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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.

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