Author: David Shama

Minnesota Wild president Doug Risebrough and coach Jacques Lemaire announced yesterday that forward Pavol Demitra will serve as team captain for the month of October.  Brian Rolston and Wes Walz will serve as permanent alternate captains.

The Wild will see if it can continue its mastery of the Chicago Blackhawks at the home and season opener Thursday night.  The Wild swept the four game series last season, won two pre-season games this year and is 17-6-l all-time in regular season games.

There’s talk that the locker rooms in the new TCF Bank Stadium will be named after former Gopher coach Murray Warmath who won the school’s last national championship in 1960.

What the new Big Ten Network means to fans with cable television here is that the Gopher road games the next two Saturdays at Indiana and Northwestern will not be seen on their TV sets.  In past seasons most Big Ten Conference football games were televised even if the telecasts were via ESPN-Plus.

The Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission has approved a 10-city listening tour regarding the Minnesota Vikings’ stadium needs.  The tour will gather citizenry input starting with Duluth on October 23 and continue outstate until November 14 when there will be a meeting in Minneapolis.

Although the New York Mets blew their opportunity to make the playoffs, second baseman Luis Castillo was productive the last month of the season.  Castillo, traded by the Twins in late July, hit .316 during September and .364 in the last 10 games of the season.

Left fielder Jason Kubel closed fast for the Twins, too. He hit .364 in August, .325 in September. His finished with a .273 average and major league career bests in homeruns, 13, and RBI, 65.  

The Twins tied a franchise record this year by drawing over two million people for a third consecutive season.  When the franchise starts playing in the new outdoor ballpark in 2010 the Twins are likely to draw around three million (a total exceeded only once in club history).  At the old Met Stadium, playing outdoors, the Twins never drew two million in a single season.

Brett Favre made the national headlines yesterday for breaking Dan Marino’s NFL career record of 420 touchdown passes but there was a lot of conversation inside and outside the Metrodome about rookie running back Adrian Peterson after Green Bay defeated the Vikings 23-16.

Green Bay’s 37-year-old Favre threw two touchdown passes to move his career total to 422 while the 22-year-old Peterson tied a Viking rookie rushing record with his third 100 yard rushing game of the young season.  Peterson tied the record by Chuck Foreman and A.P. even accomplished it by halftime of his fourth NFL career game.  Peterson ran for 108 yards on 10 carries in the first half.

What had fans wondering, though, was why Peterson’s role was limited to two carries from scrimmage in the second half.  Although it was a close game, 10-6 starting the third quarter, and 13-9 beginning the fourth, the Vikings moved into passing mode with quarterback Kelly Holcomb and away from running the football using the league’s second leading rusher (Peterson’s 383 yards trails only Oakland’s LaMont Jordan, 424).

Green Bay defensive tackle Ryan Pickett talked like a member of the Adrian Peterson fan club after the game.  He said Peterson, who averaged 9.3 yards per carry, might have played better against the Packers than LaDainian Tomlinson, regarded by many as the NFL’s best running back and a player Green Bay had faced a week earlier.

“Peterson is a heck of a back,” Pickett told Sports Headliners. “He’s explosive, big. Man, he’s got great vision on the field. Any time you give him an inch, he’s going to take it. …”

Peterson doesn’t play like a rookie. “He looks like an experienced veteran out there,” Pickett said.  “He’s just running the ball hard.  He’s gonna be a force to reckon with this year.”

Tomlinson rushed for 62 yards against the Packers, compared with Peterson’s 112. “He might be the best back we’ve faced so this year and that’s saying a lot, playing against LaDainian and all.” Pickett said.  “He’s up there and he’s got a good future ahead of him.”

Be good or be gone. Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor told Sports Headliners recently that he has expectations about proper behavior by his players and also for team leadership.  The Wolves, led by coach Randy Wittman, will trade or release players who aren’t team oriented, Taylor said.

Taylor, who traveled with the team over the weekend to training camp in Turkey, is anticipating a different locker room this season than in the past.  “The last couple years we just put up with some behaviors we shouldn’t have,” Taylor said.  “And if I had known about it, we probably wouldn’t have. …”

Asked to offer an example, Taylor said players were “degrading” others in the locker room.  Years ago Wolves players like Sam Mitchell and Ervin Johnson would stop that kind of behavior, Taylor said. Although he wanted Kevin Garnett to be a verbal leader, the super star forward, now traded to Boston, didn’t fit the part.

“We just found out that wasn’t the type of leadership that K.G. had,” Taylor said. “I think a lot of people looked to him then, and by him not saying anything it almost like condones it. …It wasn’t what he meant but he just didn’t see it as his place or appropriate for him to step into that.  So his type of leadership was I’ll go out on the floor and play hard, and you guys should play hard. …We found that out too late and then we didn’t have the other people (to assume leadership). …”

Taylor expects some of the leadership role to come from 34-year-old Juwan Howard, acquired during the off-season in a trade with Houston.   After the Garnett trade, Howard asked to leave the Wolves for another team and that could still happen.  Either way, Taylor has already told second year players Randy Foye and Craig Smith, along with Al Jefferson, a fourth year key player acquired in the Garnett trade, that they need to step up as a “collective” leadership group.

With past behavior problems and the fact the Wolves have eight players 24 or younger on the 17-man training camp roster,Taylor is going to be pro-active this month.  On the overseas trip (the Wolves will play an exhibition game in Turkey and another in London) Taylor plans to meet individually or in small groups with all the players.  His two topics will be community service and being team oriented. Taylor wants his players to be good citizens off the court, giving to the community with the many opportunities available to high profile pro athletes.

The Wolves owner also wants to “reinforce” a message from Wittman to be a solid teammate.  “The importance of being a team member, and that we can’t say that in a meeting we’re going to be a team member and then go out on the floor and act somewhat different, be critical of other people, be selfish on the floor…,” Taylor said.

He also said the franchise’s long range goal is an NBA championship. This season is important, he explained, for determining who will become the team’s leaders and best players.  It will be a process as the Wolves find out if Foye, Smith, Jefferson and whoever else are the ones they need to return this franchise to championship contention.  Others who may emerge include Gerald Green, also acquired in the Boston trade, and No. 1 pick Corey Brewer.