A Bit of Local Folklore

There seems to be new construction going up everywhere in this city lately.  For a lot of reasons it pisses me off; it takes longer to drive some places, and it feels like nothing is ever complete.  But to an extent I appreciate that lack of completeness.  This city is never satisfied and we’re always reaching for something more.  That shitty bar Cowboy Slim’s down on Lake was dynamited for what will be some more highrise apartments and an even denser population in this most noticed part of Minneapolis, Uptown.

                Another big new addition to Uptown is the Mosaic parking structure, Bar Louie, the new Greenway bridge and entrance off Girard Avenue and a bunch of new fun stuff in that same area.  One of the most fun additions is a giant brick head facing south just across the bus road from the Greenway.  My housemates and I have come to name him Cornelius Uptown.  He’s a statue erected to the memory of the hyper-intelligent alien who landed on this spot to found Uptown in ancient times.   He had two golden surfer angel servants (best way to describe them) also commemorated atop two incomplete looking pillars which lead into this somewhat-abbreviated park.  And a model of his spaceship is a short ways down the path in the form of a spherical interpretation of the type of trolley car this area used to be famous for.

                This story has given me endless enjoyment every time I pass to the extent that I have even made it one of my security questions at work to access my password account in the system (“Q: Statue south of the Greenway?:” “A: Cornelius”)[i].  It’s a story that really only we know, so logically I tell anyone visiting the area willing to listen.  But I also want to break down exactly why this is funny.  Many questions arise in the telling of this story which are better left unanswered:  Why does he have the name Cornelius?  Wasn’t Uptown just named such because it was Up from Downtown?  What do you mean Uptown was founded independently of the city of Minneapolis?

                The logical answer to all these questions is Shut Up.  But seeing as if I was an outsider I would be asking them at least internally, if not externally, I plan to answer them all once and for all to everyone.  His name is Cornelius because that is the name of all those probably-important ancient (like, at least a couple centuries past) historical leaders or explorers that we vaguely remember.  So that applies even if he was an alien from another planet.  Because, of course.

                It’s better that we gave him the last name Uptown, because firstly, it’s based on the assumption that aliens have last names and that they, like us, name things they find after themselves (both correct). In the show Recess (One Saturday Morning! ABC! Today!), the kids went to Third Street School.  Later on we find out that one of the most important men in their town is Thaddeus T. Third III, and so presumably Third Street is named after his Grandpa.  Uptown is named after an alien from another planet with the last name Uptown.

                But answering the last question reveals a little about the place we live, too.  Was Uptown founded independently of Minneapolis?  For all most of us care, it might have been.  We have an identity with the area possibly as strong or stronger than with the city.  So we don’t just live in Minneapolis- we live in Uptown.  And yea, there’s a certain black-hole aspect to the area. But I’ll quickly admit that my favorite readily- available beer is named after another part of Minneapolis.[ii]

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[i] Given how much other security my as-yet unnamed employer has and the amount of traffic on this blog, I am not concerned with that bit of info.

[ii] Nordeast. By Grain Belt. Duh.

Refugee City

                Magic Johnson and Co. made a really good purchase recently.  Yes, the Dodgers cost a lot of money, but what he’s really investing in is the greater Los Angeles area.  This is the area that has throughout the years made giants out of runaways.  What I mean by that is it has taken into its arms those entities which have come from the east seeking greener pastures.  And it doesn’t get much greener than Los Angeles, it turns out.

                L.A. is the nickname for a city whose original full name[i] was twenty-five times bigger than that.  But it’s all marketing.  And a better market is what early motion picture producers saw when they started bolting for the area in the early 20^th century.  You see, there was this guy named Edison who invented the motion picture camera, and he wanted everyone to pay him royalties when they used it for profit.  And if he couldn’t do it the legal way, he had some “helpers” who would make sure it got done.  So these pioneering filmmakers went as far away from Edison and his goons as they could get while still getting noticed in the US of A.  But the added benefit of being in California was that the state was pretty lenient on patent law and generally ignored Edison’s suits.

