Skip to main content

Go Vikings! Go Denny! Ole, Ole, Ole!

We are supposed to identify with our local professional sports teams.  It says so right in our contracts with life.  Minneapolis/St. Paul--the Twin Cities--are not world-class large cities, but we have a lot of professional teams:  the Vikings in football, the Twins in baseball, the Timberwolves and the Lynx in basketball, and the Wild in hockey.

It is true of all the teams that they make it easy for us to identify with them.  For instance, the Vikings wear ugly helmets with fake Nordic horns on them, maybe because we are Wagnerian opera fans, or maybe because somebody thinks Vikings were fat and wore sheep horns on their heads.

This morning's newspaper (that's the first clue, right there:  I am ancient and still read newspapers) reports that another Minnesota Viking (not the Wagnerian type, or the Norwegian-with-horns type, but the suddenly-let-us-give-you-all-this-money-because-you-are-a-special-brute type) was arrested, again, somewhere.  I don't know anything about that Special Teams Viking except that the police seem to dislike him.

A lot of professional athletes seem to be persecuted by the police for being drunk or abusive or perhaps, for sending pictures of their penises to people they would like to know; maybe for raping someone in a public toilet: that kind of fun-loving thing!  It might all be just a blip on our economic system of giving indecent amounts of money to people who amuse us on weekends.

It does seem odd to have all that news about arrests among professional athletes.  I know a lot of professional people with other professions, and I am trying to think of any who have ever been arrested for anything:  maybe Denny Hecker, but he is a car salesman, and I am not sure professional crooks are really professionals.

I think one of our neighbors was arrested, once; something about illegal aliens, or marijuana, or something.  Maybe just a housekeeper without documentation.  Or speeding.  Something like that.  Of course, none of them is particularly athletic, either.  Most of us look more like opera singers, or Norwegians wearing sheep horns and drinking beer.  You know: stupid stuff.  Not really violent.  Bad taste.  Embarrassing.

What really puzzles me is the families who want their kids to become really good at football, or basketball.  Maybe get into the pros.  Become famous.  Get a lot of money.  Get arrested.  Go to jail.  Visit them on weekends.  Maybe help them earn their high school equivalency degree.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more