing off in the end zone.  Trash talking on social media.  Coaches who freeze the kicker after the ball sails through the uprights.  Need we go on?

Perhaps the Hopkins players might have been "inspired" (if that's the word) by the U.S. Olympic women's hockey team, who lost the gold medal game in overtime to Canada at the Winter Games in Sochi, then pouted as they received their silver medals.  Or how about the 1972 American Olympic men's basketball team?  To this day, not one of those players has accepted their silver medals after a controversial loss to the then-Soviet Union, who won the gold medal at the Summer Games in Munich.

Selfish behavior?  Yes.  Understandable in the heat of the moment?  Yes.  Is this what we want our youth to emulate?  Certainly not.  But they're going to do it anyway.

So don't blame the young man if he throws his second-place "thanks for competing" medal in the garbage after a close defeat.  Blame the adults in his life who brought him to this point.

Arthur Chu Is Out of "Jeopardy"

Jeopardy Sign - CES09 (Photo credit: justin_levy)

In "Jeopardy"'s 50 years on TV, few contestants have been as controversial as Arthur Chu, who just completed a 12-day run on the quiz show with a grand total of $297,200. 

Chu is the actor and freelance voiceover artist from Ohio who just might have created the template for future players to win at "Jeopardy", even if it cheeses off longtime viewers.  His method was to seek the bottom of the "Jeopardy" board (where the most money is) to find the hidden "Daily Double", instead of the usual route of going category by category.  Oh, and it also helps to be quick on the signaling device and knowing the correct question to the answer.  By the time "Final Jeopardy" arrived, Chu was usually so far ahead of his opponents that it really didn't matter whether he answered correctly or not.

Chu came across to some viewers as this smug, condescending punk who ruined the game of "Jeopardy" as they knew it.  Not only is this a racist sentiment (Chu is of Asian descent), but it also teaches us that winners are not always nice people.  We've known that at least since the days of Vince Lombardi.

Chu's reign on the show lasted 12 days, which might have seemed longer because of breaks for special tournaments, until he finally met his Waterloo on the episode that aired March 12.  Trailing for much of the game, he missed on "Final Jeopardy"  in response to the answer of who was the last British monarch who wasn't Prince of Wales.  The correct response was:  Who was George VI?  A woman named Diana Peloquin of Ann Arbor, Michigan got that right.  Her reign as "Jeopardy" champ was brief, lasting only into the next episode.

Chu has nothing on Ken Jennings.  His run on "Jeopardy" back in 2004 netted $2.5 million over 74 consecutive appearances before losing on his 75th.  Jennings has since returned to the show a few times to compete in tournaments, including one in which he matched wits with an IBM computer named Watson.

"Jeopardy", which premiered on NBC in 1964, was created by talk show host Merv Griffin, who was also responsible for "Wheel of Fortune".  The current Alex Trebek-hosted syndicated version is now in its 30th season.

So, going forward, will other contestants follow Arthur Chu's lead and hop around the "Jeopardy" board to get as much money as they possibly can?  Or will the producers tinker with the format and make things tougher for those who try?  As long as the show doesn't resort to Chu competing against  Jennings or a computer, the answers to those can only be in the form of a question.

Wild 2013-14: After Sochi, What?

Minnesota Wild (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Winter Olympics are over, and so is the Minnesota Wild's three-week break.  They returned to NHL action Thursday night with a 3-0 shutout win over the lowly Oilers at Edmonton.

The Wild are presently 32-21-7 totaling 71 points, which puts them fourth in the reconstituted NHL Central division, and seventh in the Western Conference.  They are at least five points ahead of a number of teams battling for one of the last playoff spots.  Once they get there, then they'll have the distinct pleasure of facing the Anaheim Ducks, St. Louis Blues or Chicago Blackhawks in the first round.

Before the Olympic break, the Wild have been meandering through another so-so season where people expected so much more from them.  They have a very good home record, but that's negated by having one of the worst road records in the league.  Coach Mike Yeo's job status came into question when the Wild teetered on the brink of disaster during the holiday season.  But after winning a few key games in January, nobody's talking about firing Yeo right now.

