I Dislike Your Favorite Team

There's a really old grumpy white guy. There's a younger white guy whose facial hair and frown connotes a certain confused toughness. There's a couple of other white guys in the middle.* There's an old white guy with a leather jacket, which means his reactionary conservatism is somehow a cool, rebellious stance**. And photoshopped in, Mike and Mike! When Mike Greenberg (a pretty fantastic douche in his own right), is the one whisper of a minority voice on your banner photo, and you are discussing sports full time, you may wish to think about how you are going about business. Just sayin'.


*I feel a bit bad about that one, as Judd Zulgad, the 3rd white guy from the left, is one of my favorite radio hosts in the Twin Cities. He deserves his job, which necessitates waking up early in the morning, driving to an AM sports station, and having to engage with, for hours at end, Jeff Dubay. I take it back - Zulgad doesn't deserve that at all. He deserves something a bit better.

**To be clear, that isn't supposition. That's Joe Soucheray, host of Garage Logic, and he's tough as fucking nails! He's an angry, leathery Ward Cleaver, complaining, for example, about how single moms are ruining society. Seriously. A couple of months ago, he made that argument. A couple of months ago!

It has been awhile since I've written a blog post specifically targeting one of our local Star Tribune columnists. The only excuse I can offer is that the Star Trib experimented with a Pay to Read structure for some of their most "in-demand" columnists, which of course meant that no one read them (aside from the tech-averse who thought getting a paper stuffed to the gills with AP articles was worth having delivered to their doorstep). But that experiment has died, and we can all read all of the Star Tribbers in all of the glory.

And today, I'd like to focus on Sid Hartman, the hardliest-working columnist in the Twin Cities. Believe me, it was a tough choice. After all, Patrick Reusse wrote this defense of urban teachers in the Twin Cities:

 "We have received an enormous influx of poor and tired and tempest-tossed people from cities that have decayed, and from other lands...And as Minneapolis and St. Paul teachers and administrators have done their darndest to educate these often disadvantaged pupils, they have seen their efforts bad-mouthed by legislators from school districts with newer buildings and better equipment and with one-10th of the problems in a week that a Twin Cities teacher can face on a daily basis."

It's a wonderful sentiment, except that Reusse is using that as a jumping off point to argue that anyone against $700,000,000 of public money on a new Vikings stadium is an idiot. Seriously. Just guessing, here, Pat, but if you polled those teachers, they would say, "Hey, if you are going to raise $700 million dollars, how about you spend it on the education system you are lauding? (you fucking dummy)." Just to be clear, I'm not calling Patrick Reusse a fucking dummy--that was just my imagining of what 95% of all teachers in the Twin Cities would say. Those teachers would also probably point out that an investment in education has been proven, by serious economists, to be an actual investment--every dollar put into improving education leads to about ten dollars in revenue for the state. Stadiums? Not so much. Just sayin'.  Not that Reusse couldn't dig up a Gym Teacher or two who support the new stadium. He didn't bother to, of course (that would require "work", something the sports columnists of the Twin Cities papers have heard rumors of, and this "work", you speak of? It gives them the willies.)

And that's as good as any segue into Sid Hartman's latest inanity. Let's do it!

I won't bother with Sid's opening paragraph, in which he argues that a new Vikings stadium would host exactly the same number of Vikings games that the Metrodome hosts (though it does take some special chutzpah to make that a selling point.)

There's a metric ton of idiocy in Hartman's column, so let's just take the prospect of the Super Bowl argument for now. Sid says, "[One] showcase event that could come here with a new covered stadium would be the Super Bowl, which was at Indianapolis this year, at Cowboys Stadium last year, at Arizona's University of Phoenix Stadium at 2008 and at Detroit's Ford Field in 2006. The Giants and Jets' new MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., is getting the Super Bowl in 2014, even though it is an open-air stadium."

All true. And if the Vikings got a brand new, Billion Dollar Stadium, the Super Bowl would undoubtedly come here. Once. Exactly Once. That's how the NFL backs up its owners, by essentially guaranteeing that if  an ownership can get one over on their populace, the NFL will reward it with a Super Bowl. But let's be clear, the Vikings could spend $10 Billion on the new stadium, and have it outfitted with tiny cameras that flew across the field on solar powered wings and rendered every image in perfect, hi-definition 3D graphics, and the new Vikings Stadium would still get exactly One (1) Super Bowl. You know why? The Super Bowl is in February, and that brand new Vikings Stadium would still be located in Minnesota. So Sid's inventory of future and recent Super Bowl's is that perfect kind of fact--it is true, but it isn't illuminating. Dallas and Arizona will host again, to be sure. Indianapolis' current stadium will not host another Super Bowl. I guarantee it. Neither will Detroit. I'll be shocked if Metlife Stadium gets another one after what I assume will be a debacle (by NFL Super Bowl Standards) in 2014--wind! Maybe snow!

