#-1: Twins (Last Week: -1). Well, you need one of two things to happen to reach the top spot in the WMNSS with a 1-4 week. Either you have to be the only team in town in-season, or all the other teams are in the news for all the wrong reasons.
The Twinks have to thank their lucky stars, then, that both things happened to them in order to deflect local sports attention, let alone help them reach the top spot in the survey, despite the fact that they opened the second half of the Major League Baseball season by getting swept, at home, but the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that has very little fan loyalty but has overcome a horrible beginning to their year to play respectably behind all the young talent they've been able to find (though not necessarily pay for; expect staff ace David Price to be moved before the trade deadline). Contrast that to the Twinks, who had four days off and are currently acting like they're taking the rest of the season off.
Tuesday I was able to tune into the late innings of the game against Cleveland. The squad had a runner on third in the bottom of the eighth trailing 4-2, but the guy batting (didn't catch the name, but who cares?) swung through strike three on a curve. Matt Guerrier, who once performed very well several years ago in his first stint with the club, pissed himself and coughed up four more runs in the top of the ninth (oh yeah, the Twins are playing at home through the weekend) to put the game out of reach. In fact, the Twins should be winless for the week. Only an eighth-inning home run on Monday off the bat of the otherwise-still-cold Josh Willingham averted a winless week (they beat Cleveland 4-3). Once again the team's problems boil down to two things: Offense and pitching.
They finish the season with Cleveland this (Wednesday) morning, then host the White Sox for four game before heading back out on the road by beginning a three-game series against Kansas City Tuesday.
#-2: Vikings (Re-Entry!). ViQueens, ViQueens, ViQueens ... don't you guys ever fucking change. I believe that every National Football League franchise is the most popular team in their metropolitan area. (And as soon as I type this I know that's not true: New York has the Yankees and St. Louis the Cardinals, to cite two examples. Never mind.) But I swear that only Minnesota is interested in the Vikings just as much for all the drama they can whip up off the field as their prospects of success on it. This organization, starting as far back as I could remember to Tommy Kramer's DUI, through Randy Moss and the Whizzinator and The Love Boat, has always been able to trip over their own dicks and spill off the sports page and onto the front page.
What they did wrong this time (and specifically the Chris Kluwe/Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer controversy) is half-ass their response towards Priefer's homophobic comments. Apparently their own "investigation" revealed that Priefer did indeed say something to the effect of, "We should round up all the gay guys, put them on an island, and then nuke the island until it glows." Since Priefer initially denied saying that, not only does his comments break NFL policy regarding hateful statements, he lied to his employer. That appears to be a fireable offense, but instead he's been suspended three games -- two if he completes sensitivity training. So the team is saying that he did something wrong, but it wasn't so wrong that he should be shitcanned. I don't think that satisfies anyone; therefore they've waddled into the median of a two-lane highway and allowed itself to be run over both ways.
Then, to show that they ultimately are taking Priefer's side of this over Kluwe's, they have resorted to underhanded and mudslinging -- and in turn Kluwe decided to play in the mud with them. First of all, they were accused by Kluwe's representation for not releasing a completely unexpurgated copy of their investigation. Kluwe then announced that he was going to sue in order to prove that the Vikes cut him because he was outspoken in favor of gay rights. Finally, he got off the high road and intimated (in his very busy Twitter account) that he knows a lot of dirt on former Vikings players and coaches, most lurid an incident he witnessed where two ex-Vikings tried to fuck an underage young woman.
The organization, in a move that kind of surprises me because franchises usually don't like to play in the shit against former players, leaked an incident where Kluwe made fun of a member of the team support staff in the wake of the Penn St./Gerry Sandusky controvery. The team actually said that Kluwe cut a hole into his underwear where his anus is and pretended like this staff member, who is a Penn St. alum, raped him.
And this is where Kluwe, a guy who I thought had a lot of things going for him, burned through much of his currency with me. He admitted that he made fun of the Sandusky story and this Nittany Lion alum, then dismissed his actions by saying it pales in comparison to Priefer's comments about gays. I understand, logically, when Kluwe says the two things aren't the same. But when you're talking about rights for victims, be it homosexuals or molested children, one would think that a person sensitive to one issue would also be at least sympathetic towards the other. So I don't quite understand how Kluwe could blow the whistle on homophobia while at the same time dismissing a story involving the molestation of kids as horseplay.
I took a couple classes on the law while in college, and the one thing I took away from it is that you have to separate what you think is "moral" from what you think is "right." Because only the written law, and the rights derived thereof, is the matter of the court system. Any thinking of morality is thrown out the window -- quickly, in this particular case.
Both sides are obviously trying to paint the other as horribly as possible if and when Kluwe's wrongful termination lawsuit goes to court. The Vikings look like gay bashers and, worse, accomplices to a cover-up. Kluwe looks like a tattletale and now, worse a hypocrite. And yet none of that shit will matter once this officially hits the judicial system.
Who wins? Honestly, sports-talk radio and those who like to make fun of the Vikings. These guys are a never-ending shitshow, yet it's so fascinating to see how they fuck up in public that you can't help but watch. These guys find newer ways to embarrass themselves every couple years, and every single time it distracts from their play in games (and usually that's a good thing). So don't believe anyone who rolls his eyes whenever you talk about Kluwe and the soon-to-come civil suit. You know and that person knows as big a walking disaster the Minnesota Vikings are, they can always be counted on to give you something to talk about. And in the quietest part of the sports calendar, to a sports fan, such he-said he-said controversy fills the air with the joyful noise of schadenfreude.
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