5 p.m. Wednesday: Our favorite Minnesota sports seasons
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I have a soft spot for this team, as evidenced by the fact that I think I've picked them for past drafts as well. But the 2009 Vikings were pure joy and an amazing story from start to finish.Brett Favre rolls in looking creaky, gets rolling a few games in, and the Vikings (almost) never look back. If not for the rule-breaking Saints and/or one devastating sequence late in regulation, that Vikings team would have won the Super Bowl and there would be a street called Brett Favre Way in downtown Minneapolis.As it is, we'll have to be content with selective memories. There were still plenty of them to choose from.
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With my bonus pick I’m taking the 2013-2014 Minnesota Timberwolves. I have not lived a charmed sports fan life, but I loved this team.
Young Rubio, young Kevin Love, Kevin Martin, Rick Adelman bringing real professionalism to the Twin Cities pro hoops scene, the rumbling Nikola Pekovic.
I still remember them facing the Thunder in the second game of the season at the Target Center and smoking them 100-81 to move to 2-0. Rubio had 14 points, 10 assists and five steals. He was magnetic. The Wolves had real potential for the first time in a decade.
Little known fact, that Wolves team averaged 55.2 points in the first half, the most in the NBA. Their starters averaged 79.5 points, third most in the NBA.
The bench? They averaged 27.5, 25th in the league.
That maybe made a difference.
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Oh somehow this got twisted. Okay the Wolves pick is my bonus pick! My No. 18 overall pick didn't post so here it comes again!Speaking of pitchers, with the No. 18 overall pick I am going with the 2004 Minnesota Twins. Just a phenomenal season that introduced me to the unparalleled joy of following every Johan Santana start.
He won his first Cy Young after posting a 20-6 record and 2.61 ERA with 265 strikeouts in 228 innings and a 0.921 WHIP.
And I will fight forever for the fact that Johan Santana, the best starter of the 2000’s, deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
Here’s a fun fact, from 2000-2010 there were 12 seasons where a pitcher threw 200 innings and posted a sub 1.000 WHIP, Santana has three of them.
He should have three Cy Young awards, his loss to Bartolo Colon in 2005 is a literal nightmare, and no pitcher with three Cy Young trophies has ever been left out of the Hall of Fame. (Except for Roger Clemens, for other reasons.)
Santana didn’t make it past his first year on the ballot.
A complete travesty.
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I honestly thought I would make this team my first pick, but then some other teams kept me from taking them, and here we are at 20 and they're still here. So, here goes:
I started writing up about the 2006 Twins this morning, and then I realized that if I said everything I wanted to say that this entry would be massive. So, I'm going to summarize: For the final 104 games of the season they went 71-33, a .683 winning percentage that was perhaps the best sustained stretch of Twins baseball any of us have ever seen. They did it with a remade lineup that featured the AL MVP in Justin Morneau and the AL batting champion in Joe Mauer, but also a stretch of Jason Tyner, Jason Bartlett, Luis Castillo and Nick Punto that caused Ozzie Guillen to nickname them the "Piranhas." They could hit (MLB-best .287 and 872 strikeouts), they could pitch (3.95 ERA ranked third and 1,164 strikeouts ranked second) and they managed to catch the Tigers to win the AL Central on the final day of the season despite a rotation that had the AL Cy Young Award winner in Johan Santana but also was without Francisco Liriano and Brad Radke for much of the final two months. (The Twins had already clinched a playoff spot so the drama in the division chase was secondary, but still ... to only lead the division on one day the entire season!)With the exception of 1991, I don't think I've ever enjoyed following a baseball season from start to finish as much as I enjoyed 2006. The playoffs were a miserable failure, as all Twins playoffs have been in the 21st century, but I'm going to focus on the journey, not the destination.
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Nice to get some wisdom with the final selection of our draft.
Gotta think other franchises in town will be jealous about all the love shown for the Twins, but that;s a challenge for them to meet in the seasons to come.
That's all for the draft. Time to post some undefeated free agents/honorable mentions whatever you want to call them. -
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Here are some of mine that easily could've make the list:
* 2002 Gophers men's hockey NCAA champs
* 2003 Wild run to Western Conference final
* 2004 Gophers women's basketball Final Four team
* Minnesota Duluth's NCAA men's hockey champions in 2011, 2018 and 2019. Take your pick.
* 2019 Gophers football. 11-2 record, Outback Bowl champs, No. 10 final ranking.
* Any Vikings Super Bowl season -
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Here's a few of the others I had on my list:
1990-91 North Stars: The sixth-worst team in the NHL regular season ended up beating the top two regular-season teams and the defending Stanley Cup champions in the playoffs, a run that eventually ran out of steam against the Mario Lemieux-led Penguins. An entirely forgettable regular-season team that turned it on.
2002 Twins: As noted, the team that saved baseball here. I deleted all my notes because I am an idiot but they basically led the division from May on and had a double-digit lead for almost the entire second half of the season. Yes, it was a bad division, but still, it felt so good after being offered up for execution the previous fall.
2003-04 Gophers women's basketball: Between 1999 and 2003 the women's Final Four was almost entirely made up of 1s and 2s. The Gophers made it to the Final Four as a No. 7 seed behind a player who basically has become a legend in these parts.
2019 Twins: A franchise that finished last in the majors in home runs three times (!) during the PED era somehow set the MLB record for home runs. Again, I deleted my notes because idiot but you guys remember how last year went.
