#-1: Twins (Last Week: -2). I can't think of a better way to start the second half of a season in which you're scuffling and trying to put away inferior competition in order to sew up a playoff spot than The Oakland Athletics, who, as it was announced about a month ago, will (in all likelihood, because this is not 100% set in stone) be taken from the good people of Oakland and be placed in the furnace known as Las Vegas, which, according to Father, reached 117 yesterday/Saturday. They have a lease to play in their Coliseum through next year, which they probably will invoke (which means, by the way, I should cancel the flight reservation I made to go there in September and use it instead on a different Southwest trip). But the new stadium won't be built until, I think, 2027.
Anyway, all this negativity that has surrounded this organization for years reached a head with this move in the middle of this season, and that should be pointed out as the main reason the A's are an MLB-worst 25-69, and why they lost the first two Games of the series with Minnesota in Oaktown. Granted, they were nail-biters: The Twins were down by a Run until Joey Gallo blasted a two-Run Home Run in the top of the Ninth Inning in Friday's Game, and in last/Saturday night's crazy contest they were tied at seven until Minnesota plated a Run in each of the final three Innings. But they're still awful.
(Aside: I'm about to say something controversial [that's interesting]: While it isn't fair for the good people of Oakland to lose the Athletics after a half-century, and it is, ultimately this relocation is different from other such relocations such as the Dodgers being taken from Brooklyn or my North Stars being stolen away from Dallas. The one very important fact: Oakland, respectfully, stole the Athletics from Kansas City. In fact, the "Athletics" have been moved twice already: They were born The Philadelphia Athletics in 1901, ripped from Philly after the '54 season, and stayed in K. C. from 1955 to 1967, at which point they were snatched from the good people of Kansas City and put in Oakland. I am afraid to point out that Las Vegas [at least the government is; word has it that no Las Vegan cares about baseball] is doing to Oakland what Oakland did to Kansas City what K. C. did to Philadelphia. Once a franchise is stolen from the city in which it was born, it might as well be a vagabond outfit. Sorry, but while I am angered by this move, that anger is measured in comparison to other relocations.
My outrage is partly fueled by the fact that with this move, Oakland will now have no major-league teams to call its own, at least technically. The Raiders were stolen away to Las Vegas, and the Warriors moved to San Francisco, so one can at least say that organization [which, ironically, was also born and thus really belong to Philadelphia] remains in the Bay Area. But Oakland will probably cease to be a major-league city. The psychic damage that will be done will be immense and, I think, far-reaching.)
But this is The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey. The Twins, who started off Friday a 1/2-Game behind Cleveland, are now 1 1/2-Games ahead of the Guardians because they have lost the first two tilts of their series vs. The Bastard Washington Senators (v.2.0). A better measurement of how good the Twins really are should come from last Sunday's 15-2 battering at the hands of The Bastard St. Louis Browns, which completed a three-Game sweep at Target Field. Thank God, once again, that this is flyover country and not the coasts, where franchises actually care about baseball and actively put money into their teams.
Once they finish up this/Sunday afternoon, they'll head to Seattle for three starting tomorrow/Monday, then come home for a trio with the White Sox starting on Friday. This is a chance for the Twins to, possibly, pad their lead in the Division.
#-2: United FC (Last Week: -3). Wednesday, while I was concentrating on watching the USMNT struggle and ultimately fall to Panama, of all countries, in the Semifinals of the Gold Cup, the Black Hart was also playing the Loons' Match in Houston. I picked the wrong Game to watch; MNUFC avenged their Open Cup battering a couple months ago by crushing the Dynamo, 3-0. (Aside: I thought that the Americans were going to cruise into the final, but Mexico would struggle in the other Semi later in the night against Jamaica. I was completely wrong, as the Mexicans thrashed the Jamaicans, 3-0.)
That gave me some hope that opting back in to watching the Match versus LAFC (instead of going to the Nickel Creek concert; here's all the internal drama over that), a club that, despite being in second place and winning at St. Louis mid-Week, was desperately out-of-form as of late. No dice; the Match ended 1-all. United FC, once again, had their chances, courtesy of Emanuel Reynoso, to score, especially to start the Game, but they couldn't finish. Laugh-See, then, capitalized in the 21st Minute, as a moonshot connected with Carlos Vela, who outmuscled and outhustled Michael Boxall for the ball, then swerved around an oncoming Dayne St. Clair to score into the open net. Three Minutes later, however, a weirdly intricate series of passes in the box, the last of which was a Kervin Arriaga lifter, ended up with Reynoso side-kicking a low shot past the Goalkeeper to tie it up. And that was that.
