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Cold Spring 12-year-old gets hit in team’s first loss

Cold Spring right fielder Drew, nephew to renowned blogger Minnesota Transplant, had this to say after Tuesday’s first loss of the season:

“Where are we going to eat, Dad?”

The Cold Spring baseball team took a tough loss against the Osseo-Maple Grove, 3-1. The team is now 8-1-1* (*tie was officially a loss determined by a coin flip in bad weather earlier this season).

Drew strengthened the bottom of the batting order with a walk, a hit and at least two stolen bases. He got caught in a run-down in the third inning and was stranded on base in the sixth. He barely missed a hard hit ball while fielding his position, but redeemed himself later while fielding a grounder and firing it back to the infield with pinpoint accuracy.

The game was played in near perfect May conditions in front of an ardent crowd that included Auntie, visiting from Illinois, at the Weaver Lake fields.

In the other big Major League Baseball game of the day, Twins right fielder Erik Kamatsu was 1 for 3 in a 5-0 loss to the Cleveland Indians.

Minnesota Transplant was the sports editor for a quarter while attending the University of Minnesota-Morris in 1988. She never attended a game. Thank goodness for the sports copy generated by the university public relations team.

Twins make winter headlines, heighten anticipation

Minnesota Twins’ Joe Mauer made headline news in the Chicago Tribune today.

Normally, I don’t even open the sports pages during the winter because I care about baseball, and the “hot stove league” is boring; baseball writers are just filling news columns with speculation and in my neck of the woods, it’s speculation about Chicago teams.

Yawn.

But today, columnist Phil Rogers’ headline read: “Hometown hero now costly drag: Mauer’s huge, long-term contract hurting Twins more than it helps.”

Rogers’ point was this: Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau cost the Twins too much and can’t deliver, and he made a compelling case. He wrote, “It’s tough building a 25-man roster with two players getting 35 percent of the payroll.”

What I find interesting is that White Sox fans are watching the Twins so closely, even in wintry January. Is Rogers’ sour grapes attitude a reason to cheer for Twins fans?

Coincidentally, it reached 40 degrees this morning near Hampshire.

Warmer temps (however temporary) and Twins headlines in a Chicago newspaper whet my appetite for baseball and the clean slate of a new season.

Only 39 days to the first game of spring training. Ahh.

Why did coach Leslie Frazier go to the bank?*

One good thing about moving only two states away from one’s home state is that the professional sport teams are in the same divisions and play each other often. This means there’s lots  of opportunity for nostalgic cheering and trash talking.

See, if I had moved to Chuvashia, I wouldn’t even get box scores, let alone the opportunity to see Minnesota vs. Chuvash games on TV.

In Major League Baseball, that means I root for the Minnesota Twins and any team that plays against the Chicago White Sox. (Of course this year, it was hard to cheer for much of anything; I will, however, maintain my American League allegiances and root for the Texas Rangers in the World Series.)

In the National Football League, I am less partisan. Married to a die-hard Bears fan, I am contractually required to cheer for the Chicago Bears. Not just when they play again the Minnesota Vikings, but especially when they do.

Like tonight.

I will acknowledge, here in the privacy of the blog confessional, that even as I am in awe of Devin Hester careening down the field, I feel kinda sorry for Vikings fans this season. And darn, the distraction of the NBA season has been delayed.

* To get his quarter back. (Thanks, Drew, for the joke inspiration!)

9 things I learned from watching stock car races for a season (and 1 thing I still can’t figure out)

The last night of the season for stock car racing ended with a smoking hulk that came just shy of winning the demolition derby.

Junior, after the demolition derby. Nice rim, eh?

Casualty count: 4 cars, 1 wrist and about 20 evenings on the dirt track at Sycamore Speedway. We won’t count dollars spent. Don’t want to know.

Accolades earned: About six trophies and $100 for second place in the demo derby. Also: Machismo firmly established.

