Wilf unanimously approved by NFL to own Vikes

The local media have been rooting for him all along, and now the self-congratulatory orgy can begin. As a counterpoint, here's a bit on how Reggie Fowler was used and abused.

 

Eastern Conference Finals Preview

Trying to distill a playoff series preview down to two or three key elements is generally a foolhardy endeavor, especially for a matchup as compelling as the Pistons versus the Heat. Injuries, adjustments, and officiating (in that order) are three wild cards that can turn an initially prescient analysis logy and anachronistic. That said, I think that the longer Detroit is forced to utilize Antonio McDyess in close games, the less chance the Pistons have of besting Miami.

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My apologies for the Hangtime hiatus. With the Wolves shoved to the curb, the absolute need for a Monday post has diminished; plus there?s a new roundelay of stadium-oriented chicanery to follow. I procrastinated on my second-round choices in the NBA playoffs, then rationalized it by assuming everyone knew that all the higher seeds would be triumphant. While that turned out to be the case, I was surprised by the rough patches Detroit and San Antonio endured (versus the gutsy Pacers and the Allen-propelled Sonics, respectively), and by the relative ease of the Heat?s sweep over the Wizards even Shaq as a spectator for most of the series. The only matchup that went according to form was Phoenix-Dallas, which I figured to be an entertaining six-game affair.

Read the entire preview here.

Following the Kentucky Derby, the Washington Post's redoubtable racing scribe Andrew Beyer wrote an extremely cranky old-man screed about what a dismal race it was. He closed the column by pretty much accusing the entire 20-horse field of doping violations. The piece came off like the rantings of a man who just couldn't handle the fact that he'd been spectacularly wrong about the Derby.

Thankfully Beyer rebounds today with a persuasively argued handicapping of the 14-horse Preakness field. He's still oozing disdain for Giacomo (and pretty much every other three-year-old thoroughbred on the planet), but he makes a compelling case for why Afleet Alex is being overhyped and why Greeley's Galaxy and Closing Argument are the two most intriguing horses in the field.

Over in the Baltimore Sun, John Eisenberg has a swell column about a new Bud Greenspan documentary premiering today on ESPN Classic at 2 p.m CST. (It will air again tomorrow at 10 a.m. CST) The film details the career of 1941 Triple Crown winner Whirlaway. The mercurial colt is best known for walking out of the gate at the start of the Preakness--only to come back and trounce the field.

Personally I'll be pulling for King Leatherbury tomorrow.

We've all had it happen. Your best buddy in elementary school moves away. There are vows to stay in touch, addresses exchanged, pictures taken. Then... bupkiss, nada, end of story. In a recent Sports Illustrated interview, former Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss bemoaned the loss of his close relationship with quarterback Daunte Culpepper. "Once you grow to love a person, a breakup is kind of hard," Moss sobbed. "I thought Culpepper was (my friend), but now that everything's happened, it seems to me I lost a friend." Culpepper countered in the press today: "My phone number hasn't changed. If you're my friend, why haven't you talked to me? Know what I'm saying?" Could a little straight talk and some tough love from Dr. Phil save this relationship? Or will the torrid decimation of this friendship continue to play out in USA Today for all the world to see?

Remeber Lee Mroszak, aka "Cabe?" He's the former KQRS prankster who perpetrated a 1997 radio hoax in which he purported to catch Packer quarterback Brett Favre cheating on his wife. It caused a big furor at the time, and cost Mroszak his job. After that, Mroszak faded from view. In 1999, the former Gulf War vet resurfaced briefly in a Doug Grow column. By then, according to Grow, the former shock jock was out of radio, born again, sober and--great detail!--making his living by selling ads for a publication called Sex Inc.

The good times couldn't last.