Part of the reason why the Wild have been underachieving has been injuries and illness in the goaltending corps.  Josh Harding has issues with MS.  Niklas Backstrom (not to be confused with the Washington Capitals player who was kicked out of the Winter Olympics for failing a drug test prior to his Swedish team's gold medal game against Canada) is recovering from an abdominal injury.  Which leaves them with rookie Darcy Kuemper, who has played well since being called up from the Iowa Wild of the American Hockey League.  Unless Backstrom gets healthy or the Wild can swing a deal to get a veteran goalie before the trade deadline March 5, Kuemper can look forward to spending a lot more time in St. Paul than in Des Moines.

It will be a few more weeks before we know if the Wild are a playoff team or not.  They need to play better on the road and against division opponents, since that's where the bulk of the remaining schedule will be.  They need to stay healthy, which is not an easy task.  And they need to stay focused on winning games in regulation time, instead of going through the charade of a five-minute overtime period just to risk an extra point in the shootout.

The Minnesota Wild took that first step forward in Edmonton Thursday.  How many more will follow?

Hot. Cold. Sochi.: Conclusion

English: Skyline of Sochi, Russia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Olympic Winter Games of 2014 are now over.  No incidents warranting breaking news coverage.  The 'ring of steel' around Sochi, Russia has held.  And everyone will be going back to business as usual soon enough.

The Russians topped the medal chart with 13 golds, 11 silver and nine bronze for a grand total of 33.  That should more than make up for the men's hockey team's failure to medal, and to keep President Vladimir Putin happy.  The United States finished second with 28 (nine gold, seven silver, 12 bronze), Norway third with 26 and Canada with 25.

The Americans had a pretty good Olympics, considering that some of their high profile athletes were big flops when it counted.  No medals in speed skating or individual figure skating, where they had done well in the past.  A silver in women's hockey.  The men's team picked the wrong moment for its offense to disappear, getting shut out by Canada and Finland in their last two games to return home without a medal.

But there was at least one new American star in the closing days of the Games:  Mikaela Shiffrin, at 18, became the youngest American to win gold in the women's slalom event.

Canada shut out Sweden 3-0 to win its ninth men's ice hockey gold medal, and the third since professionals were allowed to compete.  Hope you enjoyed the tournament, because the National Hockey League is seriously considering pulling its players from future Olympics.  NHL owners are weary of shutting down during the regular season so that a few players can travel halfway around the world, risking injuries that might prove costly for their teams' playoff chances.   Can you imagine amateurs from the United States and Canada going up against Russian professionals?  Oh wait, that's why the NHL'ers were brought in in the first place.

Another figure skating controversy erupted when Adelina Satrikova won gold for Russia in the women's final, with defending Olympic champion Kim Yu-Na of South Korea coming up silver.  If you listened to enough figure skating experts, you can believe that either Satrikova won fair and square or was the beneficiary of a home-country decision among the anonymous judges.  Figure skating is a subjective sport, no?  Well, it depends on who is doing the subjecting.

Now a word for one of the Olympic sponsors:  McDonalds spent billions to promote its brand during the Games.  So how could they imply in their ads that a gold medal tastes just like a Chicken McNugget?  Yuck.

As Sochi fades into the rear view mirror, the focus shifts to the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea and the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.  No controversies there, right?  Right?

Hot. Cold. Sochi: Week 2

American alpine skier Bode Miller at the bib draw for the Super-G in Hinterstoder (Austria) on 5 February 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In its second week, the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia have been relatively uneventful.  That is, unless you count members of Pussy Riot getting beaten up by police for an unauthorized performance, or the Ukrainian skier who quit the Games to protest the violence currently going on in his country.

As of February 20, the United States leads the medal count with 25 (eight golds, six silver, eleven bronze), which is two more than the Russians.  The Netherlands, Norway and Canada round out the top five.  It's not like the Cold War era, when people actually cared about this stuff.  But still . . .