But the Dodgers might be the most assimilated entity that has come out to California, especially considering their roots.  They were so despised when they left Brooklyn that there’s a story told in the borough about three business men who went to lunch to decide who the three worst men in the world were.  They all wrote three names down on their napkins, and when they went to look at each others, they had all written the same thing: Hitler, Stalin, Walter O’Malley.  It didn’t seem to bother Los Angeles much.  With a strong core of players who had all played in Brooklyn, they went on to win a World Series in their second year out there.  The team was so successful, they lured an expansion franchise to the area in three years and the west coast soon became a bastion of Major League Baseball.

                I’d be remiss as a Minneapolitan if I didn’t mention the second most successful pro basketball franchise of all time.  My biggest problem with their franchise is not the rampant success they’ve had, in contrast to the terrible track record of the team the NBA later saddled us with, but I feel as though their insistence on keeping the name ‘Lakers’ is essentially a slap in the face.  There are absolutely no lakes in the greater Los Angeles area, nor is it a name that you could argue applies to just about any city in America, or even just to the West Coast, as ‘Raiders’ and ‘Clippers’ might.  And while the Dodgers only moved out West a couple years prior to the city stealing what-would-have-been-my team, it feels like Dodger Blue has made the nickname the city’s own, due to both the nickname’s ambiguosity, and the immediate success they found out there.

Yes, the fans in Brooklyn were very upset, possibly even about L.A.’s refusal to change the team name or colors, but the fans in SoCal as a whole embraced the team.  Ironically, L.A. might have been able to stake a claim on the reference to street-car Dodgers were it not for the burgeoning automotive conglomerate which elbowed out the trolley system to make it the car traffic hell-hole it’s now known as.  So it’s almost justifiable to keep the name in that sense.  Maybe you even argue that the name refers to all the automotive traffic fans of the team or just denizens of the area are required to Dodge on a daily basis.  Heading out west with the rival Giants probably kept a little of the old Big Apple spirit alive, and they managed to meet the Yankees often enough in the Series to keep the fans cognizant of who else they should hate.[ii]

I went on the Lakers’ internet site the other day and was dismayed to discover that they do list all the old Minneapolis incarnation’s NBA championships as their own.  And it kind of makes sense, as that team was also called the Lakers.  But what I never understood was how the Twins would never list the Washington Senators’ meager championship resume as their own. It’s true that they have a different nickname, but they were the same franchise, and nobody knows[iii] what colors they wore anyway because everything was in black-and-white.  It’s not like the District is going to claim them, because nobody missed the team when they were gone anyway, partly due to the expansion team they received the same year the Twin Cities got their franchise.  I understand that the team didn’t want to be like that city that stole their first major franchise, and while I’m always in favor of the area-specific name, calling them the Minnesota Senators makes a lot more sense than does L.A. Lakers.

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[i] El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.

[ii] Not to mention meeting their fellow itinerants, the Twins, in a riveting 7-game World Series classic that helped bolster the baseball (and sports) profile of both areas.

[iii] I don’t know, rather.

Our State Pastime

            The Minnesota Golden Gophers Men’s hockey team has become, in our state, more than a team- it’s a religion, and it’s a way of life.  One that I wish I could be more into.  It’s not that I don’t like hockey, but I have so much on my sports fan plate already, and understanding, appreciating and rooting for hockey is so time-and-effort-consuming that I just can’t give it the attention I know it deserves.  College hockey even more so.  That’s partly a product of the country as a whole and what the national media outlets tend to devote time to.  But I understand that with many people in the state we live in, it’s what they eat, breathe, and sleep.  It starts in high school, where we have the most glorified (and rightly so) hockey tournament in the country.  It’s what basketball is to Indiana, or Brooklyn, perhaps.  Katie Baker of Grantland wrote a great piece detailing just this relationship between the hockey buffs and their team.

            The reason I get chills and want to go bake a Hotdish while drinking an ice-cold Pop is that this team is probably as much Minnesota’s team as any team in any sport is to any state or area.  It’s because almost every player on the Gophers is from our state specifically.  Taking from Baker’s story, they all seem to grow up playing on those frozen ponds dreaming of one day playing for the Gophers.  It’s the big leagues of that demographic.  Even when I was growing up watching mostly other sports, I once asked my dad about the Twins, “Are all the players on that team from our state?”  They should be, it felt like, so we could prove that we were better at that sport than the other areas.  And that’s what this program epitomizes.