As the No. 1 fan, I sat in the wooden bleachers almost every race night and videotaped almost every race. Which is tricky with buttery fingers from the evilly delicious speedway popcorn doused in real golden flavoring. It wasn’t my first choice, but when we were dating, my Beloved and I made an agreement: He would go to baseball games with me if I would go to the races with him. So I did this for love. Here’s what I learned:

1. A dirt race track is not a fashion runway. I wore boots and jewelry the first night, and that was the last time. T-shirts, preferably with obscene comments, and torn jeans were more appropriate.
2. Sycamore Speedway smells like London. I’m not sure if I was catching whiffs of cabbie exhaust or the dank odor of the
   Underground, but especially in the spring and fall when it was cool and damp, I caught myself thinking of London. I know for sure it wasn’t the accents of the redneck fans that evoked those memories.
3. Races are won where the rubber hits the road. A bad tire brings even the fastest overpowered car to a stop. My Beloved and his brother went through at least 25 tires during the course of the season, most often the left front one, which took the most abuse on the quarter-mile track of constant left turns.
4. Lip gloss and dirt race tracks don’t mix. As the cars passed the stands at 50+ mph, they threw up a thin spray of grit on everything and everyone. Try looking sophisticated with mud on your glasses.
5. The super late models do not impress me. I was there for the spectator class — street cars modified only to remove the windows and unnecessary weight (like seats). The super late models look like sleek, nicely painted Nascar vehicles, but they’re louder, smellier and a lot more dainty. Every time there was a dust-up, the race was suspended. Babies. In the spectator class, disabled drivers were forced to sit in the middle of the action, flinching with every lap, until the race ended.This is what separated the boys from the men (or, in the poweder puff class, the girls from the gorillas).
6. Race car driving requires skill. I used to think anyone could step on the gas and turn left, but now I understand the courage, timing and finesse a successful race car driver must possess. Really!
7. A good race car driver requires a good pit crew. If it hadn’t been for our 17-year-old mechanic who loved wrenching, the season would have been over in June when My Beloved drove into the wall and killed the first car.
8. Race car fans breed. The roster of top drivers read like a script from a redneck “Dynasty.” Two surnames kept coming up, and in the Powder Puff category, two sisters — the daughters of the guy with the obnoxious cop car — took first and second place. And the stands were filled with kids! Last night, a woman brushed past me three times complaining “That’s how it is with potty training.” Really? Your 3-year-old needs to be exposed to smoke, noise and drunks until 11 o’clock? Yup. That’s how it is with race car fans.
9. Hot dogs taste better outdoors. This, I should have known, but I’m the woman who once enjoyed eating sushi and drinking wine at a Major League Baseball game in Toronto. Hot dogs are street food for a reason, and boy, those mustard-covered all-beef franks made a great chaser for blue smoke and gasoline fumes.

There’s one thing I still don’t understand though:

1. Crashes are awesome, man! The crowd was never so vocal as they were when two cars collided; 360-degree spins got extra points. Race track organizers saved the demolition derby for the final marquee event of the evening for a reason. At least a half-dozen cars flipped on their tops during the course of the season, and my heart always stopped when that happened. To the credit of the crowd, though, they cheered when the driver emerged triumphant from his upside-down vehicle.

Despite the dirt and blood-thirsty crowd (they must have been thirsty for something, given the piles of beer cups under the bleachers at the end of the night), I had a good time. I can’t say I’m sorry to see it end, because I’m not. But there’s a certain irony in the whole experience.

The speedway does a drawing every night for prizes like T-shirts and caps. Every night, I dutifully filled out my drawing slip, deposited it into the box and then listened to the track announcer call other people’s names. Until last night, the final night of the season. They drew my name! And guess what I won?

A free pass to a night of racing next summer.

Raise your hand and be counted (or, possibly, tackled)

The cover of the program for the high school football game two weeks ago featured a shot of a huddle cheer, players’ arms thrust in the air.

I grabbed the program on my way into the Edina, Minn., football field and immediately opened it to Page 16 to find my stepson listed as 5-foot-10. Yup, he’s finally as tall as I am, and he’s pretty stoked about that (a lot of men aren’t as tall as me; if you value height, you’re getting somewhere when you’re as tall as I am). He also outweighs me by 30 pounds, and he’s a sleek football machine. Pretty stoked about that, too.

The game was as exciting as regular season high school football games get. The stadium was packed, nearly 100 testosterone-flooded young men roamed the sidelines, the marching band featured at least 300 musicians, more than 30 cheerleaders filled the track, the Hornettes pom team did a little ditty after the band’s halftime show and the team beat Minneapolis Southwest handily — 38-0. As a middle linebacker, Caswell played a lot for an 11th grader, and we saw him cause a Southwest fumble. A great evening under the Friday night lights.

