Bon voyage, summer. You were great.

            Summer’s officially over.  School starts tomorrow.  Sigh.  Giant sigh. 

            Don’t get me wrong—I’m really excited for fall.  Fall means college football is in full swing—road trips, tailgating, cold days and hot drinks at TCF Stadium.  It means our first play-off race in an outdoor stadium—Twins hoodies and blankets replacing flip-flops and tank tops.  It means Sunday Fundays and Vikings games—and good old Brett Favre in the sacred purple and gold.  Basically, fall is a sport fan’s dream.

            Summer 2010 was my dream.  Now that it’s officially in the books, I can confidently look back and say it was awesome.  Opening Target Field, following the Twins on the road, saying goodbye to Rosenblatt at the College World Series—it was a baseball fan’s dream summer.  And these are my some of my top moments.

1.  Rosen’s Sports Sunday @ Target Field.

            Last semester, I interned at WCCO-TV in the sports department and had the pleasure to work with Mark Rosen and Carry Clancy on the Rosen’s Sports Sunday show every week.  The night before the Twins’ home opener, we broadcasted the show from first base—I lucked out and was able to come along and help out.  I got dropped off at the player gates and was buzzed in, only I couldn’t find anyone to help me get out to the field.  I searched the back concourses for a sign of life and finally found someone in the Red Sox’s clubhouse, getting it ready for the next day’s big game.  He walked me to the Twins’ clubhouse, buzzed me, and directed me towards the field.  Then he left me alone in the Twins’ clubhouse the night before the home opener.

            It was amazing.  Plain and simple.  The Twins’ throw-back jerseys were all hanging up in the laundry room, just waiting for the players to come to the stadium the next day and pick them up.  I passed the infamous batting cage and pushed open the double doors—like I was instructed—and walked out into the Twins’ dugout.  It.  Was.  Amazing.  Absolutely breathtaking.  I honestly didn’t do anything.  Basically, I stood around and held a jersey that Kevin Smith had brought along—but it was still the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten to experience!  Besides Smith, Frank Quilici was along as a guest and getting to meet him was the icing on the already delicious Twins cake.  I didn’t get to go to the opening game and I was actually okay with it—because what I got to do was ten times better than just getting to see the game. 

2.  Meeting Harmon Killebrew

            My last day at WCCO was a Sunday.  I came in to help train in my replacement and help on Rosen’s Sports Sunday, like I usually did.  Carry hadn’t told me about our guest yet—finally, at about 9pm she broke the news.  “Oh Lindsay, you’ll need to print a form… we need one for Harmon.”

            Gulp.  That could only mean one thing.  Harmon Killebrew was going to be our guest on RSS that night.  No big deal.  My job all semester had been taking care of the guests—I had debated the SEC and Pac-10 with Ron Coomer and Henry Lake, talked Finland with Niklas Backstrom, and reminisced on the Missota Conference with Lindsay Whalen.   It was a sweet gig—and I mean this with no disrespect, but meeting Harmon trumped my entire semester of work.  He’s a class act and not only took pictures with everyone who asked but also gave me some sweet material to use for my sports trivia questions.  The highlight to my semester, it was the perfect way to go out—especially after I got to call my dad and tell him I met his childhood idol.

3.  College World Series in Omaha

            Read my last post.  Best sporting event I’ve ever been to.

4.  Kansas City Royals vs. Chicago White Sox

            You probably read that and went huh?  Trust me, I felt weird writing it.  But it’s true.  In the middle of August when it had been decided that either the Twins or the White Sox would be winning the AL Central, my friend and I went down to KC to visit a friend for a weekend.  Worked out well because the White Sox were in town to play the Royals at Kauffman and our friend scored us amazing tickets to all three games.  Friday’s game was rained out—okay, it was really a tsunami—so we were able to see a crazy double-header on Saturday.  Game one—11 innings of crazy baseball, including the 7^th when Yuniesky Betancourt hit a 2-out grand slam to tie the game 5-5.  He brought in the winning run in the bottom of the 11^th on a walk-off single, sending the entire stadium into hysterics.  Game one, Royals 6—White Sox 5.

            Game two didn’t start until around 10:30.  It went back and forth all game with Betancourt bringing in the tying run in the bottom of the ninth to send it into extra innings.  White Sox scored in the top of the 10^th and the Royals couldn’t answer back—Chicago took game two 7-6. 

            Sunday was hot.  Excruciatingly hot.  But it didn’t matter.  We were smack dab behind home plate for game three of the craziest baseball series I have ever witnessed first hand.  The best part of the whole situation—the only clean clothes we had were Twins gear.  Yup, we wore Twins gear to Kauffman stadium sitting just twenty feet from the White Sox dugout.  And it was noticed.  Several times.  By not only Ozzie and his coaching staff but by actual players as well.  It was awesome—almost as awesome as the game, which went into extra innings with the Sox and the Royals tied 2-2.  Three baseball games, 31 innings, and two wins by the Royals—the last coming on a walk-off single by Jason Kendall in the bottom of the tenth.  

(I by no mean take credit for the Royals’ awesome wins that weekend, but I’ve got to think that our Twins spirit helped them out.   You can still send me a thank you note after the Twinks win the AL Central.)

