David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Thielen, Mahomes Return on Sunday?

Posted on October 29, 2019October 29, 2019 by David Shama

Enjoy a Tuesday notes column:

It could be that top playmakers Adam Thielen and Patrick Mahomes return for Sunday’s game in Kansas City between the Vikings and Chiefs.

Wide receiver Thielen, recovering from a right hamstring injury, didn’t play last Thursday in Minnesota’s win over the Redskins. By Sunday he will have both rested and undergone treatment, making a return to the lineup perhaps likely.

Mahomes, the Chiefs’ starting quarterback and 2018 NFL MVP, dislocated his right knee cap more than 10 days ago and he didn’t play Sunday night against the Packers. But that evening NBC TV reporter Michele Tafoya said Mahomes told her that if the Chiefs were facing a playoff game he would have played against the Packers.

The 6-2 Vikings and 5-3 Chiefs have postseason ambitions just like 50 years ago in 1969. Minnesota and Kansas City played in Super Bowl IV on January 11, 1970. The Vikings were about a two touchdown favorite but lost 23-7.

Chiefs coach Hank Stram loved the limelight and was “miked for sound” during the game. He is famous for this quote about a Vikings defensive back: “(Karl) Kassulke: was running around there like it was a Chinese fire drill.”

Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall played in that Super Bowl but many fans remember him for a gaffe 55 years ago this month. Playing against the 49ers, he scooped up a fumble and ran 66 yards the wrong way and into the end zone. The 49ers were rewarded with a safety.

Former Vikings linebacker Ben Leber, now a sideline reporter on the team’s radio broadcasts and TV analyst for college football games, speaks to the CORES lunch group Thursday, November 14 at the Bloomington Event Center, 1114 American Blvd. Reservations are accepted until Monday, November 11 by contacting Jim Dotseth, dotsethj@comcast.net. CORES is an acronym for coaches, officials, reporters, educators and sports fans.

Ben Utecht, the Hastings native and former Gophers star tight end now a brain health advocate, speaker and entertainer, is the latest guest on the “Behind the Game” Twin Cities cable TV showed hosted by Patrick Klinger and Bill Robertson. The Utecht episode is also on YouTube.

In the latest A.P. and Coaches polls the Gophers are ranked No. 13 nationally, while Penn State is No. 5. The last time Minnesota was ranked in the top 25 and played another ranked team was in October of 2004 when the No. 13 ranked Gophers lost to No. 14 Michigan.

If Minnesota defeats Penn State a week from Saturday the Gophers will almost certainly be ranked in the top 10 in polls. The Gophers haven’t finished a season in the top 10 since 1962,

Minnesota connections: An October 19-20 Wall Street Journal article lists the five best sports scandals books ever and includes Foul: The Connie Hawkins Story, and The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino. The Hawkins biography details how the former ABA Minnesota Pipers star was blacklisted for years from the NBA following gambling allegations while in college. Pitino, the former Louisville basketball coach and father of Gophers basketball coach Richard Pitino, fell from grace after two sex scandals.

Willie Burton, the former Gophers basketball player who will have a banner raised in Williams Arena to honor his legacy January 26, was recruited out of high school in Detroit by Minnesota head coach Jim Dutcher who said Burton turned down Michigan and Michigan State. “He could have gone wherever,” Dutcher told Sports Headliners.

Dutcher resigned as Minnesota coach before Burton enrolled in 1986 and he played four seasons for coach Clem Haskins. The third-leading career scorer in program history, Burton played on two NCAA Tournament teams including a group that made the Elite Eight.

Dutcher’s son Brian Dutcher, head coach at San Diego State, has a team that is picked by the media to finish second in the Mountain West Conference behind Utah State.

The 3-0 Timberwolves have shown unity and hustle in their early regular season games, but face their biggest challenge so far Wednesday night in Philadelphia against a 76ers team that could win the NBA title. Give Wolves star center Karl-Anthony Towns credit for organizing a team bonding trip to the Bahamas prior to training camp.

Towns is the Western Conference Player of the Week for NBA games played October 22-27. As of Monday afternoon Towns ranked third in the NBA in scoring (32 points per game), sixth in rebounds (13.3), second in steals (3.00) and second in three-pointers made (5.0).

Gorgui Dieng, the Wolves backup center, speaks five languages.

