Golden Gophers – Page 366 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Movie 42 Stirs Minnesota Connections

Posted on April 15, 2013April 15, 2013 by David Shama

A baseball fan who looks hard enough at the new movie 42 can find connections to Minneapolis-St. Paul.

42 is the story of a courageous African American, Jackie Robinson, who broke major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947 while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson’s impact on society includes today’s tribute from MLB when every player in the American and National leagues will wear uniform No. 42 including at Target Field where tonight the Twins play the Angels. Today is Jackie Robinson Day, recognizing the April 15, 1947 arrival of Robinson in the big leagues.

Robinson, played by Chadwick Boseman in the film, endured a tsunami of racial insults from fans, players and managers in his early years with the Dodgers. In the movie Phillies’ manager Ben Chapman delivers a verbal assault that is the most painful scene to watch. The harassment’s intent is to have Robinson quit the Dodgers and the barrage is so ugly it almost makes the 28-year-old rookie first baseman implode.

Although some of Robinson’s teammates didn’t want him to be a Dodger, others came to his defense. Eddie Stanky confronts Chapman in 42, showing passion and a colorful vocabulary while protecting Robinson. Stanky, whose nickname was the “Brat,” played for several major league teams before becoming manager of the 1956 Minneapolis Millers.

The man Robinson replaced as the Dodgers’ first baseman was Howie Schultz, a St. Paul native. Schultz, who attended Central High School and Hamline, played four seasons for the Dodgers prior to 1947 with his best year coming in 1944 hitting 11 home runs with 83 RBI in 138 games, according to Baseball-reference.com.

Back in the 1940s the Dodgers had affiliations with Triple-A farm teams in St. Paul, and Montreal where Robinson played in 1946. There’s a scene in 42 in which St. Paul is written on a blackboard in the office of Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey. The Saints’ roster in 1948 included African American catcher Roy Campanella who also played for the Dodgers that same year.

In 42 Rickey, portrayed by Harrison Ford, is looking for a pioneer to break the color barrier and considers Campenella but dismisses the easy going catcher in favor of the ultra competitive Robinson. But both players became Hall of Famers including Campanella who played in 35 games for the Saints in 1948, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

Rickey’s motivations for enduring the wrath of the segregated south and some of his major league brethren for breaking the color barrier was part personal and part business. In the movie Rickey talks about how years before he had failed a black baseball player, but he also makes it clear that bringing Robinson to Brooklyn is about attracting more African-American fans to Ebbets Field.

The Dodgers’ desire to make more money eventually resulted in a failed new ballpark initiative in Brooklyn and relocation of the franchise to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. At the same time the Dodgers convinced the New York Giants to move to San Francisco so that two teams could play on the West Coast (making schedules more efficient) and also continue their storied rivalry. The relocations changed the history of baseball in Minnesota.

The Giants had been in high level discussions about moving to Minneapolis before Dodgers’ owner Walter O’Malley convinced them to move west. The Giants had operated the Triple-A Millers for years, played exhibition games here to test the baseball market and even had purchased land that potentially could have been the site of a major league park.

Instead of acquiring the Giants, this area waited until 1960 when the American League Washington Senators moved here for the 1961 season and became the Minnesota Twins.

Worth Noting

Yesterday’s Twins-Mets game, not played because of rain, is the first Target Field postponement of the season and will now be played on Monday, August 19 in Minneapolis. Right-hander Kevin Correia, scheduled to start yesterday for the Twins, will pitch against the Angels tonight.

After losing games to the Mets on Friday and Saturday at Target Field, the Twins are now 157-127 in interleague games. The Twins’ next game against a National League team is a week from tonight in Minneapolis with the Marlins.

Gophers’ baseball coach John Anderson earned his 500^th career Big Ten Conference win yesterday when Minnesota defeated Northwestern 7-1.

Parker Executive Search based in Atlanta has been paid “more than $295,000” by the University of Minnesota since 2007 to assist with searches involving Tim Brewster, Tubby Smith, Jerry Kill and Norwood Teague, according to the April 8 issue of Sports Illustrated. The story is about the role of search firms with college sports programs including their fees for identifying potential coaches and athletic directors.

Draft authority Todd McShay said on ESPN last Thursday the Vikings may draft Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o at No. 23 in the first round and California wide receiver Kennan Allen at No. 25. McShay said four wide receivers might be taken during the first round of the NFL draft April 25 including West Virginia’s Tavon Austin, a 5-9, 170-pound Percy Harvin like player who could be the first chosen.