Teemu Pukki, the squad's brand-new signing (and latest Striker), actually scored against the Dynamo, but he seemed largely ineffective last/Saturday night. I saw around Allianz Field a couple people wearing paper birthday hats; as the Pukki signing was streamed, someone (maybe the team's PR department) said the announcement was a "Pukki Party," and so people are wearing hats as a cheeky sign they're supporting the new guy. I hope it works out, but if last night was any indication, I fear that, once again, the rube hype over another new finisher will vastly outstrip the reality of scoring Goals.
While they didn't technically lose this screening Week, they blew a chance to get back into a postseason birth by not winning. They sit tenth in the West, albeit a Point behind the Dynamo for the final playoff slot. And the reason why the Loons sit behind the Twins in this Week's WMNSS is because they will stay sitting in tenth and out of a postseason spot for a month as MLS stops league play to concentrate on the brand-spanking new Leagues Cup, a competition between Major League Soccer ballclubs and squads of Liga MX. They will play Puebla and Chicago, both at home, next Week. You know, I haven't thought of whether I should track the XI for the WMNSS or not. ...
#-3: Lynx (Last Week: -1). Congratulations to Napheesa Collier for dropping 20 and helping Team Breanna Stewart defeat Team A'ja Wilson in last/Saturday night's All-Star Game in Las Vegas. Now, back to reality: The Jynx came into the All-Star break on the receiving end of a pair of vicious skull-fuckings -- by 24 to The Bastard Utah Starzzz last Sunday and by a franchise-worst 40 to The Bastard Detroit Shock Wednesday. Both ass-kickings, by the way, were at home. And that loss to Dallas was the annual day camp Game. Young girls were watching their heroines getting their brains beaten in. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT LASTING DAMAGE YOU'VE DONE TO THOSE PRECIOUS KIDS BY LOSING SO BADLY?!?!?!
This past Week proved so starkly how Minnesota just ain't gonna win the WNBA Championship this Year. And yet there are so many teams tanking resetting for bountiful draft next Year (Seattle, Phoenix, probably Chicago, maybe Los Angeles, and by the by, Indiana is The Worst Team In The League, but I think they're trying to win) that the club is going to make the playoffs because they're not bad enough not to. For example, this screening Week, while busy, starts off with a Game in Atlanta on Tuesday and a home showdown with the Sparks on Thursday. Those are both winnable. Saturday they host Las Vegas again. That one is not winnable.
#-Infinity: Whitecaps (Re-Entry!). I neglected to write about this story when news of it broke out, out of nowhere, last month. The Premier Hockey Federation was bought by the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association with the help of longtime front office executive Stan Kasten and fucking tennis godhead Billie Jean King. The PHF, apparently, is dead. And the last moment of its existence apparently will be the Whitecaps giving up the Isobel Cup-losing Goal three Minutes into 3-on-3 Sudden Death Overtime (wondered how the OT lasted that long).
This situation is strange, and the tributaries that flow into its apparent denouement are strange, too. The PHF (born as the National Women's Hockey League in 2015) soldiered on as The Little League That Could, going from four to five to six to seven teams over the Years. The 'Caps, born as an independent showcase team, joined in 2018 and won the Isobel Cup in its first season. But the really good players, the ones you see play in the Olympics, never played in the NWHL/PHF. I don't really know why, although they unionized as the PWHPA in 2019 and the league is non-union. The PWHPA teamed up with Kasten, King and that chairman last Year in an effort to form its own league separate from the PHF. And whenever I heard the players under the PWHPA talk about playing pro hockey full-time, it always seemed as though they were invoking the National Hockey League as a partner, even though the NHL never seemed to reciprocate or even acknowledge that relationship. It sounded desperate, if not thirsty, for The Best Players In Women's Hockey to try and attract the attention of the male-dominated NHL. It appeared as if they could have provided an example of independence and female empowerment by just winning a spot in the PHF and showing everybody how fucking good they were.