An S.I. online story last week listing baseball’s top 50 free agents ranked Astros’ starting pitcher Wade Miley at No. 40 and suggested the best fit for him could be the Twins. The October 24 article ranked Twins pitchers Serio Romo No. 44, Kyle Gibson No. 42, Michael Pineda No. 27 and Jake Odorizzi No. 14. S.I. said best fits for them are with other teams.

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Minnesota Connections & D.C. Baseball

Posted on October 27, 2019October 27, 2019 by David Shama

I feel a baseball size tug in pulling for the Washington Nationals to win the World Series. Lord knows it’s not a rush like I felt when Kirby Puckett hit his famous Game 6 home run for the Twins in 1991, but there is a bias for me in hoping the Nats take the Fall Classic.

The Nats have four ex-Twins on the roster in Brian Dozier, Fernando Rodney, Anibal Sanchez and Kurt Suzuki. That’s nice and the Minnesota alumni connection stirs my interest a bit in the Washington lads.

I always liked Dozier, a good old southern boy second baseman who hit home runs for the Twins when hardly anyone else did. When the now 42-year-old Rodney was with Minnesota, he wore his cap so goofy it made me laugh, but his relief pitching was so up and down he could make you scowl. Suzuki was a contributor to the Twins, a brainy catcher, who unfortunately is now injured. Not many favorite Sanchez moments of him pitching in a Twins uniform—he went to spring training in 2018 but didn’t make the final roster.

But what’s got me on the Nationals bandwagon are the historical ties of Washington, D.C. baseball to Minneapolis-St. Paul and the state of Minnesota. This is the first World Series for a Washington baseball club since 1933—so long ago that American women had only been allowed to vote 13 years before. Known as both the Senators and Nationals, the D.C. franchise that lost in the 1933 World Series to the New York Giants mostly had a chokehold on ineptitude for much of the first half of the 20th century.

Famed sportswriter Charles Dryden put it this way: “Washington first in war, first in peace and last in the American League.”

The hapless Senators were even featured in a hit Broadway musical comedy, “Damn Yankees.” A long suffering Senators fan laments if only his favorites had a slugger, they could compete against the Yankees who tormented his team and dominated baseball.

The Senators were owned by the Griffith family and dated back to 1901 when they were one of the founding members of the American League. In the late 1950s attendance in their antiquated ballpark was so bad the franchise was thinking relocation. Minneapolis power brokers had been coveting a major league team for years and the opening of Metropolitan Stadium in 1956 signaled their serious intentions and in the coming years there would reportedly be flirtations with National and American League franchises.

Although the New York Giants had a young superstar in center fielder Willie Mays, they were mostly ignored by the baseball public in New York where the Yankees and Dodgers were much more popular. Mays had played briefly in Minneapolis in 1951 for the Millers who were a Giants farm team in the American Association. He was popular in Minneapolis and so were other Giants who had first played for the Millers. Giants’ owner Horace Stoneham was more than curious about moving to Minneapolis and playing at Metropolitan Stadium but a last minute pitch by Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley convinced him to move to San Francisco after the 1957 season. In California, with the Dodgers in Los Angeles and Giants in San Francisco, the NL two teams could efficiently continue their historic rivalry.

In the late 1950s the Twin Cities were considered fertile ground for a major league team. The Boston Braves had moved from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953 and became a box-office sensation. Major League Baseball, which didn’t have a team west of Missouri until the Giants and Dodgers moved to California in 1958, was learning there were opportunities in fast growing cities that wanted in on having a franchise.

The Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox were rumored to be interested in moving to Minnesota but it was Calvin Griffith who made big league baseball a reality here. Griffith not only relocated his team after the 1960 season but also brought along family members to serve as executives in the front office, and employees who had worked in concession operations at his stadium in D.C. They would all be on the payroll for the Minnesota team who some fans wanted to nickname the “Griffs,” not the Twins.

The 1960 Senators weren’t much of a team and neither were the 1961 Twins who finished 20 games under .500. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s the “Griffs” were starting to harvest young talent, including Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva, players that would form the core of teams that became pennant contenders. The best of the clubs was the 1965 group that won the American League pennant and lost to the Dodgers in the World Series.