            But the sport itself generally has two major hubs of talent- Minnesota and Boston.  No two other places could produce as many colleges who are all that good at hockey.  And for the most part they each take players from their respective areas.  There are good teams in places like Michigan and New York state for sure, but none have as a deep of histories as the two aforementioned.  So with all the recent sports success the Boston area has had, this is pretty much our last grasp at besting them in something.  It seems even more personal for us given all the good players the town has stolen away from our teams with the allure of cash, but for once it’s nice that one sport has come down to strictly home-grown talent.

I’m pretty sure the reason I don’t follow pro hockey that closely is the lack of a pro hockey team in my state during my formative years.  I knew a lot of kids who played, but my parents really didn’t encourage it because it was just about the most expensive sport a kid could play and they (and I) liked most other sports better anyway.  But the NHL has made some horrible mistakes with the relocation of their teams.  Let’s examine- they moved a team from Hartford, Conn, to Raleigh, NC.  Not the obscure state capital I would have picked, not to mention having to change the greatest logo of all time.  2) Moving the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix, home of no natural ice… ever.  And 3) Moving The North Stars out of the State of Hockey to the State of Football.  (Sorry, Quebec- hockey seems to have thrived in the move to Colorado, which never was a horrible place to go to begin with.) But it was a good idea to bring major league hockey back to the North Star State, if only because I could never be sure if the Moose (that minor league team) was meant to be a singular or plural noun.[i]

            And it’s really sad, when you think about it, that this state, which invented the sport, went even as long as it did without a pro team. It may indeed be semi-hypocritical of me to say that teams shouldn’t ever leave the city they start in.  It worked out pretty well for the original Baltimore Orioles franchise (now known as the New York Yankees), it seems to have worked out for the Dallas Stars (curse you, Tom Green!)[ii], and it worked out alright for the original Washington Senators.  But it seems like we’ve lost a part of our state’s sports history having lost the North Stars.  You never hear about the Stanley Cup Finals run we had around the same time the Twins were winning their second World Series, probably because we feel like it doesn’t belong to us anymore- it belongs to Dallas[iii].  But you do see people walking around in North Stars jersey-shirts (sweater-shirts?) or hats a lot around here, so it seems like it meant something.  I remember when they were holding the naming competition and such for our new NHL franchise and as a sports fan it was interesting.  But even then I didn’t really feel like I was going to get into it.  I was used to having one team to root for in the summer, one in the fall and one in the winter.  When you’ve left an area for a while, even a hockey-mad area, I think you end up losing a generation of fans, because another sport will just take its place.

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[i] And I’m still unsure if I think singular or plural nouns make better team nicknames as a whole.

[ii] Same for the Lakers, too, it seems.

[iii] Put up the Senators’ 1924 World Championship banner already, Twins!

The Forerunner

Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Tim O’Brien, Salman Rushdie are four of my favorite authors. They are not necessarily American.  Vonnegut and O’Brien might even be called Anti-American, Rushdie is at best Trans-Atlantic and Douglas Adams is without a doubt British, in what he writes about and his sensibilities.  Then I realized why I thought of them as American: because America is the heir-apparent to what the United Kingdom once was.

                Though to say that America is what the United Kingdom and even just England once was, is to ignore the long history of what they had done to the world.  Even we are part of that history, kind of like a phoenix that rose from the ashes of their empire.[i]  They were once the only thing in the world.  It was a truly global empire that they say the “Sun Never Set On”, in the sense that there was always some part of the empire that was in daylight.  If America is the only global superpower right now, England once was the globe.  Why else would this language developed on an island in the North Sea with French (yeck!) influences become the dominant language in the world today?[ii]  Essentially, they had influence in so many parts of the globe, that it’s almost impossible to go some place that doesn’t have some kind of influences from this place.