5.  Minnesota Twins vs. Detroit Tigers (June 28)

            Not only did the Twins 11-4 win over the Tigers put us back in first place, it also happened to be the game when Denard Span showed Minnesota—and Major League Baseball—what he can do.  5 RBIs on 4 hits, including three crazy triples.  It was a game we needed to win and we did it in grand fashion.  Ironically, the team were battling for first was the Tigers—the team that’s currently 13 games out of the first place.

Dear Johnny, I love you.

            Everyone has things in life that they want to accomplish someday.  Mine includes traveling throughout Europe with my best friend, getting my dream job, and someday settling down with a hot, loving husband and some cute kids.  It’s the list I made when my biggest concern in life was whether I wanted to spend my afternoons playing dress-up or Barbies—cut me some slack people, I was eight. 

            When I started becoming a sports fan, I made another list.  A bucket list, if you will, of things or places I wanted to see or do—all pertaining to sports, of course.  See the Twins take on the Yankees in New York.  Head down to Arrowhead for the Mizzou-KU matchup in the fall.  Watch Gopher football at all the Big Ten stadiums.  Typical things that most sports fans tend to want to do.

            This past June, I crossed a big one off of my ‘grown-up’ list.  Attend the NCAA College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.  Started in 1947, the CWS moved to Omaha in 1950 where it made its home in the ‘house that Johnny built’—Rosenblatt Stadium.  Next year, the series will be moved to the TD Ameritrade Park, a $143 million stadium currently being built in downtown Omaha.  So as the city—and baseball fans—prepared to say goodbye to the stadium on the hill, my friend and I decided that this would be the perfect year to make the trek.  Here are some of my highlights…

1) Choosing a team to cheer for.

             After the Gophers lost those heartbreaking games to Cal State-Fullerton in the Regionals, it was hard for me to pick a team to cheer for at the CWS.  As a college football fan, South Carolina, Florida, Florida State, and Oklahoma were out strictly on principle.  I couldn’t cheer for any of those teams.  The number one seed going into the tourney, Arizona State was also out because I was not about to jump on the #1 team’s bandwagon my first year at the CWS.  Just didn’t seem right. 

            Leaving Clemson, Texas Christian, and UCLA, I kicked off Clemson because I wasn’t too excited about wearing purple or orange for the whole weekend.  Yes, a girlie decision-making process but when you have no alliances, anything goes.  With just TCU and UCLA left, I was torn.  Choose the Horned Frogs and have Jesus on my side or go with my childhood dream school and be a Bruin for the weekend.  Ultimately, UCLA won out with us and lost the tournament to the Gamecocks—can’t win everything, right? 

2) Unsuccessfully stalking Dave Winfield.

            I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this but I stalked Dave Winfield in Omaha.  Unsuccessfully, of course but I did stalk him none-the-less.  Before the tournament started the NCAA put together a CWS Legends Team of college-athletes who had some of the best performances over the last 60 years and good old Davey was one of the 28 athletes chosen.  To be honest, I don’t even know if he was down in Omaha but I insisted on trying to find him (Barry Bonds made the trek, I found it hard to believe that Winfield wouldn’t show up).  Like I said, I never did find Dave.  But by asking every single person if they had seen him, I got to talk about my two favorite things—the Golden Gophers and the Minnesota Twins.  A successful addition to any baseball road trip!

3) Learning what a Sooner was.

            When the games got delayed because of weather—something we experienced everyday—Katie and I retreated to the comfort of our favorite beer tent right across the street from the stadium.  We made friends with fans from everywhere—a group of married UCLA guys in customized jerseys, a couple of middle-aged dads from Texas, a grandpa-father-son trio from Chicago (in White Sox jerseys, nonetheless).  Our favorite group, by far, were the three new dads from Texas who came to cheer on the Oklahoma Sooners and one of their brothers, closer Ryan Duke. 

            At some point during our conversation, I quietly admitted that I didn’t know what a Sooner was.  This did not go over well with our new Boomer Sooner fans and Katie and I were quickly enrolled in an OU education class.  A Sooner—as they bluntly put it—is a cheater.  When the west was being settled, a Sooner was someone who went out before they were supposed to and claimed land that they wanted before anyone else had the opportunity.  It doesn’t seem to be the most positive choice for a mascot but everyone we met from Oklahoma seemed to like it.  I mean, I cheer for a Golden Gopher.  Anything goes in college sports, I guess.

            In a way, my weekend in Omaha was perfect—fans from across the country all in one place to watch college baseball and at the same time say goodbye to one of sports’ greatest treasures.  Katie and I became ‘the girls from Minnesota’— we took our roll seriously and trash-talked every White Sox fan we saw and gave hugs and high-fives to everyone in a TC hat.  Yes, I will admit I never understood the appeal of the College World Series and Rosenblatt stadium until I went there and experienced it myself.  It really is a baseball-lover’s paradise.  And while I am sure that next year will be a different experience away from Rosenblatt, I plan on being there to soak in every crazy moment.  Maybe I’ll even try and stalk Dave Winfield again—I’ll just find out if he’s going to be there ahead of time.