53 thoughts on “October 21, 2021: Old Friends II”

  1. AFL report:

    Mesa 11, Scottsdale 9.

    Matt Wallner was 1-for-5. He is batting .333.
    Andrew Bechtold was 2-for-5. He is batting .353.
    Michael Helman was 2-for-5. He is batting .455.
    Kody Funderburk pitched two innings, giving up three unearned runs on two hits and three walks and striking out one. His ERA is 9.00.

    1. I gotta believe that Kody Funderburk is related to former Twin Mark Funderburk. There just can't be two separate Funderburk clans that produced a professional baseball player.

      1. Ant is so great! Preparing myself to the eventual calamities to happen to the Wolves and Wild to crush my optimism.

    1. That game was fun. Really, really fun. I know Houston is terrible, but the way the Wolves competed on defense was tremendous, relentless, a tonic for the weary fan. And Anthony Edwards, man. He's almost certainly not going to have KG's career -- almost no one has -- but he plays with a joy that KG never did. I would have to be really, really bitter not to love him.

      1. I love me some KAT (and lord knows he's been through a lot) but he more of a intense/focused personality type. And you nailed the playing w/ joy part. Refreshing to see for the local squad.

      2. If they continue to play with that intensity on D it’s going to be a really fun season.

        And Ant well on his way to becoming my All-Time favorite Wolf. He really is a joy to behold.

  2. Unhappy October 21 -- the day that Jack Kerouac (1969) and Elliot Smith (2003) died -- to all who mourn.

    1. I saw Elliot’s last show at first avenue with dr. Chop. That seems like so long ago… oh, what? It was? Nvmnd

  3. Bird sighting:

    Yesterday morning, as the Poissonnière & I were walking to school, a peregrine falcon alighted on an SUV parked in a driveway about twenty feet ahead of us. I routinely hear owls and see hawks in our neighborhood, but this was the first falcon. The Poissonnière spent the rest of the walk trying to memorize “peregrine” so she could tell her classmates what we saw.

        1. by extension, Jupiter actually isn't all that big, because all the gas doesn't count as part of the planet.

            1. If the rocky core is roughly the size of earth, that would constitute only about 1/1321th of Jupiter's actual volume. So, yea, not all that big.

    1. Great Northern Owl hootfest woke me up the other night. Tres cool.

      Also, White Throated Sparrows are in the backyard now.

  4. If you had to rank your favorite teams (college and pro. American sports and international ) how would your list shake out?

    I think my Top 5 would look like

    1. Twins (although my enthusiasm of them and baseball in general has waned since COVID started.)
    2. Vikings
    3. Timberwolves (still cheering them and the terribleness surrounding them for 30+ years)
    4. Loons
    5. Gophers football (this spot really is a revolving door)

    I watch a lot of European soccer but havent really glomed onto a team. I watch a lot of Wild but if they and the Wolves are playing at the same time I'll take the basketball (even when the team is garbage) I would watch more Lynx games but they end up on channels or streams I do not subscribe to.

    1. 1a. Wild
      1b. Twins
      3. Whitecaps
      4. Sunderland AFC (League One English football!)
      5. Chicago Sky

      Probably would put the US national soccer teams somewhere around 5, but the recency of the Sky's WNBA title gets them on the list.

      Those are the teams I have alerts for.

      I don't watch college sports at all, and have cut football out of my life completely. MLS just hasn't stuck with me, and the NWSL is still an "oh, I'll check the scores occasionally" thing.

      1. I don't have a favorite player or anything, but I do like to watch the PGA major tournaments and they deserve a mention.

    2. 1. Ireland Rugby
      2. Leinster Rugby

      Pretty much everyone else is "Meh, I'll catch the score maybe". I just don't have the time to devote to sports like I used to. A lot of it is "I have an hour to myself, what is on demand...[scroll scroll scroll]...I haven't seen any hockey in a while I guess I'll watch the Sharks and Senators."

      I don't watch any college sports anymore, mostly on principle, and the NFL is out too.

    3. 1. Twins
      2. Wild
      3. SJU Football
      4. Vikings?
      5. Nationals

      Vikings make the list in that they're "my team" for the NFL, but I'm not really invested in their success in the same way as the ones above them. Wolves could probably leapfrog Nats if they were good.

      I almost put Richmond AFC on here, since I'm more invested in their success than many real teams.

    4. 1. Gophers (All Sports pumped to get to some volleyball and women's hockey this season)
      2. Drake (See above Basketball, Women's Softball, soccer, and Tennis are my major draws due to my collegiate connections)
      3. Twins
      4a/b/c. Vikings/NDSU (these even out?) Nationals because baseball is awesome and seeing them go from RFK to Nats Park was awesome over my 8ish years there.
      5. Local Hockey
      6. Loons

      I'm not sure where to put the National Soccer Teams, but I love the world cup very much. I also find myself watching a lot of Rugby too but I don't know enough about the sport to have strong feelings.

