It’s true: There has not been a player in recent American sports — not even Derek Jeter — who has been as mythologized as Brett Favre. Favre is a gunslinger*, of course, and he’s like a kid out there, yes, a kid gunslinger, or more precisely a gunslinging kid sketching out plays in the dirt with a stick, oh yes, he’s a gamer too, a gamer who loves to play the game, a player who plays for the love the game, a gamer who games for the play of his love, no, wait, no, point is is he loves to play, and plays to love, and he’s just a gamer gunslinger sketching plays in the dirt with a stick, but remember he’s also a kid, always. To sum up: He’s a gamer who happens to love the gunslinging he can do as kid who loves the game.
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 ubelmann  December 9, 2009, at 8:48 pm  2 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)  Brett Favre, Joe Posnanski SBG February 11, 2009, at 11:30 am 2 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, Non-story of the Week But, it appears that Brett Favre is retiring. Once Brett says something, you can pretty much write it in stone -- sandstone, that is. SBG August 10, 2008, at 10:15 pm 10 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Adam Weber, Adrian Peterson, Antoine Winfield, Billy Smith, Bob Sansevere, Brett Favre, Chad Bradford, Darren Sharper, Joel Maturi, Minnesota Vikings, O.J. Simpson, Olympics, Sid Hartman, Tarvaris Jackson, Tim Brewster, Tom Powers, Top Jimmy, UFC, Zygi Wilf Here we go with another week gazing at the vast wasteland that is sports columnizing in this town. Grandpa Sports First, he tells us that Zygi Wilf is expecting a big season from the Vikings. Now that might sound a positive, sell-some-tickets statement but let's be clear. Sid is telling us that the owner has lost patience with his club, coaches, and probably the City of Minneapolis. Storm clouds are on the horizon. When the Vikings perform their ritual heart-ripping on their most rabid fans, I'll point you to this column. Actually, this column is a double knife in the back. Later on, Sid reveals Twins General Manager Billy Smith to be a bold-faced liar.
The steely Sid puts the rookie on the record and makes him look bad when Chad Bradford is claimed by the Rays (and thus, not by the Twins) about a day later. Watch out when you talk to El Sid, rook. He's going to make you look like a fool. The vise grip is slowly tightening on this Vikings squad. The diabolical Hartman takes away any excuse about dissension in the lockerroom with this cutting entry about how the Vikings players all get along. Yep, there'll be no recourse to the old "lack of chemistry" excuse when the Vikings get to the point in the season when all appears lost (which happens every season). They won't be able to say, so-and-so farts in front of my locker all day, they'll just have to admit that they aren't as good as the other team. And, oh, the shot he takes at the Gophers later on in the column (a different page, so worth another link)! My goodness! What skill with the verbal cutlery! The Gophers almost ran a deficit in their athletic budget, but barely squeaked by. Says battleworn AD Joel Maturi:
We feel good about what we accomplished in '07-08. The football team was 1-11 and one field goal away from a winless season. The hockey team sa-hucked and had a controversial mid-season defection, which included an NHL coach questioning the quality of coaching in Minneapolis, the basketball team was the bright spot, and it was so-so. Sid knows we know all this, see, and he's got Maturi looking like a total idiot with that quote. Sid also knows that "because this happens" means that the Gophers made a lot of money off of NDSU grads who filled the dome to watch the NDSU Bison kick the shit out of the Gophers. But, Glen's in his happy place. Wow, Sid. Why'd you have to kick a man when he's down? Even Purple Jesus isn't immune from the cutting. "This is what a column would look like," says O.J. Simpson, "If I Did It". All Adrian "All Day" Peterson did was set the world on fire last season, but that's not enough for the rhetorical killer, Sid Hartman. No sir. He has to be much, much better. It seems that Mr. Peterson is doing all he can to improve, but something tells me that it won't please the Dean of Minneapolis sportswriters. Finally, Sid takes apart the