                And therefore, my tribute to authors from across the pond is a show of appreciation for their past influence (and in reality, a certain amount of continued influence) on the modern world.  You can’t ignore any kind of place where any sort of thing, specifically something as important as soccer, is done at the highest level.[iii]  There are 6 billion people in the world, but the best of those at the most popular sport in the world come from all over the face of the earth to play in a country of about 50 million.  And England itself is impressive enough at the sport for a country of that size, but at a certain point they simply cannot overcome their lack of a population base.  And it’s their fault, really.  They’re the ones who spread the sport all over the globe.

                What seems to be the difference between the time when England ruled and the present, dominated more by America, is that there’s a lot more acceptance of the other countries and their cultures.  It’s a much faster-moving society, and we’re all now on a more level playing field.  And it’s not a surprise that the country that was founded and grew based mostly on immigrants and the joining of many different cultures is now the most successful in an era of a lot of equally-recognized cultures.  I think if we recognize those ways we are better than other countries and cultures, we will not only help ourselves grow, but also continue to improve the world as a whole.

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[i] Phoenix, by the way, is a terrible name for a city.  Sorry about that, World.

[ii] There’s actually reasonable evidence to suggest that what is now known as a British accent is more recent than the founding of America.  Something to do with an influx of French culture into England around the time of Napoleon, which may have entered into their mode of speaking.  An interesting argument to make, as there were no recording devices to attest to this either way. The point being, we may actually be speaking in the original pronunciation of the language.  Go America, and Minnesota most of all!

[iii] America carries on this tradition, in its truest manifestation, in the game of basketball.  It is everything that soccer could never be (high scoring/small playing surface) and therefore everything it is (exciting/nuanced) and has itself become a truly global sport.

Musings on Basketball

There are a lot of things about basketball that have always bugged me, and formed my semi-distaste of actually watching it.  As far as playing ball, I had a sort of knack for it, for the same reason that I was a reasonably good pitcher in about 5^th and 6^th grade.  I understood that having accuracy was important, whether it was throwing the baseball in the strike zone or throwing the basketball in the hoop.  But what bugged me about watching it was a couple things.  It was a high enough scoring game that I thought it made every basket that much more trivial.  And it had a weird enough schedule that I couldn’t follow it religiously, having been raised on weekly football games and daily baseball.

                The schedule thing I’m starting to gain an appreciation for, because the people always need sports.  And since I’ve been watching more, you really start to get an appreciation for which baskets mean the most and when not getting a basket means a lot, too.  I got roped back in I think by the George Masons and Gonzagas of March, which is when I started to pick up on some of these things.  And I warmed to the Wolves when they picked up Kevin Love, who I had seen play well in the tournament the year before.

                With all that, I’ve found so much more to like about the sport- the personalities and polarity that they cultivate; the excitement that almost every game comes down to; the fact that we have the top league in this sport that has become truly a global one, possibly second only to soccer.  But there is at least one deficiency that it has become painfully obvious needs to be addressed.  There needs to be a legitimate minor leagues of basketball.

                The sport, we’re finding out, is not like football in that college serves as a default minor leagues.  College football and the pro version are similar enough that the transition is much easier, and pro football teams have enough room on their rosters to keep any talent that they may need in the distant future.  Teams even seem to be nervous these days that late bloomers like Jeremy Lin, who they won’t be always able to justify keeping, are going to slip through their fingers.  But a lack of additional talent might also hold back the expansion of the current D-League format.  Players see being sent down as much more shameful, and basketball players, as much as those in any sport, got where they are because of pride and ego.  Part of the process, then, would be transitioning the lower league from a mentality of “You failed to make the pros” to “This is actually just part of the pro system”.

                Basketball is also, for a variety of reasons, probably as suited as anyone to maintain a widespread, lower-level version of itself.  They already have one of the better expansion strategies of major pro sports in America.  The NBA has found that it works really well in areas that don’t have any other sports teams, examples being the Thunder (sorry, Seattle), the Magic (no, Jacksonville doesn’t count) and Memphis.  It’s a very accessible sport, and people just like their city being put on the sports map in any capacity.  Minor-league-sized arena would be easy enough to fund, and may already exist in many places they would try to do it.  The drawback is that so many of the accessible markets might already be in use or would be trampled on by some nearby team.