Little did I, nor a lot of people working in the PHF, know that behind the scenes earlier this Year, the stakeholders of the PHF were willing to sell themselves to the PWHPA and its backstoppers. The General Manager of the Whitecaps re-signed one of its players, Rookie Forward Natalie Snodgrass, to a two-Year deal Tuesday, June 27. News of the deal hit two days later. And under terms of the deal, everybody's contract was immediately voided. Everyone who worked at the PHF were all out of a job that day -- players and front office people too, including Chi-Yin Tse, 'Caps GM. The whoring by the league, the suddenness of the news and the out-of-nowhere aspect of the news reminds me of the PGA-LIV merger in golf ... well, except that I don't think the PWHPA et al. ever murdered and dismembered a journalist they didn't like.
So instead of forming its own league (the members of the PWHPA divvied up into four teams that weren't city-based and played over two weekends in Canada in October and November of last Year), the PWHPA instead bought a league it considered itself superior to, then hollowed out all of the people who worked for it so it could move into its host body. I find all of this shady, if not despicable, and if women's hockey had more of a national following, I think more people would regard this move with a lot more contempt, too. They may have had non-union issues with the PHF, and thought that this ruthless move ensured they themselves won't lose their jobs like they did when the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) went belly-up in 2019. But they essentially fired a bunch of players with this shock merger. The money people has set up a pool that will dole out severance (as determined by the money people, probably) to all contracted players and even more money for anyone who tries out for the league and fails to get a spot. If you live in America and are smart, you know not to trust the word of people who have the money. Not to mention it ain't right to just fire people outright. I wonder if this "deal" has a Non-Disclosure Agreement attached to it. If so, there has to be one contracted PHF player willing to break it. I mean, the money you would be given isn't worth signing the NDA, is it?
Beyond that, I cannot help but see this as bullying. And I find it depressingly ironic that people I would look to as fighting the good fight have instead went over to the dark side because they can take what they want through power, money, talent and fame. One of these superior players, Canadian Sarah Nurse, herself was out of a job upon the death of the CWHL. "We're not celebrating dissolving a league," Nurse is quoted as saying in this Associated Press article. And yet she, through her union, has dissolved the league. "Our hearts definitely go out to (the PHF's) players and staff because we know what it's like to have a league fold and get that phone call," Nurse also said. Really? Because she was able to take one of their roster spots without needing to earn it on the ice. And I'm guessing she didn't pick up a phone to spread the news, either.
If I were a PHF'er and saw that quote from Nurse, I would vow to injure her if we ever were playing in the same hockey Game, new league or beer league. I don't believe she fucking believes her bullshit, and I don't think she cares that she doesn't believe it. I don't think any of the players in the NWHPA give a shit about any player losing her job in the league. Look past all of the performative well wishes, their "Chin up, you'll find a job in hockey" bromides; understand that it is shameful to destabilize people's livelihoods in order to guarantee stability in a league that you decided to acquire. Nurse and them, for all of the wondrous talent they'll now feel free to showcase in their host body, are nothing more than victims turned perpetrators.
(Shame, by the way, has to be flung at Billie Jean King, too. This trailblazer for women in sport has also okayed women losing their places in sport. I thought her support for Virginia Slims cigarettes as she helped start a women's tennis association in the seventies was understandable, but I now pair that with this disgusting merger as a disturbing pattern of someone who sees in the taking of dreams of the people she helped allow to dream the full realization of women's liberation. I shake my head.)
So, what of the Whitecaps? According to that same article I linked to in the previous paragraph, there will be only six teams when the new league (I'm guessing it'll be called the WNHL -- the Women's National Hockey League ... yoo-hoo, sailor!) starts, presumably next season. The Twin Cities apparently ain't one of them. So the Minnesota Whitecaps, a team founded by two hockey dads that sustained itself by essentially being barnstormers, make a deal to home itself in a league, only to be reduced to an asset that will be buried under piles of Intellectual Property papers for the next half-decade as this new league starts up out east. A dream turned into a line item, hrmph.
Once the news becomes official, I'll write about them again. But I don't mind starting the obituatry now: RIP, Minnesota Whitecaps.
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