Injured Timberwolves’ forward Kevin Love reportedly earns $13,668,750 in salary but has played in only 18 games this season. That works out to $759,375 per game.

For the first time in league history, the WNBA draft will be televised in primetime. The first round begins at 7 p.m. CDT tonight and will be telecast by ESPN2. The second and third rounds (starting at 8 p.m.) will be aired on NBATV and ESPNU. The Lynx have the No. 12 pick in the first round, two second round selections and a third round choice.

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U Waits for Summer to Find Burner

Posted on April 12, 2013April 12, 2013 by David Shama

The Gophers are working their way through 15 spring practices but one of the team’s potentially most explosive playmakers won’t arrive until summer. Freshman running back Berkley Edwards, 5-9, 190 pounds from Novi, Michigan, is already on the minds of head coach Jerry Kill and offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover.

Edwards has game changing speed, the kind of attribute otherwise absent on the Gophers’ running backs roster. “He’s one of (the) top 10, 12 sprinters in the country,” Kill said in February when he announced Edwards will play for Minnesota. “Those things we need. And he’s a great fit for us at running back because we got some big backs, but we’d like to have one just to hand it off and it’s over. Goodnight. And he can do that because he’s got that kind of speed.”

The longest run from scrimmage by a Gophers’ running back last season was 38 yards by Donnell Kirkwood. In some games the Gophers didn’t have a running back with a run longer than 15 yards.

Limegrover is diplomatic about the running backs he has now and said he’s “very excited” about what they can do but he knows Edwards will complement the punishing style of Kirkwood and Rodrick Williams, the team’s two leading rushers from last year after now departed quarterback MarQueis Gray.

“I think the great thing about Berkley is that he truly can bring that change of pace over what we have right now,” Limegrover said. “The more weapons you have…the better off you’re going to be because every time you do that, it makes defensive coaches stand up and take notice, and be aware of, ‘Okay, they have a tailback in but which one is it?’

“So having a guy like Berkley with his speed and the things he can do getting the ball to the perimeter I think is going to be just a fantastic complement to what we already have in place.”

Limegrover won’t have to be envious of a team like Wisconsin if Edwards comes through for the Gophers. The famed Badgers’ running game pounds away for yards over and over…and then a speedy Wisconsin back darts through a hole, or jets outside for a long run.

Limegrover said it’s difficult for an offense to just rely on long drives for touchdowns. “Every once in a while you need to have that two play, 80-yard drive. …That’s what we’re working towards and that’s what we need, and Berkley is that kind of kid.”

Worth Noting

Limegrover said he isn’t set on naming the starting quarterback after spring practice ends later this month. “Not really. I think that what it comes down to is I think the offense is kind of bigger than who the starting quarterback is going to be.”

Kill emphasizes competition at all positions. “I think it shows up every day with the way kids compete,” Limegrover said.

Two of the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Award are Minnesotans for the first time in the award’s history, spokesman Wally Shaver told Sports Headliners. The winner of the 33^rd annual award will be announced tonight with coverage beginning at 5 p.m. CDT on the NHL Network.

Finalists are Boston College sophomore Johnny Gaudreau from Carneys Point, New Jersey; Quinnipiac senior goalie Eric Hartzell from White Bear Lake; and St. Cloud State senior forward Drew LeBlanc from Hermantown.

A Minnesotan, UMD’s Jack Connolly who attended Duluth’s Marshall High School, won the award last year. The last Gopher to win was Jordan Leopold in 2002.

With recent announcements that five juniors will be leaving school early, plus the end of eligibility for senior Seth Helgeson, the Gophers’ hockey program has lost more than 25 percent of its roster.

Two football games will be played at sites within walking distance of one another on Thursday, August 29. That evening the Gophers host UNLV in a nonconference game at TCF Bank Stadium while the Vikings play their final preseason game against the Titans at Mall of America Field.

The Vikings’ other home preseason game will be August 9 against the Texans.

Last Sunday in Atlanta Lewis Garrison, the former Gophers football player, officiated the Division II men’s college basketball championship game for a second consecutive season.

This is a big weekend for the Carol Fitzgerald Memorial Fund with a benefit tonight at the Metropolitan in Golden Valley, and a community celebration tomorrow at the Martin Luther King Center in Minneapolis. Pro Bowl wide receiver and Minneapolis native Larry Fitzgerald Jr. will be at both events and sign autographs at a fundraising session on Saturday. Other guests at the Metropolitan event will include Jamecia Bennett, Cris Carter, and Big Sy Huff. The fund supports multiple causes and honors Carol Fitzgerald who passed away from breast cancer in 2003.

