Took my first, and perhaps only, pelagic birding trip with the LA Audubon Society out of Santa Barbara Harbor on April 30. I found out later that this is the notorious rough-water trip. I also discovered as we returned to harbor that half the birders were on scopalamine, scopase or dramamine. The other half, I […]
While Gardy’s conservative managing style seems to pay off, year after year, I admit I get frustrated at his unwillingness to let his faster players try to steal second more often. Lots of good things can happen on stolen base attempts: the pitcher can be slow to the plate, the pitch can be hard to […]
I approach the 2011 season, opening tonight, with some trepidations, primarily because so many pundits (but not all) are picking the Twins to win their division and even beat the Yankees in the playoffs’ first round. This generous appraisal is based mainly on the fact that the Twins won the division last year (relatively easy […]
If I feel justified in placing an entry on birding in my Sports column, along with thoughts on baseball, soccer and football, It is due to the competitiveness that has crept into this hobby since my youth, when it was a quiet, generally solitary way to spend some time in the woods or at your […]
In the Yankees’ three-game playoff sweep, the Yankees displayed superior starting pitching, relief pitching, power hitting, clutch hitting, defense, baserunning, bench and managing*. The Twins excelled in…nothing I can think of. How do you explain the one-sided nature of a series between two teams that finished only one game apart over the regular season? First, […]
After a surprisingly successful 94-win season in 2010, the Minnesota Twins will be facing their nemesis and mine, the New York Yankees, in the AL Division Series in two days. Just as sportswriters have to vote on player awards before the postseason begins, I should memorialize my thoughts on the state of the Twins as […]
The NFL refs wasted no time getting into the national debate about bad calls (baseball) and stupid rules (golf) in sports seen on TV. The long-suffering Detroit Lions seemed to have pulled off a miraculous upset when their backup quarterback threw a Hail Mary in the game’s final minute that Calvin Johnson grabbed in the […]
Every four years I avidly follow international soccer, a/k/a the World Cup, and conclude with a desire to watch the sport again…in four more years. While I am watching I pick a team to root for – generally based on hairstyles and uniform colors, thus putting Germany at the bottom of the pack – and […]
Very shortly after the Armando Gallarage/Jim Joyce unperfect-game situation occurred, I settled on the instant-replay solution that is being more and more talked about, and it is simply this: Give each manager one challenge flag, but one flag only, that he can use at any point in the game for anything other than a ball-and-strike […]
After the Twins blew a four-run lead in the ninth inning Saturday night against the lowly Brewers, Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse astutely criticised Twins skipper Ron Gardenhire for managing for statistics. By that Reusse meant that if the lead had been three runs, Gardy would have brought in his closer, Jon Rauch, to pitch the 9th; but […]
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