When I got home to the RV in which we stayed during our visit to Minnesota, I threw the program on the table and forgot about it.

When I was cleaning up the next day, the hand most prominent on the program cover caught my eye. The distinctively wide hand was attached to an arm that was the right shade of flesh with just a hint of reddish hair. It was holding a helmet at just the right angle to show off “Edina.”

“This looks like it could be your hand, Caswell,” I remarked.

“It is,” he said nonchalantly.

The featured hand on the cover of the Edina football program belonged to none other than my stepson! Of the hundred young men holding helmets in a hundred huddles last year, the photographer captured Caswell’s distinctive hand and put it on the cover of the program.

He got those hands from his father, and since I love his father’s big, meaty hands, I love Caswell’s hands, too. Besides heft, their structure has a certain elegance, too. A formal wedding photo of Caswell’s deceased grandfather — Tyler’s father — shows he had those broad, strong hands, too.

Caswell’s characteristic hands will be put into service again tonight high-fiving it, roughing up jerseys and pushing defenders aside when Edina (2-1) takes on Minnetonka (3-0).

Let’s get fired up! Can I get a big hand for Edina? [Spontaneous applause! Yay!]

The lost season

I gave up on the Twins on Aug. 7 when the White Sox (ugh!) swept them in a series. I’m not the only one; my Twins loving brother-in-law said that was the last straw for him, too.

I enjoyed listening to Jim Thome’s 600th home run earlier this week, but otherwise it’s been a lost season.

The Twins were supposed to challenging for the division lead at this point. What happened?

Really, what didn’t happen? Just about every regular has had some sort of vague, nuisance or freak injury that prevented the team from fielding its strongest offering.

If you’re a Twins fan, it’s just depressing. Even the White Sox fans around here are wringing their hands. Earlier this week, the Chicago Tribune offered up the mathematical probability of the Sox winning the division. Um, it ain’t gonna happen, and if the Sox can’t do it, the Twins don’t have a snowball’s chance in climate change.

The Twins are playing the Yankees this weekend (have I mentioned lately how much I hate the Yankees?), and I will note the Bronx Bombers have the best record in the American League. Yuck. What must it be like to be a fan of Boston or the Yankees and be virtually assured of watching your team play in the post-season?

So, around Minnesota Transplant’s house, we are preparing for the Bears season. Oh, the sports writers in Chicagoland are as hard on Jay Cutler as they are on Ozzie Guillen. I’ve got until at least the third week of the season before widespread pessimism will set in.

Whoot! Whoot!

Not jumping off the bandwagon yet

Here’s the difference between Minnesota sports fans and Chicago sports fans:

On Monday, Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano ripped his team, calling them “embarrassing” and a “Triple-A team.” Zambrano, a hot-head who broke a bat over his thigh recently when he had a bad at-bat (yes, he’s a National league pitcher who actually takes his batting seriously), proceeded to criticize his fellow teammate, pitcher Carlos Marmol, for poor pitch selection.

Ouch.

That was Monday.

Columnists all over the place were calling for Zambrano’s head, but he somehow managed to smooth things over.

Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune put the Cubs dead-last in the Major League Team power rankings. That spot had been occupied by the Twins for a couple of weeks; the Twins rose one spot to No. 29 this week.

Ooooh.

The Twins have won seven of their last eight games while the Cubs have lost eight of their last 10. The Twins still have the worst record in baseball.

So today, the front page of the Chicago Tribune sports section shows a huge picture of the owner of the Cubs and the general manager with a big earthquake-like split going between them with this headline:”A $278M payroll the last two years combined, 4th most in baseball; a 99-123 record since opening day 2010, 7th-worst in baseball — it’s enough to give the Cubs …

A SPLITTING HEADACHE

I cannot imagine a similar story appearing in the Star Tribune (Twins fans, you’ll have to catch me up on the carping that’s been going on as the Twins have struggled). Yet, that kind of thing appears regularly in Chicago. Players are constantly being called out for being cry-babies or whiners or lazy or some other derogatory term, and I don’t know how many times White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has been “this close” to being fired.

The manufactured drama just makes this stoic little Minnesota Twins fan a little incredulous.

But on the other hand, the Twins have been amazing this week. Ain’t it grand?!

‘I don’t want to hear it!’ (eyes closed, fingers in ears, shaking head vigorously)

I came across this headline in the Bleacher Report, and my heart fell into my stomach:

Could the Twins have a fire sale?

