DeLeon Eskridge, who scored three touchdowns for the Gophers in Saturday’s 35-23 win over Montana State, is a true freshman who has yet to start a game for Minnesota (3-0). He replaced Shady Salamon, another true freshman in the first half, and provided the Gophers with more quickness. Prior to Saturday, Eskridge had only one previous rushing attempt for five yards against Bowling Green. At Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California he broke the school touchdown record of former USC and Pittsburgh star Lynn Swann.
Local dentist John Williams and other former Gopher athletes and Minnesota friends will travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico later this month to visit Dr. McKinley Boston. They will watch the New Mexico State-New Mexico football game on Saturday, September 27 in Las Cruces. Boston, the former Gopher football player and later athletic director, is now the athletic director at New Mexico State.
Former University of Minnesota football letter winner Eric Dalen, 1993-94, is an NBA referee.
Joe Mauer is likely to catch 135 games or more for the Twins, a high number for any catcher. Mauer, 25, is still young but some people fret about the physical toll catching takes on any catcher. He has caught 126 games this season and his previous high for catching was 120 in 2006, according to baseball-reference.com.
Twins’ rookie right fielder Denard Span has hit safely in 45 of his 67 games since being called up from Triple A Rochester. He has 20 RBI in his last 23 games. A decent prediction for next year is that Span will move to center field replacing the erratic Carlos Gomez while Delmon Young remains in left and Michael Cuddyer takes over in right after injuries have limited him to 64 games so far this season.
Gomez has stolen 30 bases, the most by a Twin since Luis Rivas had 31 in 2001.
The Twins are 38-40 in games when American League MVP candidate Justin Morneau doesn’t have an RBI. Morneau is tied with Josh Hamilton of Texas for the league lead in RBI with 124. The Twins have scored 769 runs this season with Morneau’s RBI’s accounting for 16 percent of them.
Jim Holden will be signing copies of Tennis in the Northland from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at Reed-Sweatt Tennis Center in south Minneapolis. The former Northfield tennis coach has written a comprehensive history of boys’ high school tennis in Minnesota. Among the many people he writes about is 1951 state singles champion Vincent Bugliosi from Hibbing who was the lead prosecutor at the Charles Manson trial and author of the book Helter Skelter. More recently Bugliosi has authored the best seller The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.