Opposites Do Not Attract

Once in a great while, I encounter somebody who literally is the total opposite of myself. I am not talking in looks or intelligence (although anyone who ever understood geometry would qualify). I am talking beliefs. I believe God puts these opposite kinds of people on this Earth to "keep things even," and to prove He has a sense of humor. My opposite is Nick Coleman, columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Now, I am not saying Mr. Coleman is a bad person, a bad father, an arsonist or anything like that. In fact, I give him credit for having the ability to write an article that will literally ruin my day. That is hard to do. Before I proceed. let me give you some background:

Those of you that have known me for more than two minutes realize that I am pro-Twins stadium. All I want is an open-air ballpark, somewhere in the Twin Cities. I want to take my family to outdoor Twins games, under the sun and stars. Real grass and no roof. I will put up with cold spring games as a trade off for beautiful summer games. I believe in my heart that a new stadium would revitalize downtown, keep the team in town for decades to come, and be a hell of a lot of fun. Now, to make a long story longer, after ten f'n years, a bill was finally passed to get this done. Everything is great, right? Well, I tend to be a little paranoid from time to time. My paranoia (once again) has turned out to be more fact than fiction, and the bill is in trouble. The greedy land owners want about 5 times more than the County can pay, even though they championed the site to the Legislature for years as perfect for a ballpark. How does this involve Nick Coleman? Here is how:

Nick Coleman is as anti-stadium as they come. Nick is a Euphorian to the 10th degree. He believes as long as there is one sick child in the world, it would be immoral to build a stadium for a baseball team owned by a billionaire owner. Therefore, if you are pro-stadium, you are anti-child. If "crime" still exists, no money can be put towards frivolous endeavors such as a stadium, right? I am still searching for a society that has been totally without crime, so it's kind of a catch-22. I'm working my way backward through history, and have made it to the early Old Testament. There was even crime back then. If you want to go back to Adam and Eve, you could count eating The Apple, as kind of a crime so we are totally out of luck. Maybe that's why there were no baseball stadiums in The Bible. Now, there is nothing morally or inherently wrong with this type of thinking, except that it is not based in what I like to call "Reality." Can you imagine if this type of thinking was applied to our cities? We'd have schools (Euphorian ones), prisons and dirt roads. Nothing else. Except maybe some Green Spaces for Mr. Coleman.

During the whole stadium debate, Mr. Coleman wrote some of the whiniest, anti-stadium rants. Every time I read one, I couldn't eat for at least 24 hours. If you are for the baseball stadium, you were anti-child, anti-democracy, and an asshole. I e-mailed him many times and asked him one simple question: Did the building of the Xcel Energy Center benefit downtown St. Paul? Because, according to his logic, THE KIDS would suffer, crime would increase, and assholes would abound if we built any or all arenas. Has any of this happened? No. In fact, I defy one person to show me how the building of the Xcel Energy Center has been a negative for downtown St. Paul. Well, OK, there is one negative. Some folks have complained that it now takes them 12 extra minutes to get out of downtown on game nights. And, I guess it's a hell of a lot harder to park at that costume shop on West 7th. Anyway, did Nick ever respond to that simple question?

No.

To bring this to an end, I woke up this morning fully expecting to open the Sunday paper and read a gloating article by Mr. Coleman. And, sure enough, here it is:

http://www.startribune.com/357/story/993536.html

Does he seem a little smug to you? I am now on hour 8 of not being able to eat. I have submitted a Letter to the Editor that I hope is posted the next couple of days. I know that this will not change Mr. Coleman's mind, but it makes me feel better and helps bring my appetite back.

The sad thing is, if the stadium does get built, I know full well who will be sitting in the front row, behind home plate on Opening Night. It won't be me - it will be my exact opposite, Mr. Coleman. And he'll probably write an article about how wonderful it was.

Jeff