A local source told Sports Headliners assistant basketball coach Ben Johnson interviewed on Monday for a position on Minnesota coach Richard Pitino’s new staff. Johnson, a former Gopher player, joined the Nebraska staff last year.

The 2013 Division I men’s basketball tournament, televised on four networks, was the most-watched NCAA tourney in 19 years, according to a Wednesday story by Sportsmedianews.com, attributing viewership statistics to Nielsen. “The tournament averaged 10.7 million total viewers, up 11% from last year’s 9.6 million total viewers, and is the highest average for the NCAA Tournament in 19 years (11.2 million, 1994),” Sportsmedia.com reported.

The story also said Monday night’s title game between Louisville and Michigan had 23.4 million viewers, an increase of 12 percent from the 2012 game.

The Timberwolves FastBreak Foundation will host a jersey auction after tomorrow night’s game against the Suns at Target Center. Fans can bid on jerseys worn by Timberwolves players during the game. The winning bidders will have jerseys signed and photos taken with players.

St. Thomas men’s basketball coach John Tauer, who led the Tommies to a 30-2 record and the NCAA tournament semifinals, is the Basketball Times Division III Coach of the Year.

Vance Worley (0-1, 5.73 ERA), acquired in the offseason from the Phillies, makes his third start of the season tonight for the Twins against the Mets and Jonathon Niese (1-0, 2.13 ERA) at Target Field. Worley has a 3-3 career record with a 5.17 ERA against the Mets.

Yesterday was the 52^nd anniversary of the first Twins’ regular season game ever, a 6-0 win in New York against the Yankees. Pedro Ramos was the winning pitcher, Whitey Ford the loser in that 1961 game.

Oswaldo Arcia, the Twins Minor League Player of the Year in 2012, is hitting .458 with three home runs and eight RBI in 24 at bats for Triple-A Rochester.

Comments Welcome

Mussy & Pitino: Deja Vu in Dinkytown?

Posted on April 8, 2013April 8, 2013 by David Shama

More than four decades ago the Gophers hired a 30-year-old head basketball coach who eventually got the school in trouble with the NCAA, but Bill Musselman revived a dormant program and long after he was gone Minnesota basketball was still benefitting from his fiery work.

Last week Rich Pitino, 30, took over a Gophers’ program again in need of revival and heavy lifting to make it one of the best in the country. His passion was obvious at his Friday news conference. “I believe this is one of the best jobs in college basketball,” he said even though many college coaches might roll their eyes at such a statement.

Pitino’s reputation is that of a tireless worker who may devote 18 hours per day to his task at Minnesota. He’s known as an effective recruiter and a coach who favors full court pressure defense. To be hired as a Big Ten basketball coach at 30 years old is a remarkable achievement.

Open the Musselman file and see similarities. Like Pitino, Musselman wasn’t the first choice to become the Gophers’ coach but once he arrived you knew this guy was serious —even fanatical— about his business.

Musselman worked long hours and prided himself on his own conditioning. When he wasn’t in the office or on the phone at home, he might be playing pickup basketball where a frustrated and immature Gophers’ coach could resort to fisticuffs. He hated to lose in any competition.

In the summer of 1971, Musselman’s first year in Minneapolis, he told a pumped up crowd at Williams Arena he planned on his Gophers winning the 1971-72 Big Ten championship. Skeptics in the audience remembered that Minnesota had last been conference champs in 1937, and the 1970-71 Gophers finished 5-9 in the Big Ten.

Musselman inherited some talent on his roster in 1971 but knew he needed more. It didn’t take long to sign up junior college stars Clyde Turner and Ron Behagen. They and others formed a roster that won the Big Ten title in 1972, just as predicted.

It was more than recruiting that made the Gophers a winner, though. Musselman employed a zone defense that regularly held opponents to point totals in the 50s. On offense Minnesota was a disciplined team willing to hold the ball for long stretches to find a high percentage shot.

Musselman was a motivator who could be so crazed to win he talked to his players prior to the first practice in October of 1971 about beating Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State. Never mind that there would be no game between the schools until winter.

The desire to motivate his team and pack Williams Arena resulted in Musselman’s use of a pregame ball handling drill set to music. As the Gopher players performed 25 minutes before tipoff, nearly all the seats in the arena were filled with hand clapping, foot stomping fans.

