Weekend Links (on a Tuesday!) [RandBall]

Forgot to post the link to Saturday's RandBall column. Topics this week: pitching independent of fielding, international soccer, bearded guys, and Ed Hightower.

Is Being a "Real" Fan a Good Idea?

I have always come down on the side the intense, partisan sports fan. This is, in part, because I am one. The teams of my youth have been a part of my life for so long that they feel like family members. I take them seriously enough that their failures feel like my failures, and their successes mine as well.

Yes, I do realize how silly this sounds, to allow my life to be affected by the fortunes of a group of highly-paid gladiators or by a bunch of college students. Yet I've always been an advocate for this, for one reason: if you don't let a team matter so much, then how can the successes feel so sweet?

Take one of the highest highs I've felt as a sports fan: the Golden Gopher football team's 23-20 win over Michigan in 2005. I'm sure I would have felt elated in any case, but would the feeling have been so striking had I not suffered through painful Minnesota losses to the Wolverines in 2003 and 2004? If I didn't know that it was the first Gopher win over Michigan in 19 years? That my first memory as a sports fan was that 1986 Gopher win, and of my dad explaining just why that win was such a big deal?

I'm not sure, but I've always acted that way. I've even made efforts to supplement the teams of my youth with other teams in other leagues, all based on one principle: "Unless you care maybe a little too much, it's just not fun."

I just don't know if this is a good idea any more.

I've constructed a large set of teams that are important to me, but I'm starting to think that this just gives me a larger number of reasons to be pessimistic and angry. If you've read this blog at all over the past five and a half years, you know these to be my default settings.

And yet, even when success comes, I'm on my guard. I've told several people this fall that I "don't want to get my hopes up" about the 9-1 Vikings. They're clearly as good as they've been in a decade, but I'm not even getting that excited, just waiting for the pain that feels inevitable.

I am starting to wonder if I might not be happier as more of a sports atheist, someone who watches sports for entertainment, not for personal validation.

There are problems with this, too. I take my work seriously, but like most people I have a limited capacity for it. I love reading and I enjoy music and movies the same as anyone else, but these are more diversions than passions. When I read or watch a movie or listen to an album, I don't do it to feel success or failure, only to be entertained, and I can't imagine otherwise.

I could throw myself into the pursuit of knowledge or skill - learn cabinetry or three languages or to play the banjo, but why? Learning just to learn is fun but ultimately pointless, even if I can learn to serenade crowds with German-language bluegrass music while standing atop a wardrobe.

So if not sports, then where should I place my passion?

I'm not sure what to do. All I know for sure is this: the occasional feeling of elation might not be enough to balance out the consistent disappointment and anger of being a "real" fan.

"How the Vikings moved to Los Angeles," Chapter 2 [Minnesota Vikings]

When the history of the Minnesota Vikings' impending move to Los Angeles is written, rest assured that yesterday's events will constitute the beginning of Chapter 2, which will be named "Tensions Escalate" or "Relationships Strain" or (depending on who writes the book) "The Wilfs Set Their Evil Plan in Motion."

From the Star Tribune:

In the clearest sign that the Minnesota Vikings are drawing a line in the sand over a new stadium, the team abruptly broke off relations Wednesday with the Metrodome's owners over plans to play there after the next two years.

The Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission floated a plan to extend incentives to the Vikings, in exchange for a two-year lease extension - with included penalties if the team didn't agree. Hardball, for sure; the MSFC will vote on that plan today.

The Wilfs, team owners, were incensed by this, and "broke off relations" with the committee, at least as much as owners of a team that's playing in a committee-owned building rent-free can break off said relations.

The owners also trotted out the usual "we're last in the league in revenue" chestnuts. Never mind that being last in the league in revenue in the NFL is like being first in the league in revenue in the NBA or NHL; dang it, those Wilfs aren't making as much money as they could from this team! Quick, get them hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars! We must help!

I love the Vikings, and I really hope they stay. But every bit of news makes it seem less and less likely. I'm pretty sure the book on the move is already being written.

The Most Minnesotan Event of All

I've recently finished reading Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All, by the great English actor, writer, raconteur, web expert, television host, documentarist - let us just say "entertainer" - Stephen Fry. Fry set out, in a London cab, to drive around America and visit all fifty states in turn. Not every state got its fair shake - some get merely a page, and a picture of the author near a sign post - but Minnesota got a moderate if not prolonged visit.

Fry stopped by in midwinter, just in the middle of a cold snap, and so got to experience the cold that Minnesota is so justly famous for. The people he visited, sensibly, took him out on Lake Minnetonka to ride snowmobiles and go ice fishing.

Now, as Minnesota activities go, this is a pretty good one; you can get a good slice of the local flavor by bundling up in your warmest clothes and sitting on a giant block of ice for hours at a time, the more so if it's dark, as well. But it got me thinking - for a visitor, if you were going to take them to one activity or event that is more Minnesotan than any other, what would it be?