You know how I know all of these things? I've looked at the damn history of the Super Bowl--Miami and New Orleans, between them have hosted 19 Super Bowls. (That does not include the four held in Tampa Bay, by the by. Or the seven in Los Angeles...between Miami, New Orleans, Tampa and LA, we are talking about 31 of the 47 Super Bowls played). Everything about Super Bowl distribution screams "Nice Place To Go In Winter, Unless We've Got a Debt to Pay". Which is fine, but Minnesota Vikings fans should know, without a doubt, that it doesn't matter how awesome their new stadium is...they are getting one Super Bowl. And given the state of their team, it won't be the Vikings playing there come February of whatever year. Because the Vikings are terrible, you see.

There's some dirty pool going on in the NFL with this--yes, if you build a new stadium, you will get a Super Bowl, almost certainly (especially if it has a roof, regardless of how temperate it is). But let's not kid ourselves, the Super Bowl sells itself on tourist destinations, for the most part. If the NFL doesn't have a new stadium to reward, it will always go with tourist-friendly, warm in February locales. But you could have one Super Bowl, at least, as opposed to zero, whispers Roger Goodell in your ear. And if you happen to be in a Southern City, with a stadium younger than Lindsey Lohan, like Atlanta, you'll be told, "Yes, you are a perfect city, in a southern locale, that can generate some idle tourist dollars, but Gosh, with all of these new stadiums popping up, suddenly, your venue looks old and busted, like Lindsey Lohan." I explained all of this in my excellent post, "The Super Bowl as Economic Weapon", which apparently Sid Hartman never read. Someone should teach him how to operate a computing machine.

Yesterday, with enough fanfare to suggest the stadium deal was not only completed, but the stadium was already finished, the Vikings and Ramsey County officials announced a partnership to build a stadium, whilst overlooking some pretty massive issues with that plan.

If you are a casual follower of this issue (and most people are) you'd think something had been accomplished.  Nothing really has as of yet, though.  Everyone talking about this big new deal has totally ignored that they do not have, as yet, a ton of support in the State Legislature, and have a governor in Mark Dayton who has pretty carefully delineated how much he'd be willing to spend (not enough for the plan as it stands).  Governor Dayton even suggested that most of $300 million the state is willing to spend (and that number just seems to have come out of thin air--it's not like a state in a deficit of $5 billion has any money to spend on stadiums) would go to infrastructure if that is needed, and a long abandoned Ammunition Plant well off of the interstates flowing into the Twin Cities would need a lot of infrastructure, presumably.

But never mind all of that!  I'm here to talk and giggle at the insanity of Patrick Reusse's column on the subject.  Keep in mind, this man gets paid well to deliver his opinion on all things sports-related (and also all things Park Near Where Pat Reusse Lives-Related).

You know that super-conservative, kinda racist uncle you have, who because he succeeded in his little narrow niche, thinks he knows better than you in every facet of everything?  That's what reading Reusse is like.  You probably just shake your head at your uncle every Thanksgiving and move on with your life.  Would that I could do that with Reusse.  Let's get to the old crank uncle version of the sort-of/not-really new Stadium deal!

The first four paragraphs of Reusse's column deal with a deal in Minneapolis that never, ever had a chance--both Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis weren't really interested in dealing with the Viking's demands; Hennepin County bowed out; the City of Minneapolis put out a tough deal that demanded the Vikings actually sacrifice a little.  Reusse gives Hennepin County a pass, but roughs up the City of Minneapolis for not being active enough--by which he means, give up their Farmer's Market site with a whimper.

Then, Reusse gets to the meat of the matter:  "On Tuesday, the Vikings came with the deal that politicians and pundits have been ordering them to deliver for years: They came with a large financial commitment from ownership and with a fully engaged local partner."

That's one way of putting it.  The other way of putting it could be that the Vikings have put up the exact minimum demanded of them by politicians (if that).  And they've put that money into an location that needs massive work,which they aren't helping to clean up/fix/make suitable for a stadium.  That cost is nowhere in any projections, though Governor Dayton's studies (who goes unmentioned in Reusse's piece) suggest it could be more than $200 million dollars).