Vikings for not getting Brett Favre into a purple uniform. The Vikings played their first preseason game and Hartman tells us that the scribes are unimpressed with Tarvaris Jackson ("many in the media still question Jackson's ability to lead the Vikings offense"). He even gets Jackson to admit that he sucks. Says Jackson, "If [Favre] would have came in, they would have brought him in for a reason and I understand that." That reason, of course, is that Jackson sucks and is going to bring this team down. Sid knows it, Jackson knows it, we all know it, and Sid has him admitting it. It's gonna get ugly. As if that's not enough, Sid explores the dark recesses of Tim Brewster's mind. "Gophers football coach Tim Brewster sat in his office Saturday afternoon watching film of the same day's morning scrimmage, and he was all smiles as he pointed out one outstanding defensive play after another." Oh, come on, Sid, that's just hurtful. All the negativity that's in this town sucks. Top Jimmy Souhan is in China following the Olympics. He writes about a Minnesotan who coaches the U.S. Table Tennis team, which includes a bunch of Chinese players. Nothing gets your nationalistic spirit up like a bunch of immigrants playing a sport that we don't care about. This just in! Beijing is polluted, the Chinese eat foods that seem weird to us, and the government is oppressive! No signs of any poultry references (other than the name of the Olympic stadium, The Bird's Nest), but bad jokes abound. "And if China was serious about its medal count, it would have found a way to make spitting an Olympic sport. These people are good. For them, expectorating is a performance art." Or how about this one: "Everywhere there are grim-looking soldiers, thin as Corey Brewer, only better shooters." Good grief. I know Souhan is better than this. I read him for years before he was a columnist and he's pretty good on television. But, his radio show and columns like this are just terrible. The week ended with a devastating tragedy for a Minnesota family. A random act of violence ends the life of a Minnesota man and leaves his wife fighting for her life. Souhan writes a great piece detailing the crushed spirit of the Olympic volleyball team, playing on after the news that a member of the family was murdered. Patrick Reusse While Top Jimmy vacillates between the sublime and the ridiculous in Beijing, Reusse's off to Oakland, MI to watch the PGA golf tournament. Reusse writes a whole bunch of golf columns, (seriously, several golf columns) but guess what? Golf without Tiger Woods is boring. Shooter Tom Powers Bob Sansevere SBG August 5, 2008, at 12:30 pm 3 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, Gene Wojchichowski, Peter King I linked to a couple of football stories from those two numbnuts yesterday and they were acting like the Favre thing was resolved and were falling all over themselves praising Roger Goodell for his role in resolving the dispute. I wasn't buying that shit at all.
Update: I just want to save for posterity Peter King's words. They are bee-you-tee-full:
SBG August 4, 2008, at 11:41 am Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, NFL ESPN columnist writes a Brett Favre story that seems to think that the only option is that Brett Favre will play in Green Bay. And what's with the love for the Commissioner's "decision" to reinstate Brett Favre? He had no choice but to reinstate him. ubelmann August 1, 2008, at 2:10 am 9 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, CC Sabathia, Money Matters, Trade Deadline Running things down in order of decreasing total payroll, according to ESPN's accounting: 1. Yankees, $207M: Acquire future HOF Ivan Rodriguez. *Have I mentioned how much I already hate the Cubs? You could pay the Twins and the A's with what the Cubs are being paid and then have an extra $15M left over. (I'm watching Kenny Williams on SportsCenter right now, and the best thing that he can seem to say about the Griffey trade is that "it's not going to hurt to have" Griffey around as a weapon. Not going to hurt. These are not the words of a man who thinks he has made a big improvement to his team.) I'm going to stop here. At this point, it ought to be clear: if you want to acquire a player who makes a lot of money and has a good reputation, you're going to be on this list or damned