Mroszak is back in the news again--this time for tax evasion. How'd he get caught? By being an idiot. More specifically, after resurrecting his provacateur act for the Howard Stern Show, Mroszak actually boasted on air that he hadn't paid his income taxes for three years. Naturally, an IRS agent/Stern fan opened an investigation and, last week, Mroszak, who now likes to be called "Crazy Cabbie," was sentenced by a federal judge to one year in prison.

Moral: Don't brag about your crimes, don't cross Brett Favre.

Two-wheeled masochism makes its debut in White Bear Lake

 

The sport of randonneuring has been keeping a low profile recently in the national media. Let's put that another way: Pretty much no one has heard of randonneuring, and it's not going to be turning up on KFAN or ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, or ESPN593 anytime soon. Don't bother looking for it on OLN's Cyclism Sundays, either.

 

Which is just fine with the long-haul cyclists who have built a small religion around the act of self-supported, timed, marathon bicycle events. And when I say marathon, I actually mean five times that number, minimum. The ultimate accomplishment in this masochistic practice is the quadrennial "Paris-Brest-Paris" rally, which spans 1,200 km (or 746 miles) in 90 hours or less. It's an achievement managed at great cost to one's buttocks--less a sporting event than a two-wheeled vision quest.

 

One qualifies for the honor of falling asleep on two wheels in a foreign land by dint of having completed four preparatory "brevets" of 200km, 300km, 400km, and 600km, all within a season. While P-B-P isn't slated to occur again until August of 2007, an intrepid claque of Minnesota riders has begun a just-for-kicks-and-saddle-sores randonneur cycle this spring, ranging from White Bear Lake through western Wisconsin. (Previous Minnesota brevets started from Rochester). The first ride promised 6,000 feet of climbing, a number that would break the will and annihilate the quads of even the bad-assest fixed-gear bike messenger.

 

Needless to say, a Wagner Ring cycle would require both less sitting and less spiritual torment. There are no sponsors, no sag wagons, no food tents. There's no prize at the end for the first finisher. In fact, there's no particular honor for finishing first. The nominal registration fee and completion of the full circuit gets you nothing more than a medal (which you also have to pay for). If I'm not mistaken, you need to mail away to some sanctioning body in France.

 

All this is another way of saying that randonneurs are a particular breed; one assumes that these rides represent a form of penitence for sins too sordid too name. Perhaps this dynamic helps explain why the published accounts of these rides often seem to be describing pilgrimages of gruesome proportions, with semi-ecstatic endings. Kudos go to Minnesota randonneur organizer Tim McNamara, then, for his unvarnished and wryly funny report on this Saturday's debut brevet:

 

The return leg was not so kind. Around noon the temperature began to drop, the wind picked up from the northwest, and squalls dumped loads of rain, sleet and even a little hail to complicate matters. As if 63 miles into a 30 mph headwind wasn't enough of a complication! This didn't stop the first finishers from getting back to White Bear Lake in 8:19! Your humble reporter (that "humble" part is a flat-out lie according to said reporter's spouse) ambled back two hours later, having spent an hour and a half just covering the last 15 miles.

It would be disingenuous to say this was a nice ride. It wasn't. The high rate of attrition points this out. It was a battle with the elements and just a hard slog.

So who's on board for May 28's 300km follow-up?

St. Paul's "Steel" Will Grigsby--the best Minnsota boxer of his generation and arguably the best in several decades--will be fighting for a world title on Saturday evening. Neither the Star Tribune nor the Pi Press has seen fit to make notice of this.

This is inexplicable.

The 108-pound Grigsby is a slick and entertaining boxer and his story makes for great copy: Coming up from the rough streets of Frogtown, Grigsby won his first world title in 1998, lost that belt in a slugfest with the legendary Ricardo Lopez, and returned to win another minor belt only to have it stripped after he tested positive for pot. (Obviously, he should have purchased a Whizzinator). Then, following arrests on dog-fighting and domestic abuse charges, Grigsby was sent to prison. His career looked to be finished.