Here's what it get's weird and super-tangential.  For those of you who don't know--the new location is kind of out of the way.  It's north of I-694, the northern part of the interstate Beltway of the Twin Cities.  Public transportation (in general, pretty bad in the Twin Cities) is practically nonexistent that far north of the metro.  But I should mention (because it is important to the craziness that is about to follow) that the Twin Cities are working to improve their mass transit with additions to an urban light rail line that will connect downtown St. Paul with downtown Minneapolis.  Remember that I said that part, OK?  Because it's about to get all Old and Cranky and Weird up in here.

Reusse: "We know Arden Hills does not fit the dream of the transit crowd. Currently, those dreamers are busy spending scores of millions to turn University Avenue into a modern version of post-war East Berlin, all in the name of a choo-choo from downtown St. Paul hooking up with the Hiawatha Line in downtown Minneapolis."

Arden Hills doesn't fit with the dream of anyone who likes to attend Viking games, but doesn't want to drive for 45 minutes, or pay a monopoly to park their car.  Say what you will about the Metrodome, but it being in a central location allowed people to walk there, bus there, train there, or choose from a wide variety of urban, independent parking lots.  There are no parking lots in Arden Hills, and the only ones that will be there will be owned by the Vikings.  Yeah, only crazy Transit Fans (?) hate the Arden Hills site.  And I'm not sure why post-war East Berlin is the reference of choice, except that it sounds horrible.  I live and work near University Avenue--am I avoiding it right now?  Sure--because it is under construction, not because it reminds me of a grim Communist dystopia.  It's called hyperbole, and Patrick Reusse is just like Joseph Stalin, in that he uses hyperbole well.  (see what I did there?)


Read that last part again--"All in the name of a choo-choo".  People who like mass transit in central urban corridors are babies!  That's called infantilizing your opponents.  Also it was a favorite technique of Stalin.  Also, Pat Reusse is a big goddamn baby.  (I may be using it a little too bluntly, but you get my demo, yeah?)

Next paragraph (complete with hinted conspiracy theory):  "One vestige of previous construction is a large train station in front of the Metrodome. Another is the hub serving Target Field. Thus, the transit crowd could live with either a new Metrodome or the Farmers Market site, to offer impressive ridership numbers on Sundays in the fall and early winter...Come 2015, not long after the St. Paul-Minneapolis hookup is complete, the transit crowd will have to admit that it previously was delivering several thousand Vikings fans by train, and now, after spending those scores of millions tearing up University Avenue, it is delivering zero Vikings fans by train."


The "transit crowd".  Sounds ominous.  Perhaps Reusse should have capitalized it--"The Transit Crowd" would have been much scarier.  But it is a crazy argument.  No one wants a new stadium, if they have to pay for it.  It makes economic sense to use existing resources.  The train will have function beyond the Vikings (the thousands it delivers to Vikings Games, it does exactly 8 times a year (barring that occasional year they have/lose a home playoff game)--and yet, for some reason, it operates the other 357 days that the Vikings don't play, and still finds a purpose and a ridership.

The Transit Crowd (who?) wants a new stadium built near an existing Train Stop, so they can boost their ridership numbers.  Not far from that argument is, "Let's build a train system who serves no one and see how many people ride that!"  By the way, there's this thing you can do, called research--let me show you what it can do.  Reusse argues that the Public Transit Cabal of the Twin Cities (who?) wants the Metrodome station to remain busy for those 8 Sundays a year to inflate their statistics.  In the 3rd Quarter (July, August, September) of 2010, the light rail of Minnesota averaged 35,000 riders a day.  We can recognize that this is the busiest time of the year for sports, yes?  In the first quarter of 2010 (featuring January, February and March--little Vikings, no Twins), the light rail averaged 27,000 riders a day.  That might seem like a dip, until you remember that the Transit Authority weren't expecting numbers like that until at least 2020.  Still successful!  Still a horribly stupid argument from Reusse!  (and I didn't mention that the numbers actually dip on Sunday--the train is being used by commuters, as it was to meant to be.  Duh.)

The simple answer, that Reusse refuses to acknowledge, is that no one likes the deal the Vikings are putting out there.  A couple of Ramsey County commissioners smell a chance to clean a deserted SuperFund* site, see the lack of interest from actual sites, and put something together--a deal that the Vikings love, Ramsey County voters will hate for good reason, and the State isn't going to back any time soon.

Oh Yeah--Bike Riders who love Minnesota--Pat Reusse thinks you guys aren't worth it either:  "[Instead of working on a Vikings Stadium] The political leaders in Minneapolis were occupied with other matters, such as moving up in the ratings for "Most Bicycle Friendly City in America."

Everyone who doesn't love what Pat Reusse does is stupid and kind of faggy! So says Pat Reusse!