What?! My Twins? Give up? Sell their goodies on the open market? Sell? Out?

This is the kind of cynical hogwash I’ve become used to reading in the Chicago newspaper to which I subscribe about the deplorable Chicago White Sox. Manager Ozzie Guillen has been fired and replaced about 100 times already in the six weeks of this young season.

I’m one of those rabid Twins fans who believes my team is … different. Better. Honorable.

But … the Twins are 11-1/2 games out of first. Last place in the division. The only streaks they can muster are losing streaks. Baseball Prospectus’ postseason odds report gives the Twins a 7.6% chance of making the playoffs.

Objectively, the Twins suck (that’s a technical term). And in the business world, sucky teams (also a technical description) sell off their expensive baggage and regroup (the Chicago Cubs do it almost every season, and though it’s not pretty, it is what big-market teams do when it becomes apparent their fans aren’t going to show up to see a bunch of losers lose).

I don’t want the Twins to be that team! I’m not ready for that yet! I still have hope! Hope that Joe Mauer will feel better and that Justin Morneau is just warming up! Hope that Tsuyoshi Nishioka will heal and want to prove his worth to his countrymen! Hope that the Francisco Liriano is durable and consistent!

Delusion is acceptable at this point in the season (yes, it is!). Please do not suggest the Twins are like everybody else (they are not!). They could make a June 1991-like comeback (yes, a worst-to-first turnaround has happened before).

Well, they could.

Follow the bouncing ball

With March comes madness. About basketball. Seeds and brackets. Betting pools and media darlings. Sweet sixteen and final four.

Don’t care.

But what I do find interesting is now that it’s March, kids in my neighborhood come outside and play basketball in the driveways.

Love this.

They’re getting fresh air and exercise, and they’re not turning into gobs of fat in front of an iPad/computer/television screen. There are six driveway basketball hoops within 100 yards of my office window. If it’s even reasonably decent out after school, I can hear the thump, thump, thump of the ball bouncing on the asphalt, the middle-school trash talking and the whoops of triumph while I work. During one evening earlier this week, I saw flirting when two boys and a girl were playing basketball across the street. Lots of chasing and screaming, all in good fun.

It reminds me of spring and youth and vitality.

When I was growing up, the basketball hoop was attached to the garage near the alley behind my house. Even though I was freakishly tall, I wasn’t a good basketball player and I didn’t really enjoy playing basketball at all. But I played it for enough years to understand the concepts and appreciate the talent of good players.

Rather than practicing my free throws, I spent time in the front driveway bouncing a tennis ball against the house. The game I played was called 7up, and it involved a series of increasingly difficult manuevers like no-bounce throws, single-bounce throws and throwing the ball under a leg against the house and catching it. If you screwed up, you had to start over. If you got through all seven maneuvers without a mistake, you’d clap (then double-clap, etc.) during each move.

I don’t know why this game obsessed me, but I remember playing for hours (maybe my mother sent me outside to get fresh air and exercise). Our house had narrow wooden siding so part of the challenge was avoiding wild bounces. I’ve always enjoyed a good challenge, and 7up provided it.

Bouncing balls and middle school madness? Perhaps. All in good fun.

Best national anthem performance of the year

“Oh-oh, say can you …”

Hear?

The microphone went dead just as the pretty blonde began the national anthem at yesterday’s Twins spring training game at Hammond Stadium.

The nearly 8,000  people in attendance stood at attention with their hats removed, looking to the assistant hand a new microphone to the pretty blonde.

She put it to her mouth and … still nothing.

We continued to stand in near silence while she shook the microphone and some sound guy out of sight was probably frantically pushing buttons behind the scenes.

Five seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds of vaguely uncomfortable silence.

And then an awesome thing happened.

The crowd began singing. Thousands of voices were singing the “Star Spangled Banner” in unison. We proudly hailed as we sang though high notes of the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air. To her credit, the pretty blonde sang, too, unamplified like the rest of us. She stood out on the field all by herself where no one could hear her, reverantly facing the wind-whipped star-spangled banner.

We gave proof through the technical malfunctions that the flag was still there.

The people of the land of the free, the home of brave paid tribute to our tradition of nodding to our hard-fought freedom before a sporting event.

We erupted into enthusiastic applause. T.C., the mascot, encouraged the pretty blonde to take a bow.

It was beautiful.