5 p.m. Wednesday: Our favorite Minnesota sports seasons
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The shock. The 2017 Vikings. They looked like Super Bowl contenders after Week 1, when Sam Bradford diced up the Saints. Then Bradford fell to chronic knee injury. Case Keenum stepped in, floundering on the road in Pittsburgh. Mike Zimmer’s concerns about Keenum, a backup quarterback he had considered cutting, looked to be validated.
Such was the Keenum experience. Keenum, and a No. 1 defense, brought the Vikings onto the doorstep of the NFL’s first home Super Bowl in the most dramatic fashion. The ‘Minneapolis Miracle’ victory over the Saints, Keenum’s sixth one-score win that year, in the NFC divisional playoffs was enough to cement 2017 as one of the best Vikings seasons of all time – even if the NFC Championship loss was all too familiar. -
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Two more good picks to end the first round with the 1965 Twins and the 2017 Vikings. Different stories and different outcomes, but teams that stuck with people because of the way they did things. Plus our first Sam Bradford reference of the Virtual Happy Hours.Start us off with Round 2, Andrew! -
@CaseyCommon I agree, Casey. That '87 team was a bunch of regular guys that did enough to give themselves a chance, and they nabbed a WS Title. Watched that game at a friend's apartment, and one friend was a Cardinals fan...everytime he said something we looked at each other and said, "Did you hear a noise?" :) Game 6 when Hrbek hit the grand slam, we had a Star Wars tape that we popped in and played the SW theme, since that was what the Metrodome did too at that time! -
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Andrew did get it in a blog though! https://www.startribune.com/besides-his-big-fortitude-mike-zimmer-details-his-confidence-in-case-keenum/468654283/
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I was living in southern California as the son of a hardcore Lakers fan during the 2003-04 Wolves season, but I knew about Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell because of my father’s fear they could knock off the dynasty (as the starless Pistons eventually did in the NBA Finals). I didn’t watch these Wolves every night or know every detail like many starved fans do, but I know you couldn’t be an NBA fan in the early 2000s without knowing those Wolves, Garnett's yell and Cassell's "celebration." -
@JerryZgoda That was also the season that produced the "Last of the Ninth, Twins Pennant drive in '65" record album with all the great Twins comebacks that season, including Killebrew's walkoff homerun that beat the Yankees just before the All-Star break. My dad bought that (I wasn't born yet) but played it over and over as a kid. I think I became a HS sports announcer in big part because of that album!
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Great pick, Andrew. For one thing, the Sam Cassell "celebration" is linked to Mike Zimmer's comment about Case Keenum.
For another, I have a Sprewell Racing cap that news side writer Dick Meryhew brought it back from his trip when he went to see Sprewell's side hustle making custom car parts, including spinners. -
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Not believing they're still on the draft board, I take the 1981 North Stars, who finished third in the Adams Division but reached the Stanley Cup Finals only to lose to the great NY Islanders. They were so lousy just three years earlier that the NHL merged them with the Cleveland Barons (the former California Golden Seals, of course) to get one good team Louie Nanne knitted out of two. I'll never forget that springtime run when I was a sophomore in college. It actually started in February when Glen Sonmor sent them out to fight the Boston Bruins -- a team they couldn't beat any which way -- before the first puck dropped and after that bloodbath, they stood up to the Bruins all the way to a first-round playoff victory over them. From there, they beat Buffalo and Calgary with a team that included Bobby Smith, Steve Payne, Gordie Roberts, Curt Giles, Craig Hartsburg, Tommy McCarthy (shown below), Brad Palmer, Younghans and Polich, Gilles Meloche and more than a few I'm forgetting here. What a great time to be alive for those playoffs game, maybe of which I somehow afforded to attend.
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Pro hockey hits the board. I watched the final game of that series in Thunder Bay for reasons that I don't quite remember. The technicians from the CBC went on strike for the first period of the game and the only thing they showed were crowd shots. It was weird.
Casey Common, you're up. -
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Since Jerry stole my North Stars pick from under me, I'm going back to the Twins. We all know about 1987 and 1991. But the other Twins season of that generation that I loved was the year that team first came of age: 1984. The offseason trade of Gary Ward brought in Mike Smithson and John Butcher to shore up a weak pitching staff. Hrbek, Gaetti and Brunansky were joined by a singles-hitting newcomer named Kirby Puckett. (Plus, pictured: John Castino and Houston Jimenez waiting for Dave Kingman's ball to come down.) The front office wasn't quite there yet, as shown by the late-season trade-deadline pickups of: Chris Speier and Pat Putnam? They only finished 81-81, but they were tied for first as late as Sept. 23, and they weren't completely out of the AL West until two soul-crushing walkoff losses at Cleveland (thanks, Ron Davis and Jamie Quirk). But it was the first fun and exciting September the Twins had in a while -- and the first of several to come.