Here's some suggestions that I've come up with:

• Playing a round of golf while there is snow on the ground. I'm shocked every year, but every year in April and November, you'll see local golfers trudging the links, even if they're delayed by the occasional still-melting snowpile.
• A nice game of pickup pond hockey. Though it might be hard to get a 52-year-old man out on the ice in -30 temperatures. Maybe a nice broomball game instead? (It's like hockey, for people who can't stickhandle or skate!)
  
• A "feed" of any kind. Fish, pancake, turkey, sausage, corn - if somebody's serving it in giant quantities, people will come. (Note that this suggestion also encompasses all potlucks, especially if they are held in a church basement or gymnasium.) Or the ultimate:
• A lutefisk dinner. No, I've never been to one. Yes, I'm afraid.
  
• The state boys' hockey tournament. The classic suggestion, of course. Having been there, I can say that it's not that big a deal... until you remember that it's high school hockey and yet there's 17,000 people there and there are people scalping tickets outside the arena.
• An outstate high school basketball rivalry game. I've met a lot of people who went to metro-area schools with good basketball teams. Most of them never went to a school basketball game. Some even made a special effort to stay away. They just don't understand what it's like to watch, say, Ortonville vs. Milbank (SD) on a cold January night. Maybe you have to be from the prairie to understand (or at least have watched Roseau play Warroad in hockey on TV.)
  
• The summertime parade at any "-Fest" or "- Days". Not just outstate, either - do they still have Raspberry Days in Hopkins?
• Driving north on Highways 35, 169, 10, or 94 on a Friday in the summer. Our state dream may be owning a cabin up north, but it's prefaced with our state summer activity: sitting in traffic for miles and miles.
• Town-team baseball. Maybe a visit to Miesville or Jordan... or Rosen, home of the concessions stand that doubles as the world's largest beer cooler.
  

I'm sure there's others that I'm forgetting. Set me straight, if you like.

If it's a sporting event you're after, to define Minnesota over a couple of pages in a book, it should probably involve winter and ice. It is, for better or for worse, what we're known for. And so ice fishing wasn't a bad choice, Mr. Fry - though a turn on a set of skates, stick in hand, might have worked too.

On Productive Outs [Twinkie Town]

Over at Twinkie Town today, I've got a post going up about productive outs. I figured it would end with the following sentence: "Making an out ALWAYS reduces the number of runs your team is expected to score." What I found, surprised me.

Weekend Links [RandBall]

This week's batch of weekend links is here. Subjects this week: the fall of the Minnesota Thunder, hockey suspensions, JJ Hardy, and sportswriters.

Oh, What a Goal! [Minnesota Wild]

The Wild lost last night, 4-3 in a shootout to the Lightning. It should have won the game handily and going away, but it gave up three goals - two of them in the third period - thanks to the following blunders:

1. Shane Hnidy got tangled up behind his own net on a power play, lost an edge, fell down, and hurt himself. Not his fault, but it gave the Lightning an easy centering pass and a shorthanded goal.
2. Cal Clutterbuck, back defending a 3-on-2 rush, stumbled near his own blue line. Because of the stumble, he had to lunge for a cross-ice pass. He missed. This resulted in a 3-on-1 and another Lightning goal. (Incidentally, this never would have happened if Kim Johnsson hadn't lost the puck on a 3-on-1 rush the other way, without a defender within twenty feet.)
3. Marek Zidlicky took a stupid penalty with 1:18 to go, giving Tampa Bay the chance to pull the goalie and get a 6-on-4 advantage, and the tying goal.

The Wild followed all by losing a shootout to a team that hadn't scored a shootout goal all year. It was a terrible way to lose a point; Minnesota outplayed the Lightning, yet managed to blunder into a shootout loss.

But I'm here to tell you none of that matters - at least, not if you watch Owen Nolan's goal about three or four times.



You will probably not see a better Wild goal than that this year. Simply extraordinary - all the more because Nolan is 127 years old.

Elizabeth Lambert: Who's Refereeing This, Mike Dean? [Soccer]

The Elizabeth Lambert story has been all over the internet for a couple of days. If you haven't seen it: Lambert, a University of New Mexico defender, was caught playing dirty on camera in the Mountain West semifinals against BYU. And when I say dirty, I mean "violently enough that a Mountain West women's soccer game has been the talk of the internet."

If you haven't seen the video, it's via ESPN. Today, the New York Times got in on the act, publishing a story that had several people openly wondering if the uproar was because it was a women's soccer player and not a men's player. Said University of North Carolina head coach Anson Dorrance, famous for his "be a warrior-woman" style of coaching:

It’s almost like they crossed a gender line they weren’t allowed to cross, like we want to take them out of the athletic arena and put them in the nurturing, caring role as mothers of children.

