As you get older, all you really ask of sports is to keep you entertained and to provide something interesting to talk about from time to time. You want good teams playing a lively style, and you want them playing another team with perhaps a good story and some verve to them. At the very least, you want to watch games and teams that will have some meaning, or even a memory, when you’re done watching them. To know that those precious hours you spent were worth it for the story.
It is for that reason that I must insist the leagues come together and draft a resolution that no Minnesota sports team be allowed into the playoffs.
It was a particularly putrid night for the Twin cities, aside from the Twins winning a season series from the Yankees for the first time in 22 years. Except that will probably be the most notable thing the Twins accomplish this year. It might be the most notable thing they’ve accomplished in five years. Maybe 10. This is an organization that holds what should be a hallowed place in baseball history, the team that hit the most homers in a season, the 2019 version. And yet no one can tell you anything about that team other than Byron Buxton got hurt, because that’s all that anyone knows about the Twins.
Anyway, the Timberwolves ate it in five games and the Wild got totally pumped in Game 5 by the Stars when their method of hockey, let’s call it “Lummox-tastic,” was repeatedly punished on the power plays they just kept handing to the Stars for reasons that they would try to explain with a series of grunts. I realize by writing this I have assured that the Wild will probably win the next two games and advance, where they will play in yet another nondescript series against either Seattle or Colorado that will be a fart in the wind in the memory of any fan who is sentenced to watch it. No one will choose to.
The Wild have never been relevant
The Wild are kind of the perfect representation of Minnesota sports. They have never been relevant. They have never been particularly bad, nor have they ever been particularly good. Everything about them is scenery, right up to that dumbass logo on the front of their jersey. It looks like the logo of a neighborhood car mechanic that just happened to have a friend whose passion is graphic design and who just helped his buddy out with his sign. They’ve never played in a series anyone can remember, other than maybe dumping out Patrick Roy’s Avalanche nine years ago. And even that was in the first round, and mattered little. We can do better, and we really need to demand to do better. We don’t have much time, people.
The T-Wolves can at least claim to have been relevant once. At least relevant enough to be a free meal for Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers 20 years ago. They can even claim to have been bad enough to get a couple high picks, which the Wild can’t. They used one of them on Karl-Anthony Towns, who is doing his best to prove he’ll just be there too. If KAT is a building block it’s a Lego you’ll step on at 2 a.m. and curse the day you had children. Again, this is a waste of everyone’s time.
The Twins march into their every attempt at postseason baseball like some Capra-esque adventure, except it’s the reality of all those Capra-esque adventures where the small-town jamoke gets drop-kicked back to whatever backwater he somersaulted out of by the people who really know how shit works and then they get on with their lives. The simple, little guy doesn’t win, and the Twins have spent 30 years proving it.
At least the Vikings have the decency to occasionally provide a hilarious playoff collapse, and those we can remember. But seriously, if it wasn’t for Kirby Puckett, Jack Morris, and the fact that the Twins used to play in an abandoned convention center the entire region’s experience with even getting to a championship round would be restricted to the Super Bowls that Bud Grant got to while he was shitfaced and short-sleeved at Metropolitan Stadium and then promptly got a foot in their ass every time.
The Twin Cities themselves are great…
This isn’t to denigrate the city itself. The Twin Cities can be a great place to be, and perhaps the best music city in the country. Any place that can claim Prince alone can claim the throne in that category, and really one of the most important culturally as a whole too. This is more important than sports.
But whereas their music has been timeless, their sports have just been bread before the appetizers. Merely present before you even get to the stuff that comes before you even get the good stuff. And not even the artisan bread. Just the slightly sliced loaf with the frozen butter.
We don’t have a lot of time on this Earth. We really shouldn’t have to waste any more of it on any Minnesota team passing through simply to ask if they can use the bathroom before they leave without buying anything. These are playoff spots that could go to a handful of teams that might provide just one moment we can cherish. The squads of Minnehaha have well proven they can’t even meet that threshold.
Except the Lynx. They can carry on.
Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate, where he’ll tell you this is really about Shane Churla.
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