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Great photo of Castino and shortstop Houston Jimenez, who got pissed at me (I was covering the team that season) when I asked him if he was really 5-foot-7. He wasn't. It was the only time I ever saw him mad. The final weekend in Cleveland was one of the oddest ever. I was torched by the Strib Ombudsman for something I wrote about that series, and didn't talk to him for about five years after that. As a young man, i could hold a grudge.
You're up Randy Johnson. -
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My second-round pick is another reminder that this draft is a series of personal favorites rather than a ranking of teams that the staff voted on. I’m guessing only one other person on our panel -- that’s you, Randball – would have this team under consideration.I’m going with the 2000-01 Gophers wrestling team, which captured the program’s first national championship and did so by putting the capital “T’’ in Team. Coach J Robinson’s squad sent wrestlers in all 10 weight classes to the NCAA Championships, and every one of them placed in the top eight to earn All-America honors and secure the team title.The Gophers were a force all season long, amassing a 19-1 dual-meet record. The only loss was against No. 1 Oklahoma State, 25-12, with Minnesota missing starters Owen Elzen and Garrett Lowney because of injuries. The Gophers would avenge that loss by beating the Cowboys 20-12 in the National Duals title match.After closing the regular season with a 17-16 win at Iowa, the Gophers won the Big Ten tournament and sent those 10 wrestlers to Iowa City for the NCAAs. In that hostile environment, the Gophers had all but dethroned the six-time reigning champion Hawkeyes before the Saturday night title matches even were wrestled. Minnesota lost all six of its semifinals the night before but rallied in Saturday’s consolation and placement matches. Third-place finishes by Leroy Vega, Elzen and Lowney; fourth-place efforts from Luke Becker, Brad Pike and Jacob Volkmann; a fifth-place showing from Damion Hahn; a sixth from Jared Lawrence; and eighths from Brett Lawrence and Chad Erikson did more than enough to keep Iowa at arm’s length. The 10 All-Americans marked the first time that feat had been accomplished.
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This is not the team I was going to take but, again, it's still on the board so I feel obligated. And it's a team I feel like I've gone to time and again during these virtual happy hours, but ... well, there's a reason for that.I think I have to take the 1998 Vikings here, for everything they brought to the table. Randy Moss, Randall Cunningham, 15-1 record, you know the story. Yes, it ended in disappointment, but again, so has every other Vikings season in recorded history.
I was in college in Madison at the time and it became required viewing to get to the Kollege Klub whenever the games weren't on local TV because of a Packers conflict. It was just so much fun to see a team that could seemingly score at will. I do not begrudge Gary Anderson for how it all ended ... I just wish he'd made that one kick.
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Sometimes things have a special place because of the disappointment they bring. Good pick and a good memory of a season that created the first serious disappointment for my kid, who was 10 years old and just starting to figure out that sports could break your heart.I'll try io lighten the mood with my next pick.Pete Steinert, Mike Rand and Jeff Day will follow.
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I went to Macalester when our football teams sucked. Once we played Hamline at the end of the season when the Pipers had won one game and we hadn’t won any (in the midst of our 50-game losing streak). Chance for a close game to end the season with some optimism, right? No. We lost 71-6. So when Macalester won the Midwest Conference title in 2014 and went to the NCAA Division III playoffs, it was a pretty emotional thing. It was Mac’s first season in the league after leaving the MIAC in football and then playing as an independent. I suspect the conference was annoyed with us for parachuting in and winning the title. (Note: The conference has kicked us out, effective next season.) Mac will be returning to the MIAC next season and I suspect the Scots aren’t gonna be favored to win the title for a few years. This photo is from the game when they beat Carroll to get a berth in the conference title game. The players thought they'd be riding a bus to southern Illinois until the coach came in three days before the game and said they were flying. That was probably bigger than beating Illinois College in the title game for the 2014 Scots.
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I still have four teams that I really would like to get to ... so, of course, I will go with the most obscure.I wanted to see this team on the list because it was such a cool story. The 2002 Gophers men's golf team, which Mark Yudof had just recently made a dead team walking (the team was ultimately saved), won the national championship in Columbus, Ohio. First ever title in 88 years of program. First title by a northern school since 1979. They were tied for 16th place after two rounds and still only in fourth after three.They also won the Big Ten title with an interim coach (Brad James).I'm guessing finding art for this might not be too easy.
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