      1. A rugby primer

        A) England sucks

        There that's all you really need to know to get started 😀

        1. But for real, I've been meaning to write an intro to rugby feature for the site if people are interested.

            1. I think you'd have to start even more basic for me. I don't even know the rules/objectives of the game.

    5. 1. Twins
      2. Borussia Dortmund (BVB)
      3. S.A. National cricket team
      4. Inter Milan
      5. UConn girls buckets

    6. Is this a list of current appreciations, or one of those doomed-by-blood allegiance lists? I am going with the former, which allows me to escape any sports bigamy charges

      1. Twins
      2. GS Warriors
      3. SF Giants
      4. KC Chiefs
      5. [rotating tap]

      I grew up as a Twins/Vikings/North Stars/Gophers fan, with a strong family affinity for Cornhuskers football. I will still watch the Vikings/Gophers/Huskers, given the opportunity, but I don't really identify with them any more, except to lament Minnesota fandom or the fall from excellence that the Huskers represent.

    7. Top Shelf
      1. Twins

      I wish there was better sportswriting coverage of the Twins. The blogosphere has really gotten stale, and I feel like there has been some going through the motions in the coverage at The Athletic. A regular Twins podcast that was not personality-driven would be nice. I enjoyed Jeremy Nygaard’s perspective when he was co-hosting one, but it was discontinued when his co-host moved out of state.

      Call
      2. Padres
      The Friars were my NL team when I lived near San Diego. I love their ballpark, but can’t stand their GM. Signing Homer & Machado muted my enthusiasm for the team, and the manager situation is a total sh!tshow. Dennis Lin, The Athletic's San Diego baseball writer, does a great job of covering the team. Turns out good baseball writing will keep me engaged with a team with which I have an otherwise waning connection.

      3. Rockies
      My closest friend is a native Coloradan and big-time baseball fan. (He grew up a Clemente-era Pirates fan.) I really liked Larry Walker back in the day. The franchise is MLB’s hermit kingdom, and the owner is the Supreme Leader. If San Diego’s GM is a tool, the now-ex-GM in Colorado was a fool. Arenado is probably my second-favorite active player after Arráez, so naturally the team burned its bridges with him in favor of a guy they fired a couple months later. Things do not look good for the roster, but the ballpark is lovely. Nick Groke, who covers the Rockies for The Athletic, should really win a sportswriting award for his reporting from the hermit kingdom.

      Rail
      Life is too short to follow the sports equivalent of a rail drink. The rest of my baseball appetite is mostly filled by Effectively Wild, FanGraphs, and Marc Normandin’s newsletter, with occasional articles at Baseball Prospectus or The Ringer. I quit following The Ringer’s MLB Show when it was acquired (along with all of The Ringer shows) by Spotify. That sucks, because I really like Michael Baumann’s take on labor issues and enjoy pretty much everything Ben Lindbergh does.

    8. 1. Twins
      2. Whoever is playing the Yankees
      3. Whoever is playing the Cardinals
      4. Whoever is playing the White Sox
      5. Blues

      Seriously, I am so out of the sports world these days. I'll always be a Twins fan first and foremost. I don't think anything is going to change that save for contraction. After that, I used to be a St. Louis Rams fan twenty years ago, but having stopped watching football, and the Rams moving to LA, they're not in the running anymore. Don't watch soccer. Don't watch Basketball. I did enjoy watching the St. Louis Blues win the cup a couple years ago, so they'd probably be my true #2.

    9. 1 (tie) Twins
      1 (tie) Wild
      3 St. Cloud State Hockey
      4 Vikings
      5 Minnesota Lynx ( They are a WNBA team that is based out of Minneapolis )
      5b PGA golf

      1. GW basketball and Husker football both have dropped precipitously in the last decade, and Everton have done a great job of supplementing my need to follow a team for which nothing ever goes right as soon a you get hope in the Twins offseason.

  5. The Minnesota Twin are hiring and there are more than 40 open positions, although many of them are for interns and fellows. I threw my hat in the ring for a marketing manager job.

  6. So I downloaded the Chrome extension that lets you unfollow everyone on Facebook and eliminates the news feed. I had to run it a few times and then unfollow a few accounts manually, but for now it's eerily peaceful. I can still use every other function of the site, I just don't have FB constantly bombarding me with content algorithmically curated to make my blood pressure go up.

  7. I literally just discovered that Albert Pujols plays for the Dodgers. When did that happen?

    1. May 13, 2021: Released by the Los Angeles Angels.

      May 17, 2021: Signed as a Free Agent with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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