In less than a year Musselman transformed the Gophers on the national college basketball map. During his career at Minnesota the Gophers had Big Ten finishes of first, second, sixth and third. The team was so popular games were regular sellouts, and fans who couldn’t get in the arena paid to watch on a large screen in the next door hockey arena.

Musselman left the Gophers after the 1975 season with NCAA infractions brewing and the bad taste of the infamous 1972 Minnesota-Ohio State brawl on his resume. But he had the program rolling in recruiting, victories and at the box office from the start of his assignment in Minneapolis, and that momentum carried over for years and contributed directly to the success of the two coaches who followed him, Jim Dutcher and Clem Haskins.

If Pitino can duplicate the “Good Mussy” and not the “Bad Mussy,” it will be déjà vu in Dinkytown.

Worth Noting

Rich Pitino said he welcomes the idea of the Gophers playing nonconference games against Louisville, the team coached by his father, Rick Pitino. “I would love to, if he would be willing to do it. We were going to do it at FIU, and hopefully we can do something here. I think it would be great. It would be fun to go against him head-to-head.”

Although Rich Pitino didn’t say it, the game is something the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority should be looking at for 2016, the first year of the new Minneapolis Vikings stadium. A crowd of 20,000 to 30,000 could be likely, and installing a basketball setup in the new covered stadium would be a trial run for hosting NCAA Tournament games.

Pitino has already contacted Minnesota high school recruits including Apple Valley junior point guard Tyus Jones. He plans to have individual meetings with Gophers players this week.

The April 8 issue of Sports Illustrated said Minnesota natives Nate Wolters and Mike Muscala didn’t help themselves with their performances in the NCAA Tournament. Wolters, the South Dakota State point guard from St. Cloud Tech, “got destroyed” against the quickness and long arms of Michigan defenders in the tourney, according to an NBA executive.

Muscala, the Bucknell center from Roseville, has talent but an NBA executive quoted in the magazine said, “You can see his skills. But he needs to develop. If I were taking him, I’d try to get him to play in Europe for a couple of years.”

S.I. predicted the Timberwolves, drafting at No. 8 in the first round, will choose Indiana shooting guard Victor Oladipo.

The Vikings will play a home preseason game against the Titans at Mall of America Field on either Thursday, August 29, or Friday, August 30. A game on August 29 will be the same date the football Gophers play UNLV at TCF Bank Stadium.

A Vikings’ spokesman said the team’s date will be finalized within a couple of weeks. The Vikings’ August 25 preseason game at San Francisco will be nationally televised by NBC’s Sunday Night Football.

Gophers’ offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover said he thinks former Gophers’ quarterback Max Shortell is home in Kansas still deciding where he will finish his college career. Shortell, who would have been a valuable junior for the Gophers next fall, decided to transfer from Minnesota after the season ended last year.

Limegrover, who used to weigh 400 pounds, is now at about 230 and coaching with renewed energy.

At the Minnesota Football Clinic on Friday night newscaster Randy Shaver thanked high school and college coaches for fund-raising $121,000 for his cancer research foundation. The “Tackle Cancer” promotion involved 150 high schools and two colleges in the state. The Gophers will participate this year at the San Jose State game at TCF Bank Stadium.

The clinic, a three day event led by the Minnesota Football Coaches Association and held at the Double Tree Park Plaza in St. Louis Park, reported a record attendance of over 1,300, according to an e-mail from Ron Stolski, executive director of the MFCA.

At the clinic Minnetonka High School coach Dave Nelson was given the Tom Mahoney Man of the Year Award by the MFCA. “Tom Mahoney was one of the founders of the Minnesota Football Coaches Association, and an inspirational, tireless leader of it for decades,” Stolski wrote in an e-mail. “The Tom Mahoney award is presented to an MFCA member who represents the best in our association. A person who devotes leadership and enthusiasm for and energy to the efforts of the MFCA. Dave Nelson epitomizes all that the award represents.”

St. Thomas football coach Glenn Caruso said his Tommies will return “more kids than any top five” Division III program in the country. Among his top 60 players last year, 35 were freshmen and sophomores. Caruso said the Tommies might be ranked No. 2 in the nation prior to the start of next season.

St. Thomas begins the first of seven spring practices next Sunday. The Tommies, who have 91 Minnesotans on the roster, return nine starters on offense and six on defense.

Twins’ closer Glen Perkins, who earned his second save of the season yesterday in a 4-3 win over the Orioles, has yet to give up a hit in three innings over three games. The Twins, now 4-2, have swept their two opening series.

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