Where We Live

Say you are from a large metropolitan area, and you come into contact with a person from that same area in the presence of people from other metro areas (either because you are in a different area or these people are visiting or new to your area). There might be no more exclusive conversation you can have than one about radio stations in your respective area.  Now, you may have conversations about different types of radio, based on your shared or conflicting interests with the Hometowner You’re Talking To, but I don’t think there’s any conversation this Outtatowner With You would be less involved in. 

But say you were all sports fans- generally said OWY would have some knowledge base regarding this sports team, either because his Area’s Sports Team might have played them a few times, or because sports is just an interest of his.  Probably same goes for a band from your area, because oftentimes these bands get big, or there’s going to be a similar band from his area that you and the HYTT might have heard of.  Even if you guys get talking about the weather or politics, that’s something the OWY could have some opinion or insight on about simply because he’s a semi-informed person.  But if you talk about a radio station, there’s nothing he could offer an opinion on, because said local station would never need to make itself known outside of the metro area it calls home.  In this era of instant interaction with different people in far-flung areas, it might be one of the last bastions of regionalism.  Anyway, it’s probably best to change the subject quickly, unless you want that dude to just leave.

                So being a representation of the local area is probably the best thing radio has going for it.  And one of the best ways to do this is by obtaining rights to a local sports team.  My favorite station right now is JACK fm, which seems to be most highly competing with the upstart K-Twin (also on a pre-set in my car- since, I’m guessing, the station was called B96).  I say that, since they’ve been advertising a lot using ‘Twin Cities’, which seems to be in answer to K-Twin’s “Everything for the Twin Cities” campaign.  K-Twin might actually start winning the race for title of the Twin Cities Station, as they are going to have the Twins broadcast rights starting next year.  This is bad news for JACK.  FM tends to have such a small broadcast range, so very few fm stations are allowed to carry sports of any kind.  WCCO let the Twins go a while back, though they really don’t have to worry about losing any kind of regional foothold, as they also have a TV affiliate people know and love.  And there’s probably a reason that stations like Cities97, which have a local nickname for our area in their name, have been so successful (despite, quite honestly, really sucking).  One of the last advantages radio has is its ability to make people feel connected to those they live near.

And another way they do this is to run a lot of commercials for local enterprises.  But even the most diehard tuners-in, tend to want to tune those out.  The best policy I’ve learned is that you have to have other pre-sets at the ready in case it does go to commercials.  They follow one of two strategies- either it’s a commercial you’ve seen on tv without the picture, or a very annoying dialogue that could never happen in everyday life, between two people you’d never want to meet.  They also usually last for about 10-15 minutes, so too much time to try to justify waiting them out if you actually want to be entertained.  I do believe JACK fm has a semi-smart strategy, which is to rip on the fact that they have commercials, saying things like “Wow, you made it through all of those?  Here- have a cookie!”

One of the ways radio can stay part of the fabric of a city so much more easily than other mediums, I’m starting to realize, is because of what you can do while listening to it- driving around, biking around, playing video games, yard games- whatever!  And I can honestly say that I’ve done all of those things recently listening to radio.  (My roomies are quickly finding that I cannot, however, do any of those things while watching tv.) Growing up, one of my most regular summer activities was listening to the Twins while I shot hoops in the driveway.  It helped me not stress out so much.  And I’ve often felt like sports radio, no matter how annoying, can make it seem like you’re listening to the heartbeat of a city.  There’s still a huge (though friendly) rivalry in the Cities between those who listen to KFAN and 1500 for their sports talk.  It’s not just sports talk.  I’ve noticed a lot of dudes with a 93X pre-set in their car which actually never seems to be touched in the course of a short trip.  I have 93X as a preset in the car that I haven’t changed the presets on since I bought, and I understand that it had previously been owned by a middle-aged woman.  Because what’s better than blasting rock-and-roll while you’re cruising down 35W?  While tv keeps us connected to people throughout the country or the world, radio is the means by which we stay connected to where and when we are.

