Media – Page 35 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Big Ten West Division Signals Potential

Posted on May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 by David Shama

It’s looking like the football Gophers could intensify their rivalries with Wisconsin and Iowa in coming years. While it’s unknown when Big Ten football will start its 2020 season, the three programs are having impressive offseason recruiting results after being bunched at the top of the West Division standings in 2019.

Minnesota’s 2021 recruiting class is currently ranked No. 8 nationally by 247Sports, the often quoted college football authority. The Gophers have 16 high school players who have verbally committed to coach P.J. Fleck, including five four-star players.

Iowa’s class is ranked No. 10 and the Hawkeyes have 15 commits, with three of them four-stars. Wisconsin is No. 18 with three four-star commits among its 10 player total.

Recruiting rankings will reshuffle a lot between now and Signing Day in December. Yet the early and impressive ranking of the three programs makes a statement about Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.

The Gophers are expected to have about four or five more scholarships available for the 2021 class. That means about 75 percent of the class is already in place. If things hold, Fleck will have the most four-stars since he came to Minnesota in January of 2017.

With the momentum of 2019’s 11-2 team record and breakthrough season, and the recruiting success of this winter and spring, Minnesota could add more four-star players to its class of 2021. Five-star recruits are rare but a possibility for Minnesota.

The Gophers, Hawkeyes and Badgers are recruiting various states including nearby Illinois. The University of Illinois program has fallen on hard times, causing state players to have reservations about joining the Illini who have heavily turned to the transfer portal for help.

Five of Minnesota’s 15 players in the 2021 recruiting class are from Illinois, including three four-star commits. So far this year Iowa has two players from Illinois, including a four-star offensive tackle, and the Badgers have one Illinois native.

Last season Minnesota had a 7-2 Big Ten record, tied for best in the West Division with the Badgers. Iowa was right behind at 6-3. All three programs were in the top 15 teams in the final Associated Press national rankings. The Gophers had an impressive bowl win over SEC power Auburn, the Hawkeyes beat USC by 25 points and the Badgers had a one-point loss to Pac-12 power Oregon.

Both Wisconsin and Iowa have consistently fielded winning teams for decades. That isn’t likely to change as long as the present leaders of those programs remain in place. It’s up to Fleck and the Gophers to match that consistency and even exceed it on a path to excellence.

There’s still plenty for Minnesota to prove but each of Fleck’s teams have outdone their predecessors. That’s an encouraging sign, along with the 2021 recruiting and how it appears the Gophers are not only upgrading the talent pool, but building roster depth.

There may be no better example of the latter than the vital quarterback position. The bluebloods of college football didn’t want Kentucky native Tanner Morgan when he was in high school, but Fleck saw his potential. Now looking at his redshirt junior season, Morgan is forecast as an early round NFL Draft choice in 2021. Morgan’s replacement could be redshirt sophomore Zack Annexstad who at one time beat out Morgan as the starter. The QB roster also includes two redshirt scholarship freshmen and 2021 pledge Athan Kaliakmanis, who is one of Minnesota’s four-star commits from Illinois.

In the future the Gophers must contend with not only facing Iowa and Wisconsin, but also Northwestern led by Pat Fitzgerald—a master of getting more from less at the Big Ten’s only private school and a place where fan support is sometimes buried in apathy. Nebraska, with perhaps the Big Ten’s most passionate fan-base, could come alive after two disappointing seasons under state native and head coach Scott Frost, who has recruiting ties not only to his home state but also to Florida. Purdue, too, has potential led by offensive guru and head coach Jeff Brohm.

The Big Ten West has long been a step-child to the Big Ten East Division but the gap could be closing. If Minnesota, and say Nebraska, become annual dynamos, and Iowa and Wisconsin stay strong, look out for the “Wild West.”

Worth Noting

Former Gophers basketball player and assistant coach Al Nuness praised the news yesterday that Minneapolis native Jeff Mailhot is joining coach Richard Pitino’s staff at Minnesota. Mailhot has a detailed resume of college and high school coaching including at Hopkins where he worked for head man Ken Novak, who probably has produced more Division I standouts than any coach in state history. Nuness knows both Mailhot and Novak, and said the two have a close relationship. “That’s a great hire,” Nuness said.

