Quick Rant on Various Sports

Thought I’d take a minute to go off on the hot topics in the sports world.  If you’re not a sports fan, might not be too interesting to you!

After Sunday’s AFC and NFC Championship Games, we’re left with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals.  That will be an interesting Super Bowl.  I’m always pulling for an underdog team to make it.  I had reasons to cheer against every team but Arizona this weekend.  The Steelers just won it three years ago.  The Phillies just won the World Series, so I didn’t want to see another Philly team win a title.  And the Ravens won it all in 2001, which is also recent enough that I wouldn’t want to see them do it again.  That left the Cardinals as my team to root for.  The last time the Cardinals won a title in the late 40’s, my grandparents were high schoolers.  Who woulda thought Kurt Warner would be able to lead another team to a championship game?  Win or lose, this puts Kurt Warner in the Hall of Fame, I think.  If I was betting right now, I’d put my money on the Steelers.  But then again, I would have bet against Arizona in their games against Atlanta, Carolina, and Philadelphia as well.  We’ll see if the Cards have another trick up their sleeves.

The Timberwolves have been playing out of their minds lately, winning 7 of 8 (nearly eight straight if not for a late collapse against Miami).  As of this very moment, the Wolves have the best record in 2009 of any team in the Western Conference.  Too bad you also have to include 2008’s putrid record.  The Western Conference is very strange—there are a group of good teams and a group of bad teams, and they’re separated by a very wide margin.  The Wolves have moved to the front of the pack of teams with no chance of making the playoffs, which also includes Golden State, Sacramento, Memphis, Oklahoma City, and the LA Clippers.  But they’re 10 games back of Dallas, the worst of the good teams.  That’s a big gap.

And as for baseball, I’m very bored with this off-season.  Thanks to the state of the economy, teams are not making many moves, and the Twins have been by far the quietest team of all so far, almost staying completely “pat” with their roster.  The only new players with any sort of experience or name recognition with spring training invites are knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and one-time hot Oriole prospect Luis Matos.  The biggest news surrounding the Twins has been the recent rumblings that they’re interested in relievers Brandon Lyon and Eric Gagne.  Right now, I’m so desperate for the Twins to do something that I’d jump out of my seat to hear they signed one of those mid-tier relivers.  

Twinsfest is this weekend, but for the first time since 2002, I do not plan to attend.  I remember after last year telling Lauren that it was a waste of time.  It was wildly crowded, the lines for anything were a couple hours, and I’ve done and seen it all many times before!  To stand in line for a big-name player’s autograph means camping out for basically the whole day and shelling out $25 or $50.  I still think it’s cool to go down on the field of the Metrodome, but I’m certainly not mesmerized by meeting the players anymore, possibly because I’m older than many now.  The only reason to go would be to get back in the baseball mood with spring training just around the corner.  Well, that, and to see which Hall-of-Famers Lauren can literally run into now that Paul Molitor has been checked off.