Now, after a two-and-a-half year layoff, Grigsby is poised to make his comeback, fighting on the undercard of the long awaited Winky Wright-Felix Trinidad pay-per-view card. And no one is writing about it. Well, almost no one. Minnesotaboxing.com just published a Q and A with the former champ.

In baseball's new era, steroids are mainly the province of the marginal and the desperate

1: It's not the front-line sluggers who are using steroids these days; it's the marginal talent on major league rosters and their minor league affiliates--the guys who have the least to lose and the most incentive to go for broke. And among them, there are quite a number of pitchers. So far five players from MLB's 40-man rosters have tested positive: Twins P Juan Rincon, Tampa OF Alex Sanchez, Colorado OF Jorge Piedra, Seattle OF Jamal Strong, and Texas P Agustin Montero. (Despite their roster status, only the first two were actually playing in the majors this season.) The number of minor leaguers who have tested positive so far: 47, including eight from the Seattle Mariners system.

2: The suspensions are hitting Latino players particularly hard. Is this because of a language gap, or because Latino players come through a ragged, brutal player development system that tacitly encourages such things?

3: It's probably too soon to begin to see the real impact of quitting steroids on the players who have forsworn them in the glare of baseball's new suspension policy. The most interesting comment on the matter we've seen was in Gary Smith's (generally overwrought) Sports Illustrated cover story a few weeks back. Former minor league slugger and lifelong weight-lifter Tex Warfield told Smith the real payoff from steroids isn't strength, but stamina:

"All these people who say that steroids don't help you hit a baseball, don't help hand-eye coordination, here's what they're missing: There are no dog days of summer when you're on steroids! As long as you stay on 'em, you stay strong, you have an abundance of energy every day. You feel the same in September as you did in April. Barry Bonds hasn't had dog days in four years. People don't understand the dog days. Home runs come from hitting the ball out in front, but by September, even when I'd drop from a 35-ounce bat to a 31, I'd be catching the ball a foot behind. What was a homer in May would be a can o' corn in August."

For the first time ever Canterbury Park's opening meet will coincide with the running of the Kentucky Derby. It should make for a fabulous day out at the track. Post time is 1:30 p.m.

Bellamy Road is obviously the beast to beat in the 20-horse Derby field. The George Steinbrenner-owned thoroughbred tied a 32-year-old course record in winning the Wood Memorial by 17 1/2 lengths last month. That monster performance (warranting a stratospheric 120 Beyer speed rating) ensured that he'll go off as the favorite, currently at odds of 5-2. Following a week of impressive workouts at Churchill Downs, everyone seems to be a Bellamy Road believer. Daily Racing Form columnists Andrew Beyer and Steven Crist both predict the frontrunner will romp through the field. (You can read Beyer's take for free in the Washington Post.) The only knock on Bellamy Road is that he hasn't raced enough, just twice this year and five times total. Only one horse in the last 57 years--Sunny's Halo in 1983--has won the Derby in his third race of the year.

Afleet Alex is the sentimental favorite, currently at odds of 9-2. He barely survived as a newborn because his mamma didn't have enough milk to nourish him. He had to be weened on a Coors Light beer bottle. The horse's breeder is sick with cancer of the colon and liver. And Afleet Alex overcame a lung infection to crush the field in the Arkansas Derby.

The only other entrant drawing much acclaim is Bandini, the rambunctious sire of Fusaichi Pegasus. He won the Blue Grass Stakes and has tremendous potential, but is unpredictable.

A couple of other horses that I'm intrigued by. Buzzard's Bay won the Santa Anita Derby (usually considered the most prestigious Derby prep race), but can't get any respect. He's currently at 20-1, probably owing to a lackluster Beyer speed rating of 98. Greeley's Galaxy topped the Illinois Derby, but still didn't have enough earnings to make the cut for Churchill Downs. His owner ponied up an extra $200,000 to get him into the race. Greeley's Galaxy has the third best Breyer rating in the field, but is still going off at odds of 15-1.