Birthdays: Gophers baseball coach John Anderson and 1991 Twins World Series star Jack Morris both turned 65 last Saturday. Jared Nuness, Al’s son and an assistant basketball coach at Baylor, is 41 today (May 19). Bud Grant, who coached the Vikings to four Super Bowls, will be 93 Wednesday.

Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor made a savvy decision in 2014 when he decided to purchase the Star Tribune. The paper filed for bankruptcy in 2009 after struggling with debt and declining advertising revenue but has made a big comeback in recent years shifting part of its business strategy to digital subscriptions.

Ex-Chicago Bulls bad boy Dennis Rodman, who has been receiving plenty of attention in the 10-part ESPN series “The Last Dance,” once kicked cameraman Eugene Amos in the groin at a Target Center game against the Timberwolves. Amos litigated and received a $200,000 settlement.

The series, of course, focuses on Bulls superstar Michael Jordan who has been paid $1.3 billion by Nike since 1984, according to the May 7, Forbes Sports Money Playbook.

Although speculation about it has declined, if MLB begins its season with playing sites only in Arizona, Florida and Texas that will be a tax windfall for players. Arizona has a modest state income tax, while Florida and Texas have none at all.

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Rambling about 60 Seasons of the “Griffs”

Posted on May 12, 2020May 18, 2020 by David Shama

This year we are supposed to be celebrating the 60th season of the “Minnepaul Griffs.”

“Minnepaul Griffs?” Let’s explain.

The American League’s Washington Senators received permission to relocate to Minnesota in the fall of 1960. In the early weeks of the transition, the Twin Cities “think tank” of media and fans speculated about what to name their new Major League Baseball franchise. It was certainly clear that Senators wasn’t a fit as part of the name in Minnesota.

Minnepaul drew some “votes,” even if it was an awkward way of combining Minneapolis and St. Paul. Griffs was a better offering, nicknaming the club for the Griffith family that owned the franchise moving from its longtime home in the District of Columbia.

Minnesota Twins won out in the name-that-team derby, although an early legal document involving the Griffith’s franchise referred to the Minneapolis baseball club. There was also early memorabilia with the Minneapolis name—not Minnesota.

While the Griffiths were advised not to slight St. Paul, it was Minneapolis powerbrokers who had been trying to tantalize big league franchises like the Cleveland Indians, New York Giants and the Senators to relocate here in the 1950s. Also, the national sports media and fans knew this area from the fame of the five-time NBA champion Minneapolis Lakers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has so far delayed the 2020 MLB season, but it can’t stop this writer from being optimistic the “Boys of Summer” will take the field sometime in the weeks ahead. If so, the Twins will celebrate their 60th season in Minnesota.

I like to be first to a party, so let me offer further history lessons and reminiscing about the baseball franchise that has been entertaining us in the Upper Midwest since 1961.

The arrival of MLB was a big deal, and sadly, much more important to the public than the departure of the Lakers for Los Angeles after the 1959-1960 NBA season. The Vikings, an NFL expansion franchise that also took the field in 1961, were greeted with interest but nothing like the Twins because decades ago it was baseball that was the “national pastime” and not football.

Back in the early 1960s, drawing over 1 million fans through the gate was a financial sign of success in the bigs and a statement that your town supported baseball. The Twins announced total attendance of 1,256,723 fans their first season. Then they cruised through nine more seasons of passing the 1 million mark in attendance, as fans came from near and far including by private airplanes. The financial windfall was important to the Griffith family whose personal wealth would not be confused with the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, or even the Pohlads.

Team president Calvin Griffith was tight with a buck, with at least one player quipping the Twins boss threw nickels around as if they were manhole covers. Griffith found a money machine in Minnesota in the early years, and he seemed to like living here. His lifestyle included fishing near his home on Lake Minnetonka. Lore has it, though, that he didn’t care so much that an exclusive suburban Minneapolis golf club didn’t want him as a member.