The Anatomy of a Collapse

            What I want to figure out is, how did a team like the Washington Nationals lose a six-run lead at home in the deciding game of the first playoff series in the history of their franchise (and the city’s first since 1933).  My friends who watch baseball and I were watching the game that night, and later keeping tabs on it from our phones at the bar, and as we were watching it- rooting for the Nats- we felt this impending sense of doom that the Cardinals comeback was just inevitable.  In fact, I was sitting there just before we were trying to leave for the bar (with our two other friends who aren’t so big on sports), and I pretty much had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the house.  The clincher was Mike saying “Look, the Cardinals are going to come back, and you don’t want to be here to watch the end of that.”  I knew it was true.  The greater knowledgeable world of baseball knew it was true.  The biggest shock leading up to the last inning was that the Nats had actually tacked on an extra run, which gave us some fleeting hope.  But is a two-run lead safe when facing the Cardinals?  Nope.  It’s like that team has the collective knowledge and experience of their franchise’s entire history- from the Gashouse Gang, to the Mad Dash, to Gibson, to Herzog and the Wizard, and even last year with the Rally Squirrel and Happy Flight (which I guess was also a thing).

            I’ve always railed against those fans who say, “I shouldn’t have gotten invested” because I feel like there’s a reason we get invested in sports.  Or at least if you’re not then just don’t be a sports fan.  But I’ve also found that it helps the healing process a little to be able to explain it.  And maybe in the course of the explanation, one says things like “I should have seen this coming” or “I should have known”. But in wanting to believe that sports will continue to surprise you, there’s a reason you didn’t let yourself know.  That doesn’t always mean the surprise is going to be a pleasant one.  This whole experience for fans of the Nats and just those rooting for them in the meantime should not have been a huge surprise, as it seems like collapses like this do happen in baseball, more than you might expect.  And so what I want to try to understand is why.

            Part of it is just the odds involved in getting out to a lead in the series.  Baseball is a game of inches, and when you get out to even a one game lead with 2 games to go, simply by plugging away and hoping you can take one.  But to settle at that would be to ignore just how resilient this Cardinals team is.  They won Game 6 of the World Series last year down to their last out and down two.  They won the Play In Wild Card Game on the road against an Atlanta team that finished five games ahead of them and got the benefit of the worst baseball call probably since 1985 (paging Don Denkinger).  And then this.  So they clearly know how to strike against teams that aren’t going to put them away.

            Trying not to completely ignore for a second that the Nationals are relative newbies to the postseason, there’s a lot they did to shoot themselves in the foot in Game 5.  Having gotten a six run lead in the early goings, the case could be made that they didn’t do enough to extend their lead.  They didn’t score again until the eighth, and by that point the Cards had already made it a one-run game.  Though there was a rally or two, the Nationals’ hitters seemed a bit too easy on the St. Louis pitchers and seemed to really get themselves out.  But Washington was playing at home and had the crowd and the momentum behind them.  And I understand that it’s an easy pattern to fall into, because when you’re that close to a series win, you just root for the innings to go by faster, no matter what that means. Plus, if you’re the Cardinals, it’s probably easier to pitch when your teams losing by a lot.

            But I think the biggest mistake was in how the Nationals pitched the Cardinals.  Gio Gonzalez could not seem to get a batter out, and needed to be relieved in the 6^th.  In that respect, they need to still treat their starter like it’s the last game of the season and they need a win.  That being said, he may have deserved it.  The Cards just kept putting it in play and making things happen, and the Nationals played like they were going to get themselves out.  This was all capped off by Ian Desmond’s just-miss of a grounder that would have ended the game.   Those are plays that just need to be made in a championship season.  Every season has one, and last year it was Nelson Cruz not running through that fly ball in St. Louis.  If they’re made, you have the Jeter Flip play or Kirby Puckett’s The Catch in Game Six of the 1991 Series.  Even Willie Mays’s original The Catch in the 1954 World Series.  But suffice it to say, sometimes not being able to make that play is where your team is done in.  There seemed to be just too many plays the Cardinals made and that the Nationals didn’t.