• The U.S. women's hockey team choked its way out of a gold medal, giving up a two-goal lead to its biggest (and only) rival Canada in the final minutes of the championship game, who then scored the winner in overtime for a 3-2 victory.  Credit the Canadians, who have now become the most dominant team in women's hockey, for a great comeback, eh?
• The Russian men's hockey team, whom everybody thought would dominate their way to gold on home ice, were eliminated in the quarterfinals by Finland.  Granted, this team was nowhere near the powerhouse Soviet squads of the late 20th century, with some of the players we have come to know in the NHL.  But when you turn someone like T.J. Oshie into an overnight folk hero in an overtime shootout loss to the United States, something is seriously wrong in Putin Land.
• The U.S. speedskating team, which used to be dominant in the days of Dan Jansen and Bonnie Blair, is leaving Sochi with no medals.  First they tried to blame it on a design flaw their outfitter put into the new suits they wore in competition, then ditched them for the old uniforms.  Nice try.  Didn't work.  Maybe it wasn't the suits?
• In alpine skiing, Ted Ligety won gold for the Americans in the men's giant slalom and Andrew Weibrecht earned silver in the Super G.  But all anybody wanted to talk about was Bode Miller, who won the bronze in Super G.  Not so much that he is the oldest (36) to win an Olympic medal in that sport, but because he participated in an NBC postrace interview that would have made Barbara Walters proud.  It's one thing for the network to mic Miller's wife to get her reactions during the race.  It's quite another for reporter Christin Cooper to constantly badger Miller with questions about his dead brother and how that has affected his skiing, to the point where he was "showing his emotions" (also known as blubbering like a baby) on camera.  Was that really necessary?  Isn't it enough to just let Miller enjoy the moment?
• The Americans also won medals in skeleton and bobsled.  But most of the attention went to Lolo Jones, the 2012 Summer Olympics track participant whose inclusion on one of the women's bobsled teams raised hackles because some folks thought NBC had a hand in getting her picked over a more deserving competitor.  As it was, Jones joined the list of those who competed at both the Winter and Summer Games without a medal to show for it.  
• The big news at NBC, besides promoting the heck out of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" (as Ed McMahon would have said it during the Johnny Carson era), was the return of Bob Costas.  After six nights of Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera, Costas' red eyes had apparently cleared up enough to allow him to return as prime time host.  As for Fallon, he's like a puppy just out of the shelter, eager to please his new owners.  Everyone seems to adore him, just like a puppy.  Too bad Fallon isn't as funny as a cute puppy.

So it goes in Sochi, with just a few days left before the Olympic flame is snuffed out.  What, pray tell, is going to happen next?

Wolves 2013-14: Dark Horse and a Playoff Spot

Wizards v/s Timberwolves 03/05/11 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Though you wouldn't have known it from their record, the Minnesota Timberwolves are actually in the hunt for the last playoff spot in the NBA Western Conference.  All they have to do is to get past the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets for the right to get blown out of the first round by the Oklahoma City Thunder.

With a 25-28 record after the All Star break, the Wolves would have been shoo-ins for an Eastern Conference playoff spot, where only four teams are above the .500 mark.  In the West, there are nine teams.  The Wolves right now are the darkest of horses.

Otherwise it's the same old problems:  Injuries to key players that leave the Wolves short handed.  The ineffectiveness of Ricky Rubio, J.J. Barea and other draft picks from the David Kahn era.  The inability to put away opponents in the fourth quarter.  The lack of a decent bench.  And the lingering questions about the futures of coach Rick Adelman and Kevin Love.

Love made the most of his turn as a starter for the West at the recent NBA All Star Game in New Orleans, scoring 13 points in 33 minutes.  It has become increasingly obvious that Love is not going to be a Timberwolf much longer, with his stock rising to the point where it would no longer make sense for him to remain in the Twin Cities.  So instead of the Wolves waiting for Love to turn into a free agent and getting nothing in return, they should do him (and us) a favor by trading him elsewhere.

The Wolves do plan on sticking around downtown Minneapolis for the foreseeable future, whether Love does the same or not.  Target Center, now considered one of the oldest NBA arenas, is getting a makeover.  The team and the WNBA Lynx are also moving their practice facility to the much-maligned Block E, which will be renamed Mayo Clinic Square.  It seems the world-famous Mayo is getting into the sports medicine business.

What the Timberwolves would really like to do in the final few weeks of the regular season is to break from the five-team logjam and secure their first playoff spot in a decade.  It won't be easy--nothing about this team ever is.  If they somehow make it, it could go a long way toward keeping Kevin Love in Minnesota.  Not to mention ending a decade of bad basketball.