Griffith was a character and no one, including Calvin, knew for sure what words might come out of his mouth. I never saw the man smile, although he always treated me with respect. I can’t recall his ever turning me down for an interview. He might waive me into his Metropolitan Stadium office and say, “Shama, sit down.”

Griffith was certainly not a high society elite, but he knew baseball. Even before he moved his franchise to Minnesota, he and his aides were building a promising talent pool that included players from Cuba. American players like Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison and Jim Kaat, and Cubans Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles and Camilo Pascual, formed the core of a Twins team that won the American League pennant in 1965, and then lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.

There was no better way to spend summer days and evenings in the 1960s than at Metropolitan Stadium—and get paid for it. My dad bought primo seats for a dozen or more games per season, but I also was part of the crew that prepared food for the vendors who sold hot dogs, soda and popcorn in the stadium stands. I was paid something like $7 per game but would have worked pro bono (if I knew then what that meant).

There were about eight of us working in one of the stadium’s side rooms used for preparing items for the vendors. We became friends and we were constantly doing what teenage boys do—verbally baiting one another and occasionally exchanging punches. We also found time to experiment with the cuisine including boiling the hot dogs to twice their normal size. Coca Cola found a new partner when we mixed the famous soft drink with orange soda.

Although we had an open invite to drink and eat as much as we liked, my favorite activity was leaving the room to watch the game. No more than a couple of us were supposed to leave at any time and go watch the Twins for a few minutes, but we played fast with the work rules. By the seventh inning we could start putting the food into storage and mopping the floor to close up the facility. The best scenario was for the game to be moving slowly in the late innings so that by the eighth and ninth I could watch the game without being sidetracked by my job.

The Twins played their last game at Metropolitan Stadium September 30, 1981. I had covered the team for a wire service in the 1970s but on that September day I sat in the stands as part of a small gathering of 15,900 fans. The Twins had fallen on hard times at the gate and on the field. The Metrodome awaited with better days coming at the box office and in the standings.

From the time the dome opened until its last season in 2009, the facility was belittled, but legions of Twins fans will insist that without its home field advantage their favorite team never would have been a combined 8-0 in World Series home games that ended in championships in 1987 and 1991. The stadium of the “Homer Hanky” was an inspiring place for the Twins to play and a nightmare for the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves.

After the 1970s I didn’t return to covering the Twins as a journalist until 2006. In the old days I found Killebrew to be the most approachable Twin I could imagine. In the 2000s I found players more difficult to talk with, except for Torii Hunter who made you feel like the editor of Sports Illustrated. Among managers and coaches, there have been none more likeable this millennium than Ron Gardenhire and Rick Anderson.

I can’t let this piece go without listing my all-time Twins team. With apologies to Gardy, I have to make Tom Kelly the manager. The man could be a professor of baseball and its managerial situations at an Ivy League institution. Here’s how I fill out T.K.’s batting order for a 60th anniversary season team:

Leading off the second baseman, Rod Carew. Batting second, the catcher Joe Mauer. Hitting third, the center fielder, Kirby Puckett. The cleanup hitter and third baseman? “The Killer,” of course. Batting fifth, right fielder Tony Oliva. Hitting sixth and seventh are first baseman Justin Morneau and left fielder Torii Hunter. Batting eighth is DH Kent Hrbek and ninth is shortstop Zoilo Versalles.

If T.K. has to win one game for the ages I am giving him Jack Morris, the right-handed hero who pitched 10 brilliant innings in the seventh game of the 1991 World Series that made Minnesota the baseball capital of the universe that year. (Morris was 2-0 in the series with a 1.17 ERA). If Jack needed help in the ninth, it’s Joe Nathan to the rescue.

Calling the action on local radio and TV would be the broadcast team of Herb Carneal, Halsey Hall and Ray Scott. They were both reporters and entertainers who charmed these parts decades ago. None more so than Halsey who had so many sidesplitting stories he could make a rain delay better than the ball game.

Hall had been a newspaper man for a long time before the Twins arrived. He loved having a big league ball club in Minnesota. His emotions about the hometown team could go to extreme. Once on the broadcast of a nail-biting game Scott quipped, “Halsey get up off the floor. You’re paid to watch.”