close to it. Money matters. The exception to the rule? Milwaukee acquiring CC Sabathia. But even then, they have no expectation--none whatsoever--of keeping Sabathia after this season. The Brewers had a really deep farm system and downgraded from legit AA/A prospects to a couple of future draft picks in order to get a few months of Sabathia. Not many teams are in a position to take a hit like that to their farm system for a rental. (Back to SportsCenter, they finally got around to Twins/Sox highlights. That looked like a pretty bullshit call to me on the Span HBP. First, I thought he got the bat back in time for him to have not "offered" at the pitch. Second, who makes that call? In general, I feel like you have to take a gigantic swing-from-your-heels Paul Bunyan swing to get an umpire to call a strike when you get HBP. Of course, I never like to see stuff flying out of the stands onto the playing field.) At first, revenue sharing and the luxury tax did help to level the playing field. Sure, it never slowed down two or three teams, but the Twins were able to substantially increase their payroll from the early to middle part of this decade. Now not only do we need to wait for the new ballpark to increase our revenues (the same thing the A's are doing), but the high revenue teams have figured out how to work around the luxury tax by spending lots of money* on the draft and international free agents. *Originally, I was going to say "absurd amounts of money," but there's really nothing absurd about it. Good draft picks are a fantastic investment and it is absolutely smart for teams to spend $5M or however much on picks in the later rounds who otherwise might have gone in the first round. After all, it's not like the Yankees or Red Sox are regretting not spending that money on Livan Hernandez. So why didn't the Twins go after one of those big names? Because it didn't make sense to do it. Teams like the Twins and the Rays (and, say, the Reds and the Rangers) are forced to make real, honest-to-goodness baseball trades based on differences in player evaluations (like the Garza-Delmon trade and the Volquez-Hamilton trade) rather than take an overpaid-but-still-useful player off of someone's hands. And when the low revenue teams are involved in those trades, they are usually acquiring the risk that a group prospects might not pan out in exchange for ditching the risk of a veteran declining in performance and locking up a huge chunk of their budget. That's the baseball world we live in right now, and while I'm somewhat dissatisfied with it, I'm generally okay with it as long as the Twins remain one of the few teams that can put a team on the field that helps me believe that they could win when I buy my ticket to see the game. But man, I can't quite imagine what it would be like to be a Nationals, Pirates, or Royals fan right now. Watching all the big money teams get the big name players and more or less all be sitting right in the middle of a pennant race, while the media sits back smugly, knowing that the big names alone will get them ratings, not bothering to note that payroll has been an overwhelming, unstoppable force in player movement over the last year. Eventually, I suppose I would just pack up* and find a different hobby. At the beginning of the season, I thought that the Twins would be well out of contention by now, but I'm damned glad that they're not. *Speaking of packing up and leaving--what's this that I hear about the Packers paying Brett Favre to not play. How unsporting is that. I'm not a big football guy, but I am a big sports guy, and I have a hard time believing that a league commissioner would really, truly find it in his league's best interest to have teams paying players to sit at home and watch the games on their big-screen TV. If Favre takes that payoff, he'll take along any sympathy I might have had for the supposedly difficult task of finding an NFL-caliber quarterback. Apparently they have too many quarterbacks and need to pay some of them to keep their distance from the game. SBG July 31, 2008, at 7:27 am One LTE - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings A story picked up from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says thatsays that the Packers have had internal discussions about trading Favre within the division (read: to the Vikings).