While Minnesotans were thanking Griffith for making us big league by moving his team here, MLB didn’t like the idea of not having a team in the nation’s capital so Washington was awarded an expansion franchise that started play in 1961. By the late 1960’s that new team, also called the Senators, had a Minneapolis owner. Bob Short, who had owned and moved the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles after the 1959-1960 season, took control of the Senators in 1969.

If Washingtonians resented us for taking Griffith’s club, their anger must have been off the charts a few years later. Short’s Senators were deeply in debt after the 1971 season and the Minneapolis businessman received permission from his fellow American League owners to move the team to Arlington, Texas where they became and remain the Texas Rangers. This was classic Short who broke the hearts of fans in two towns, and liked to borrow and leverage money. The guy who put a group together that bought the Lakers for a reported $150,000 and later sold them for $5 million, unloaded the Rangers in 1974 for millions more.

Washington baseball fans got dumped on twice in 11 years and it wouldn’t be until 2005 that they would have another big league club with the Montreal Expos moving to D.C.. During this time it was the Baltimore Orioles who profited from the absence of a major league team in D.C. The cities are less than 50 miles apart and it’s arguable whether there are enough fans to support two franchises unless both are among baseball’s best teams.

So now Washington, the baseball town that has been jilted a couple of times, is riding high. After last night the Nationals and Houston Astros have each won two games in the World Series. If the Nats can win two more games they will be the first D.C. team to win the Fall Classic since 1924. The town has already experienced sports highs of late with the Washington Capitals winning the Stanley Cup in 2018 and the Washington Mystics becoming WNBA champs this fall.

If the Nats don’t win out, at least they can’t blame us.

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High Time to Appreciate U Football

Posted on October 24, 2019October 24, 2019 by David Shama

The Golden Gophers football team is 7-0 for the first time since the 1960 national championship team started the same way. But let’s clear this up right now:

The 2019 team is not even close to as talented as coach Murray Warmath’s bunch that tied Iowa for the Big Ten title and played in Minnesota’s first Rose Bowl. Yeah, I know athletes are better today. I am just saying if you compare the 2019 and 1960 teams against their peers, there is no comparison in talent.

As a kid I watched all the home games of the national champs, a team loaded with good players and pushed to the top by a few great ones including Tom Brown. He won the 1960 Outland Trophy winner as the nation’s best interior lineman and is among the most dominating defensive nose tackles to play in the Big Ten Conference. Brown was a senior in 1960, while quarterback Sandy Stephens was a junior and would be All-American the next year and recognized as the Big Ten’s MVP. Tackle Bobby Bell was a stud sophomore in 1960, and the next two seasons would be an All-American, winning the Outland Trophy in 1962 and Big Ten MVP, and finishing third in the Heisman Trophy balloting.

The 2019 Gophers aren’t going to win the national championship. I will also take any wagers they will beat No. 3 nationally ranked Ohio State in a possible December matchup in Indianapolis for the Big Ten title. But before you get the wrong idea about intentions in this column I want to also be clear regarding something else:

Let’s appreciate all the positives about the Gophers so far. Dating back to last year Minnesota has won nine straight games (the program’s first-nine game winning streak since 1941-42), which is tied for the fourth longest winning streak in America. The Gophers are ranked No. 16 and 17 in two major national polls.

What an improvement over most of the Minnesota teams since the program last won a conference title in 1967. The 2019 team combines good talent, with a few superb playmakers, a motor that will not quit when things get difficult, and a determination to compete every Saturday. Minnesota has found different ways to win, sometimes rallying late in games, while other times jumping to early leads and even dominating against an old nemesis like the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

The coaching has been, ah, elite. Boss man P.J. Fleck and his assistants have encouraged an environment where not only do the coaches lead, but also the players. This has helped create the focus and consistency with which this team has performed. The coaches time and again have put the players in position to make the right plays. After timeouts the Gophers have immediately scored touchdowns in the red zone. At other times they have made adjustments during games to solve a defensive problem.

Thank the Lord offensive coordinator, quarterback whisperer and superb play-caller Kirk Ciarrocca changed his mind early this year about taking a job with West Virginia. Thank Fleck for firing defensive coordinator Robb Smith after the Illinois embarrassment a year ago and immediately replacing him with Joe Rossi. Since the 55-31 Illini loss, Minnesota is 9-1 and has allowed 10 points or less in five of those games. In the last five games the defense has not given up more than 300 yards, while Ciarrocca’s offense has produced four straight games of 400 yards or more.