*That's something that goes unmentioned a lot--the new Vikings stadium site needs massive clean-up:  from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency:  "Contamination resulting from past ammunition manufacturing operations at the facility has been identified in groundwater, soil, sediment and surface water. Contaminants of concern include chlorinated solvents, explosives, metals, VOCs, SVOCs, PCBs, PAHs and lead. The primary contaminants of concern in the groundwater both on and off-site are VOCs. The contaminants in the soil on TCAAP primarily consist of VOCs and lead. The contaminated sites that are being addressed by the Army consist of ground and surface water, surface disposal areas, sediments, disposal pit/dry well, landfills, chemical disposal areas, firing ranges, small arms ranges, unexploded munitions/ordnance and burn areas. The Army, U.S. EPA, and MPCA have worked jointly to determine the contaminants involved, the extent of the contamination, and the remediation that is required."

Patrick Reusse must have paid extra to live under a bridge that had internet access. Most bridges don't, you see. And he's a troll. Get it? I've just made a joke more clever than any of the dozen or so Reusse attempts in his Turkeys of the Year column.

It feels a little weird to be nodding in agreement with Patrick Reusse--my brain keeps communicating to news to my neck muscles, but they raise an eyebrow before going along (yeah, my neck muscles have eyebrows. Shut up.)

As I mentioned previously, Jim Souhan was in full-on bitch mode today.

Baseball loves statistics. We know that. We've seen the explosion of new stats, like VORP, and MORK, and GORP. Even old standbys like AVG and ERA can be illuminating. Statistics are not inherently good, of course. In the hands of a hack, they can be twisted to deliver fake good news, often by using too small of a sample to be a true stat. Let's take a quick look at an example of each, delivered by sportswriters for the Star Tribune.

Apparently, during a week which saw countless Favre rumors, some Timberwolf GM rumors, and the Fishing Opener (you may have to live in the Minnesota/Wisconsin are to truly appreciate the importance of that), Patrick Reusse passed over all of those topics for his Sunday column. 

Did the Head Coach of the Minnesota Footballin' Gophers use Twitter to mock a super fat Star Tribune columnist for being fat?  Did some higher up at the U of M tell that coach to delete his "tweet"?

Pat Reusse interviews some Vikings about Obama's win.  He gets some get good quotes--thoughtful quotes from some not particularly well-known Vikings.

Mike Lamb came off the bench to drive in the RBI against Sox closer Papelbon. Those are the barest of facts. With those facts, one could read the game a lot of different ways.

There's Twins Beat Writer, La Velle Neal's take on it:

A lot of things have gone the wrong way for Twins third baseman Mike Lamb lately, such as his batting average and, consequently, his playing time.

Yet he stood in the clubhouse after Friday's 7-6 comeback victory over Boston, his ears ringing from teammates slapping him on the head, hoping his walk-off two-run single in the ninth against one of the best closers in baseball has relit his pilot.

And then there is fatty Patty Reusse:

That ugly fifth gave Boston a 6-5 lead and the Red Sox failed to add on, even with chances against relievers Juan Rincon in the sixth, Dennys Reyes in the eighth and Jesse Crain in the ninth.

Would it matter?

The Twins' last shot appeared to come in the sixth, when third base coach Scott Ullger got Young thrown out at the plate by a hefty margin on Adam Everett's second double.

Yes, the Twins were prepared to achieve the improbable -- losing when Everett, the lightest of hitters, had his annual game with more than one extra-base hit.

They had given away a handful of runs in the field, and they had killed a rally with Ullger's faulty arm-waving, and now Jonathan Papelbon was entering to preserve the victory for the defending champions of North American hardball.

Boy, hard to count all the cheap shots in those few paragraphs. Scotty Ullger made a huge mistake for waving home a speedster on a double in the late innings? Adam Everett had a good game, and he's slagged for it; the bullpen isn't given any credit for it's bend but not break innings, which they probably actually deserve credit for, seeing as they are one of the toughest bullpens in the Majors.

Hey, maybe Reusse is just a dick. Fat and lazy and a dick. Wow. That's some sort of trifecta that is to be proud of, I guess.

Last night, the Twins almost got no-hit; tonight they exploded for 13 runs on 16 hits. Getting that many hits isn't actually a shock. As the totally awesome announcing crew of Bremer and Blyleven pointed out, the Twins tend to get at least 10 hits after getting one-hit.

Things that don't normally happen after getting one-hit include winning the next game (they looked to my bare eyeball to be roughly .500, even with at least 10 hits), or getting 5 RBI's from Nick Punto (which simply never happens) or a rookie hitting for the cycle, as Carlos Gomez did.