Apparently, they can't buy Favre off:
I'm gonna be buying a purple number 4 jersey, I can feel it. SBG July 27, 2008, at 6:33 am 3 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Arnold Palmer, Bob Sansevere, Brad Childress, Brett Favre, Carlos Gomez, Jared Allen, Minnesota Gophers, Patrick Reusse, Sid Hartman, Tom Powers, Top Jimmy It's a new week, and what better way to start a week than to go back and look at what our local sports columnists wrote about last week. Actually, I can think of a lot better things to do to start a week. In fact, this is way down the list. Really, it's not on the list at all. Nevertheless, I've decided to subject you to the frivolity. Let's start with Top Jimmy. In his first column of the week, TJ advocated for the removal of Carlos Gomez from the top of the Twins batting order. TJ was telling us earlier this season that Gomez wins the Twins a game a week -- that might be true, but lately, he's been doing his best to lose the other six games a week. TJ accurately points out that Gomez is an exciting player, but he sucks at getting on base. And, considering that leadoff hitters bat more than anyone else on the club, a crappy OBP is not what you need there. The Twins quickly took TJ's advice. This column is pretty much a no-brainer, but TJ has missed no-brainers before, so kudos. Another whipping boy for TJ has been Vikings coach Brad Childress, but the Vikings have the look of a serious contender... okay, I'm not REALLY believing that, but anyway, TJ writes a hey, this Vikings operation looks like it's kind of competent column. Witness:
In case you are wondering, KAO = kick ass offense. Ouch. First, a my boy Gomez needs to be moved down in the lineup or possibly shipped to Rochester and now a Chili seems to know what he's doing column? Tough week for Top Jimmy. I don't see any poultry references, other than that eating crow that he's doing. What's next, writing a column about a Vikings defensive end and his security blanket? Oh, no he di'nt! I'm not sure that Patrick Reusse showed up at a game this week wearing the same dress at Tom Powers, but they both wrote the same column last week about some washed up golfer, so that was bad. What can Reusse do to make amends? He starts the week off by scoffing at the Vikings $853 million plan to "reconstruct" the Metrodome. Such a plan would call for $600 million from the taxpayers. I'm pretty happy with the Vikings playing in the Metrodome and, if necessary, somewhere else entirely starting in 2012. 81 dates in a Twins stadium? Yes. 8 regular season Vikings games in an almost billion dollar building? No thanks. The NFL is for TV anyway. Reusse follows that up with a story about a Gopher football player getting his degree 40 years after playing for the U. How is that news? I thought all those guys were on the 40 year plan. Then, Reusse profiles the fourth guy on the Vikings defensive line, at least for now, Jayme Mitchell. It's hard to take that the NFL is coming soon. Reusse ends the week with a tribute to the newly deceased Chicago sportswriter, Jerome Holtzman. In it, he wrote about how much fun it is to hang out in the press box and make fun of ball players -- and that Holtzman was a lot of fun. He kind of sucked as a writer, though.
So, hang out, have fun, mock world class athletes, write crappy stories, and, presumably, hit the bars. Good old boys. One can see why Mr. Reusse has such disdain for bloggers. They are so unprofessional. Grandpa Sports delivers the usual. Twins happy with Liriano, despite grievance. Tony Dungy thinks the Vikings are going to be good. Seriously, Sid, where do you come up with these questions? You asked somebody who was in town about the Vikings? Brilliant! The Vikings brain trust has been together for a couple of years now, so they are getting their shit together. Think the Brett Favre controversy is something? Well, the Vikings have had their fair share of QB controversies. That last one is a little out of the mold, but never fear, in the same column Sid tells us that the Twins have been a pleasant surprise. Shooter tears a page out of Grandpa's playbook, writing a non-story about Carl Pohlad. But hey, his first column of the week included this gem: Golf's "King," Arnold Palmer, was to fly from the Twin Cities to Rochester on Monday in his private jet for his annual physical at the Mayo Clinic. Well, excuse me for making a crack about a non-story. Shooter follows that stupendous effort up with this one: "Twins reluctant to make a trade that would hurt team's chemistry". Word has it, though, that they aren't worried about fucking up their biology or physics. But, of course, the Shooter column is always about the juicy tidbits. Like this one: "Look for the grass for the Twins' new ballpark opening in 2010 in downtown Minneapolis to be grown on a Colorado sod farm." Whew! That's about as exciting as, well, watching grass grow. Shooter ends a fine week by telling us that Tim Brewster is still promoting the Gopher football program. And there's this note: "The Gophers are still intent on getting the University of Texas on their 2016 football schedule." So, Brewster's gonna make sure that they don't play the Longhorns until after he's fired. Good. Tom