The Gophers have five games remaining on their regular season schedule but are already bowl eligible. With a 4-0 league record, Minnesota is in first place in the Big Ten West Division. One more conference victory will ensure the Gophers a winning league record for only the fourth time since 1999.

The town is (gasp) starting to talk about Gophers football, including knuckleheads in the media. For decades the program has often been buried in apathy, but last Saturday’s game at Rutgers drew a peak BTN Network audience of 921,644 viewers. I guarantee most folks watching weren’t sitting on the couch to track hapless Rutgers. Fan speculation includes daydreaming about ESPN College GameDay coming to Minneapolis before season’s end. What’s next? Larger home crowds and perhaps even a rise in the pathetic student attendance?

Maryland is the opponent Saturday and the Terps, despite a 1-3 Big Ten record, might have as much talent as the Gophers. They defeated and outscored their first two opponents 142-20, including an upset win over top 25 ranked Syracuse. Maryland’s team speed and athleticism is worrisome to opposing coaches. The Gophers are likely to win Saturday but don’t bet your Halloween costume on it!

Go to Saturday’s game and fill up those empty seats in one of the Big Ten’s smallest football venues, TCF Bank Stadium (capacity 50,805). For too many Minnesota home games weather plays a factor in ticket buying decisions, but temps will be favorable for this Saturday. Too bad the Gophers weren’t under a roof for the October 12 Nebraska game played in rain and cold temps—they would have drawn 55,000 or more fans.

Rain or dry, this is a team to identify with. No passionate Gophers fan will forget the embrace between Casey O’Brien and Fleck last Saturday. The four-time cancer survivor was named this week’s Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week after being the placeholder on Minnesota’s last three extra point conversions in the Rutgers game.

O’Brien gave the keynote address on behalf of the conference football players at the Big Ten Football Kickoff Luncheon in July. He spoke about being thankful and how football helped him while he was battling cancer. O’Brien, who is a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar, was featured on ESPN College GameDay earlier this year and his story has inspired others across the country.

O’Brien is a Minnesota kid whose dad, Dan O’Brien, coached for the Gophers a few years ago. Casey is part of a legacy group the football public has followed even before they arrived in Dinkytown, including linebacker Thomas Barber who is the fourth member of his family to play for the Gophers. Defensive end Carter Coughlin’s dad and grandfather both played for Minnesota. Linebacker Kamal Martin, and wide receiver Tyler Johnson played at Twin Cities high schools, and safety Antoine Winfield Jr. has a name known locally because of his father’s fame in the NFL including with the Vikings.

Local ties add to the fun in watching the Gophers, but there are so many other players, too, that have contributed mightily to this 7-0 start including quarterback Tanner Morgan and wide receiver Rashod Bateman. Their recruiting stories are much different. Morgan is one of the Big Ten’s most efficient and gutsy quarterbacks today but didn’t have big time suitors coming out of high school in Kentucky. Just the opposite for Bateman, a four-star recruit, who was chased by SEC powerhouse Georgia but came North from his home in Tifton, Georgia, where he is making highlight reel catches for the Gophers.

Bateman is a candidate to win the Biletnikoff Award honoring the nation’s best receiver. Johnson is on the list, too. Fleck is being considered for the Paul Bear Bryant and Bobby Dodd coach of the year awards.

There is a lot to like about these Gophers, and the admiration goes beyond the field. There are over 110 players on the roster but Fleck has said none are in academic difficulty. The team’s cumulative GPA of 3.20 last fall was the highest in program history. And then there is the community service work the players and coaches do including visiting hospitals where they reach out to others.

None of this is to guarantee nothing bad is going to happen in the days, weeks and months ahead. Maybe a player will do something foolish and become part of a police report. If so, he should have known better because the program puts a big emphasis on being a good citizen—accountability, serving and treating others with respect.

The Gophers have navigated the first seven games with minimum injuries. That could change and lessen their chances before the season ends. They also have benefitted from a favorable schedule that is back-loaded with difficult opposition including top 25 ranked Penn State, Iowa and Wisconsin. It could also be that Maryland will be a handful and so will playing at windy Northwestern where the Wildcats, last season’s West Division champs, are struggling but coach Pat Fitzgerald will not allow his team to play soft.

But the whole point here is not to get ahead of ourselves. This has been a cool couple of months for Gophers football. Enjoy it for today.

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