“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” So begins Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a literary classic.
And also a good representation of Minnesota’s two most popular sports teams: the Vikings and the Twins. Let’s examine that introductory selection and see how it applies to football and baseball for our local pro teams.
Right now, if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan, the upcoming season is burgeoning with great hope and high expectations. They fell one game short of the Super Bowl last season after, arguably, one of the most memorable plays in the history of the NFL, the Minneapolis Miracle, was made against New Orleans. (After typing that, I just had to go watch the replay again!)
It is the best of times for the Vikings. They signed the best free agent quarterback on the market in Kirk Cousins. They picked up Kendall Wright, a sneaky good wide receiver to complement Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen. The team signed Diggs to a contract extension. They did the same with linebacker Eric Kendricks. They have essentially got their core offensive and defensive players locked in for at least the next three seasons.
This is the window of opportunity. It’s a wise thing to manage a salary cap and keep your main components of a potential championship team. There is a belief in Minnesota that the long evasive light of a Super Bowl win is in sight. Hope pervades fans everywhere.
What can derail this juggernaut? We’ve seen one thing already: injuries. Over half the offensive line is anywhere from dinged up to out for the season. This was a weak point last year, as shown by the Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive front in the NFC Championship game. The team needs that line to be strong and to avoid catastrophic injuries.
The schedule is also brutal. The Vikings play the NFC West, facing old QB Sam Bradford in Arizona, a much-improved San Francisco team, a very good LA Rams squad, and a Monday night road game at Seattle. They also play the AFC East, which includes perennial favorite New England. Plus, the team gets rematches against New Orleans and Philadelphia. That’s not to mention two games each against the division rival Lions and Packers and Bears (oh my!).
But hope springs eternal. Last year fans were doing the Skol chant throughout December and into January. This year, we hope it will be the best of times come February as well.
And then we move across town to Target Field. It’s not exactly the worst of times (that would be most of the 70s and the late 90s), but for a team that made the playoffs last year, this season has been a disaster. We keep hearing that we need to give the new upper management a few years to get their plans in place, but when they expect fans to shell out big bucks to go to 81 home games a year, the patience wears thin quickly.
And here’s a difference between the two teams. While the Vikings go around signing players to contract extensions, the Twins have not. They made a flurry of trades in July, most of which involved players in the last year of their contracts. I’m not sure if they think these guys will go help a playoff contender and then come back and sign with the Twins again in the offseason or what.
Signing a guy like Brian Dozier, a fan favorite and good second baseman, would have been a great PR move and a solid baseball decision. Instead, he was traded to the LA Dodgers, where he proceeded to start his annual second half of the season surge.
The incredulity of fans at seeing this over the course of many seasons highlights the foolishness of the Twins. When Target Field was built, we were assured they would start spending more money now, but we keep hearing how they can’t afford the big names. The hope in Twins Territory is that we hit the right combination of players over a season or two while they’re still cheap and make a playoff push. There seems to be no long-term plan to sign players to contracts after their initial ones expire.
Here, too, injuries have hurt. Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano were leaders last year, but have played sparingly this season. Ervin Santana, the Twins’ best pitcher, being out over half the year hasn’t helped matters. But the darkness that settled onto Target Field in July was not just losses but the dark color of the empty seats.
I got to thinking that when the Twins trade away half the team in July, they should offer half-price tickets after that. They’d probably make more money than they would now since more people might be willing to go to a game. While there, one is likely to spend money on concessions. If you give up on the season, you shouldn’t expect the fans to stick around.
Every spring we have hope the Twins can relive 1987 and 1991. Every season we face a winter of despair when the Vikings inevitably let us down. Are the tales going to change? The Dickens if I know!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is procellous, which means stormy or tempestuous, as in, “The students knew their teacher would be procellous after the Vikings lost their playoff game.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!