The 2020 Twins have yet to take the field, but for this writer the 60 seasons celebration starts today.

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Looking for Twins TV Return in July

Posted on May 5, 2020May 5, 2020 by David Shama

Word is Major League Baseball will start the 2020 season in July. Sports Headliners was told by an authoritative source his understanding is an abbreviated schedule will be played with initially no fans in ballparks. If more control of the COVID-19 epidemic happens, fans could slowly be allowed into stadiums as the season develops.

To deal most effectively with the virus, it’s predicted MLB will be reorganized into three 10-team divisions representing the east, central and west regions of the country. Travel would be minimized with teams playing games only within their division. To start with, and perhaps continuing indefinitely, games could be played only at sites in Florida, Texas and Arizona.

MLB owners and players have yet to agree with a 2020 schedule plan. With the necessity to get a plan in place soon, the pressure is on for an agreement this month. Presuming agreement is reached, that would allow enough time for three or four weeks of training prior to an early July start of the schedule.

It makes sense that one of the details the two sides could agree on is an unprecedented expanded roster size. If illness or injury hit a team particularly hard, where does management source players without a deep roster? Usually when there is a roster need, MLB teams turn to their farm systems for help but at this time it’s uncertain what the status of minor league baseball is for 2020.

With so much pent up enthusiasm for baseball from the fans, TV viewership could be record setting in July both regionally and nationally. In a reorganized geographical central division, Twins fans wouldn’t see baseball’s best player, Mike Trout of the Angels. Nor would they watch the Twins against the Yankees and Red Sox, two blueblood clubs that have been coming to Minneapolis since 1961. But a division home in the midwest would have Minnesota playing American League traditional rivals in the Indians, Royals, Tigers and White Sox. Intriguing opponents from the National League in the Twins’ new division could include the Brewers, Cardinals and Cubs.

The Twins are expected to have one of baseball’s better teams and could be in some sort of revised playoff system that leads to a World Series winner in November. In these weird times, how strange would it be to play the Fall Classic in an empty stadium?

Worth Noting

MLB players are usually paid over a 162-game season, but would earn prorated amounts during the course of an abbreviated 2020 year.

Look for the NFL to announce its 2020 schedule within days. Each team will play the usual 16 regular season games, with no games outside the United States. Four games in London and one in Mexico City had previously been planned.

Among the familiar events of spring in recent years is Bud Grant’s garage sale from his Bloomington home. Well, the legendary former Vikings coach, who turns 93 later this month, is secluded at his Wisconsin cabin, and there won’t be a sale this year. In the past the sales have been promoted as the final one, but son Mike Grant has a wait and see approach. “Never say never on these garage sales,” Mike said.

As head coach of the Eden Prairie football team, Mike will have Justice Sullivan as one of his captains this fall. Sullivan, who projects as a college linebacker, lived in Iowa until a couple of years ago and has verbally committed to the University of Iowa as a four-star recruit. Grant said Sullivan could play inside or outside linebacker like Carter Coughlin, the former Eagle who was one of the Gophers’ best defenders at the end position last season.

“Outstanding young man, and good student, great kid,” Grant said of Sullivan, whose dad Jake Sullivan played collegiate basketball at Iowa State.

During this period of public health uncertainty, NBA owners, including the Timberwolves Glen Taylor, have been told to refer media requests to the league office.

Despite the coronavirus epidemic, metro golf courses are busy. An avid player told Sports Headliners public courses are only taking reservations about a week out.

More outdoor activity starts Saturday with the fishing season opening for a number of popular species including northern pike and trout. To many Minnesotans, though, it’s the “Walleye Opener.” Media reports say license sales are brisk.

It just might be that two of the finalists for commissioner of the new Central Collegiate Hockey Association are names with ties to the University of Minnesota. The new leader of the CCHA is expected to be announced soon and be in place by July 1.

The 2020 Minnesota Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame honorees in the High School Division are Walter Hunting, Duluth Denfeld; Jeff Mumm, Thief River Falls; Mike Quist, Gaylord; and Karl Urbaniak, Mabel-Canton. Also joining the Hall of Fame from the Citation Division is Mike Turner of Varsity Photos.

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