Powers must still be exhausted from his Ron Streck column, so he brings just one column this week about, you guessed it, another old codger golfer that you've never heard of before. Looks like Tom was on vacation. Hope he did something other than hang out with old golfers. If I keep up this column, Bob Sansevere is going to wear me out. The guy writes pretty much every day. True, he only writes about 200 words a day, but it's every day! Let's see what was on his mind this week. Arnold Palmer says he's had a good life. One would think that there was an old-timer's golf tournament in town with all the old golfers hitting the sports page this week. It's good, though, to see that Arnie has a firm grasp of the obvious. Bob also tells us he's not sold on Tavaris Jackson. But, he's running a KAO, Bob! Speaking of old codger golf, Bob says the course that they played on here in town was too damned easy. Boy, the St. Paul paper spent a lot of time on that tournament. Apparently, Grandpa didn't totally dominate Tony Dungy while he was in town this week. Sansevere talked to him, too. If you just read the headline, "On and On With Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony Dungy" you'd think that Sansevere had a wide ranging interview with the former Vikings assistant coach. You'd be wrong. He's got five questions including a one-word response to a question about Brett Favre. He also didn't ask Tony whether he thought the Vikings would be any good. But, then again, only Sid asks questions like that. Sansevere also talked with Gopher football recruit Sam Maresh, who had heart surgery last month. The kid is talking about playing -- I certainly wouldn't, not after heart surgery. For his final column of the week, Sansevere writes about the rumor that Brett Favre was calling the Vikings on a Packer cell phone. There's a caveat -- if the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (who reported the cellphone story) is dialed in -- but then Bob takes his rips at Favre. Both the Favre and Packers camps are denying this story, so it appears that the MJS was dialing a wrong number. I hope those guys in Milwaukee are fun to hang out with in the baseball press box, because then we can excuse their rumor mongering. SBG July 24, 2008, at 1:19 pm 4 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, Cellphone, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Tampering After hearing about Favre's alleged calls to the Vikings on a Packer-issued cell phone, we now learn that Brett (probably) didn't have such a phone. These are good times, friends. Good times. SBG July 20, 2008, at 6:20 am 12 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Billy Smith, Bob Sansevere, Brett Favre, Charley Walters, Glen Perkins, Joe Mauer, Patrick Reusse, Sid Hartman, Tom Powers, Tom Streck, Top Jimmy I opened up my virtual Sunday morning newspapers, and this is what I saw. Top Jimmy: Brett Favre is tarnishing his reputation because he still wants to play. Maybe so, but hasn't he been doing this for years? Favre is going to want to play right up until the day they order the artificial hips. By the way, I'm pretty sure Top Jimmy wrote this column without leaving the comfort of his mother's basement. Patrick Reusse: Profiles Ron Streck, who's playing in the old codger's golf tournament in town this weekend. Turns out Streck was the first player to win on the PGA tour using a metal wood. Includes this quote from some golfer, when seeing the metal wood: "That looks like a practice club. I'll never use one of these." That golfer was Jack Nicklaus. Here's Reusse's genius. He writes a column about someone you've never heard of and it's interesting. Nice piece. Sid Hartman: ZOMG! Both the pitcher (Glen Perkins) and the catcher (Joe Mauer) are from Minnesota! And they are teh awesum!
Well, if the Packers trade Brett Favre to the Minnesota Vikings, you heard it here first. Also, this should make you all cringe and rethink your vote on the Billy Smith poll from earlier this week.
Tom Powers: He profiles Tom Streck [actually, Tom wasn't speaking to the media, so he profiled Ron, just like Reusse], too! Suddenly, the Reusse column isn't looking so great. He even has the Nicklaus quote. Strike all that about Reusse's genius. Bob Sansevere: Profiles some other codger golfer, Loren Roberts. Wow. I guess he was unable to make the I'd have to say that Shooter wins for best column. It's funny (although presumably unintentionally so) and he's got that Billy Smith quote. SBG July 17, 2008, at 7:01 am 2 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings Whiny Packers accuse Vikings of contact with their inconvenient icon. SBG July 8, 2008, at 10:17 am 4 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Peter King Peter King engages in some off-season baseless speculation, that Mr. Packer could end up a Minnesota Viking. Imagine how delicious it would be for the Vikings to trot Brett Favre out the first game of the season -- in Green Bay, on Monday night, at the game where Favre was supposed to have his number retired. Please, oh please let this happen. |
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Recent Letters to the Editor
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