How rare is it for a Twin to hit for the Cycle? You have to go back to Kirby Puckett, before he had even one World Series ring--1986, for fuck's sake. Gomez went 4-6, with 2 strikeouts, though to be fair, his last strikeout came after he had hit for the cycle, and had come up to bat for the second time in the 9th, with the Twins leading 13-0. Can one blame him for flailing a bit? I can't.

Carlos Gomez, of course, part of the Santana trade. The idiots who comment on The Star Tribune are already saying, "oops, I guess this was a good trade. This guy hit for the cycle."

It was a good trade, but not because Gomez hit for the cycle on one night. It was a good trade because Santana was asking for money that only 3 franchises were willing to pay, and the Twins got good value in return, Carlos Gomez being one of those guys, who'd still rather bunt than swing, regardless of tonight. It was a good trade, but not on the basis of an admittedly historic night.

Of course, it would be easy, on the night that Carlos Gomez hit for the cycle (something that Torii Hunter, never, ever did) to pull some random quote from Patrick Reusse decrying the trade that sent Santana to the Mets, that gave the Twins Gomez, and room to sign veteran pitcher Livan Hernandez. Because it is easy, I will do so:

He's 22, he's played in the big leagues, he's the key to the trade, the Twins don't have another center fielder worth mentioning, and Gomez isn't a cinch to be the regular?

If he's not in center on March 31, and on merit, then the Twins waited seven weeks to make the worst deal possible.

Of course, Reusse positively draped is predictions in "ifs", but his argument is clear, yeah? If it isn't, I'll direct you here, where we discussed his freak-out in some detail. To be fair, though, the headline says it all--it was, "Waiting Game Works Perfectly...For the Mets."

Tell it to the Mets, fatty.

Generally speaking, I really dislike the sports columnists of the Twin Cities newspapers. Back before I was a super powerful blogger in my own right, I was a super powerful reader of Deadspin, which used to have a regular feature called Why Your Hometown Columnist Sucks. They have discontinued it, it seems (what's up with that, Will?). But one of my first actions as a sportswebs interactor was to nominate Bob Sansevere of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I'm pretty sure every time you see the words, "a deadspin reader says", those words are mine.

My antipathy towards Tom Powers has been well documented on this site right here. And I stand by my assessment that Tom Powers is a Stupid Fat Fuck.

All of this is my way of saying kudos to the Star Tribune columnists of late.

I'm not a big fan of Patrick Reusse in general. He reminds me of me, when I was a junior in college and it was clear I was not going to be on the varsity soccer team, but I would be a damn good player on the JV. I could have fought hard, really pushed it, and tried against all odds to make Varsity, like Rudy, or Pre, or Terry Fox would have. I said, "fuck it" and coasted and had fun. Patrick Reusse gives off that same vibe. He knows he'll never be fired, but he's not destined for National Glory anytime soon. He's not ESPN Page 2 quality, and he knows it. But this piece on Randall McDaniel was a nice antidote to all of the New Mexico, Sex Boat, Tank Williams stories out there.

Key Passage:

McDaniel works both with students who have fallen behind and with students who are ahead of the curve and need to be challenged. He also serves as a substitute
teacher at the elementary schools.

A couple of years ago, the administrators at Sandburg Middle School asked McDaniel and his wife, Marianne, if they could get involved with students in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

Randall and Marianne started "Team McDaniel" for the 2005-06 school year. They asked students to join them in community service: volunteering at an assisted-living
facility, a food shelf and other outlets.

There were 36 students in the Sandburg group last year, and now the number is in the 80s.

I just flat out enjoy the writing of relative neophyte Twin Cities Sports Columnist Jim Souhan. Every time I read him, I'm impressed with his lack of bullshit, his lack of homerism, his unwillingness to write apologia for the owners (You hear me, Sid Hartman? Of course you don't, you are old and don't hear well).

He wrote the piece about a possible Iverson to Minnesota trade, and he put it out there, man. He said what needed to be said. And he said it well:

Perhaps never again in Garnett's tenure will the Wolves face an chance to trade so little for such a great, great player.

General Mismanager Kevin McHale needs to recognize where he and his "organization" reside: Nowheresville, U.S.A.

The Wolves aren't good enough to win a title. They aren't bad enough to ensure the high draft choices (they've still got their picks for 2023 and 2024) required to rebuild.

Garnett's versatile and relentless play will keep the Wolves in the middle of the pack, and the Wolves' lack of draft choices and cornucopia of bad contracts will keep them from ascending.

Which is why The Answer is the answer to the question: What have the Wolves got to lose?

I would like to salute the Star Tribune for having the courage to publish two sports editorials that weren't completely bullshit! Well done!