Now, I've watched a lot of soccer, almost all of it men's soccer in international competition and the big European leagues. As an Arsenal fan, too, I know from abjectly poor refereeing, but even Mike Dean refereeing at Old Trafford wouldn't ignore blatant calls like this. Let's go over the video:

0:23 - Lambert gets a minor elbow in the stomach. She retaliates by hauling off and punching the forward between the shoulder blades. In English soccer, if the ref saw it she'd be sent off; if not, she'd end up getting a two- or three-game suspension after the game from the FA.

0:30 - Scrum over the ball. Lambert kicks her opponent while on the ground, then kicks her again after the ball's gone, for good measure. This would provoke a slap fight, followed by (at best) a yellow card or (at worst) straight red for Lambert.

0:32 - Horrible tackle. From behind, Lambert comes over the ball, misses the ball completely, and nails a BYU forward. That one's yellow if it's Mike Dean refereeing a Manchester United game, but more likely red.

0:40 - Lambert yanks a BYU player down by the ponytail. There are English players with long hair. If this happened, we're looking at a straight red card and a probable five-game suspension.

1:10 - Lambert kicks the ball into an opposing player's face while the opponent was on the ground. She's finally cautioned by the ref for this. It likely would have been a caution in the English game, too, except it also would have started another slap fight.

1:16 - Crazy clearing attempt in which Lambert punches an opponent in the face. Straight red card for sure. (If you disagree, I once saw Arsenal's Sol Campbell get sent off for elbowing someone in the face, even though a) Campbell was running in front of him; b) Campbell never saw him; and c) Campbell was swinging his arms in the normal course of running with the ball.)


Total it all up - that's six separate incidents, five of which could have caused Lambert to be sent off, and two of which would have resulted in impressive suspensions if she'd pulled the same moves in a European game.

So that is my question. I don't care that Lambert's a woman; I don't care that she's breaking through her societally-assigned gender role, or whatever. Who the heck was refereeing this game? Were the assistant referees both blind? How in the heck did Lambert ever escape without getting sent off?

Clearly, that's the real crisis. We need some better women's soccer referees, stat.

More on Payrolls [MLB / Twinkie Town]

Over at Twinkie Town, I've written yet another column about MLB payrolls. Lots of baseball people like to talk about how money doesn't necessarily buy success. (Hint about the article: it does.)

Weekend Links [RandBall]

Saturday morning is a good time for some weekend links. Subjects covered this week: hockey, visual displays of information, LeBron, and onomatopoeia.

Fun to Watch [Minnesota Timberwolves]

Following last night's loss to Boston, I had a few thoughts about the Timberwolves. My verdict: they may have lost, but it was fun to watch, and I think things are - gasp - actually looking up.

Ruling Needed: Lookalikes [Minnesota Timberwolves]

As part of their ongoing effort to hold the rights to every NBA player for at least 24 hours, the Timberwolves this season acquired seven-footer Oleksiy Pecherov, who has also variously been called "Alex", "Oleg", "Aleskiy", and "Oleskiy" in reports I've seen.

This is not what I'm worried about. Here's what I can't decide: does Pecherov look more like Simon Pegg in "Shaun of the Dead," or Stewie Griffin from "Family Guy"?


His bio picture doesn't really help, either. I can't quite decide; if anything, Pecherov just looks like a bizarro "If They Mated" offspring of Pegg and Stewie.

Canis Hoopus has already voted for Griffin. I've heard at least one more vote for Pegg. I can't decide. Someone break this tie.

Reveling in it [Minnesota]

Pardon us Minnesotans a bit of celebration, won't you?

The Vikings won yesterday at Lambeau Field, giving them the season sweep for the first time since 2005. Even more excitingly, the Vikings did it with one of the more revered Packers of all time at the helm of the offense. The jilted Green Bay fans booed their lungs out and their hero stuck it to them anyway, and a frustrated, impotent-with-rage Packer fan is the best kind of Packer fan. We still don't like Brett Favre, but if he makes Wisconsinite fans miserable, there must be some good in him.

The Gopher football team came up with an win over Michigan State. The Spartans lost the previous week to undefeated Iowa on the final play of the game, making the win more impressive. More importantly, the new-found tradition of bizarre, lucky, Gopher-assisting plays at TCF Bank Stadium continued uninterrupted - and also, we can all reminisce about "the game when the entire stadium booed the referees for an entire drive."

The Wild got two wins, both in regulation, and that's a step in the right direction for a team that so far has stampeded backwards and sideways at every opportunity. It's just nice to see a game in which the opposition gets no points, let alone the one or two the team allowed in every game up until this weekend.

The Gopher hockey team, for a change of pace, actually scored. Those of us who sat through a one-point weekend in North Dakota and back-t0-back home 3-0 losses against Denver got something to cheer about - and a Battle Hymn and a stick salute as well.

Honestly, if the Timberwolves hadn't lost twice, this would have been one of the best Minnesota sports weekends ever. And if you can't ignore a couple of Wolves losses after a weekend like this...