Scottish Dad - So I Married An Axe Murderer

It was about a year ago that my wife and I started planning our trip to Scotland. Personally, I can't believe how fast the year has gone. I was reminiscing about our Scotland trip the other day, and it got me thinking about the movie "So I Married An Axe Murderer."

Now, I have to say that the movie itself is crap. Weak plot, not very funny, except for one character - the Scottish dad portrayed by Mike Myers. I read an interview with Myers after the movie was released, and he said that his real-life dad is from Scotland, and he basically "recreated his dad" for the movie.

The Scottish dad doesn't appear very often in the movie, but when he does, it is priceless. A found a "best of" the Scottish dad on You Tube. If you watch this, you've seen all you need to see of the movie.

So enjoy, and LET"S GET PISSED!

Jeff

Quick Sports Questions

Monday night and the kids have lots of homework. That also means I have lots of questions on the world of sports. Here they are:

1. It is being reported that the Vikings are closing in on making a trade for Houston Texans quarterback Sage Rosenfelds. Now, I realize that Peyton Manning is not available, but Sage Rosenfelds? Do the Vikings really think that obtaining Rosenfelds to compete with T-Jack is going to help sell tickets to their jaded fan base?

2. Speaking of the Vikings, it may not matter who plays quarterback for them in a few years. They are currently lobbying the Minnesota State Legislature to build a new stadium. I have written about this before. It's not that I want the Vikings to leave the state, even though it would have a wondrous effect on my blood pressure. Steve Berg from MinnPost wrote an excellent article recently about the possibility of the Vikings becoming a "casualty of the recession." As we all know, Minnesotans need the proverbial "gun to their head" before building new stadiums. It took losing the North Stars to get the Xcel Energy Center built. It took threats of moving and contraction of the Twins to get Target Field built. Now, it will take threats of moving to Los Angeles for the Vikings to be heard. The timing, however, could not be worse for the Vikings. How does a team, with no financial partner, ask for a billion dollar stadium from a state with a $7 billion dollar deficit? Hell if I know. Thirty homes games and counting until the lease expires in 2011.......

3. I actually started to watch the Timberwolves again when they went on that little run in January. Then their one legitimate All-Star candidate, Al Jefferson, suffered a season-ending injury. Of course he did. Folks, is there a more snake bit, self-defeating, unlucky, hapless, cursed franchise in sports than the Minnesota Timberwolves? Ok - maybe the Cubs, but you get my point.

4. I watched the Wild pull out a 2-1 road victory over the hated Chicago Blackhawks last night. It was one of those games that was won single-handily by the goaltender. This time it was backup Josh Harding. He absolutely stood on his head while making 44 saves, many of them at point blank range. Including this one. Incredible. It makes a guy wonder if the Wild have no intention of retaining starting All-Star goalie Niklas Backstrom this off season and thereby declaring Harding next year's starter?

5. On a positive note, is anyone else out there getting some good vibes about the Twins 2009 season after the Joe Crede acquisition? It's the last season in the Metrodome, you know.

Those are my questions for tonight. Anybody have any insight???

Jeff

The Blog Works Again.

From today's St. Paul Pioneer Press:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The Minnesota Twins are expected to announce the signing of free agent third baseman Joe Crede to a one-year, incentive-laden contract at a 3 p.m. press conference today.

The one-year deal is worth $2.5 million in base salary and up to $7 million with incentives that are contingent largely on plate appearances. Crede, who had been working out in Arizona, is expected to be at the press conference for the announcement.

Crede, who had offseason surgery on a back injury that cost him considerable time the past two seasons (he played 47 games in 2007 and 97 in 2008), will step in as Minnesota's starting third baseman. Minnesota will have to make a corresponding move to make room for Crede on the 40-man roster.

Good move!

Jeff

Pitchers and Catchers. Plus - Just Sign Joe Crede.

Twins pitchers and catchers report today in Fort Myers, Florida. Ahhhhh, this day serves as the glorious start of spring training, and the first true sign of the beginning of the end of winter. The Twins are returning virtually all of last year's players from a young team that nearly made the playoffs. While there is hope, the natives are restless because the front office did absolutely nothing this off-season to strengthen the team through free agency. I must say that I really like the 2009 edition of the Twins except for one position - third base.

First, the Twins were outbid by the Dodgers for Casey Blake, a player who has played with the team before and wanted to return to Minnesota. The Dodgers offered 3 years, $17 million and the Twins thought that was too rich for their blood. Now, Billy Smith and the front office is taking their sweet time with free agent Joe Crede. Smith is getting some heat locally for not making any deals this off season. Smith, a man in his 40's, almost seems like a guy who lived through The Great Depression (the one in the 1930's - not the current one). Let's just say he is a bit of a Penny Pincher. He also seems a little gun-shy to pull the trigger (sports cliche's) on a deal after last year's Delmon Young fiasco. I don't know.

The word is that Crede is looking for an incentive-laden 1-year contract in the range of $7 million to become their third-baseman. Oddly enough, it was thought that Crede was asking for roughly $5 million to sign, but his agent Scott (A.K.A. "Satan") Boras keeps upping that figure as teams get interested. The Twins are skeptical about Crede's health, due to a myriad of back injuries over the past couple of years. Boras claims that Crede is 100% healthy, but you can never truly trust an agent, particularly a demonic one.

Personally, I think the Twins should take a chance and sign Crede, for a few reasons:

1. Crede's only looking for a one year contract. If he is a miserable failure, they can part ways at the end of the year. The Twins are not going to get burned with a long-term contract in this case. If Crede was asking for anything more than a year, I'd laugh and walk away.

2. Crede is an upgrade from the team's current platoon at third of Brian Buscher and Brendon Harris. Nothing against Buscher and Harris personally, but Crede may hit more home runs and drive in more RBI's than those two if he plays half the year. Look, I have no illusions that a Scott Boras client is going to sign with the Twins long-term, but if Crede can provide some power, he may be the guy to put this young team over the top in 2009.

3. Crede kills the Twins. Sometimes you have to sign a guy just so he stops playing against you. Crede is one of those guys.

4. The Twins are waaayyyy under their self-imposed salary cap. The Twins have operated recently with a self-imposed salary cap in the $70-$75 million range. They like to say they always plan to spend 52% of their revenue on players. Currently, they are around $57 million. This gives the team some leeway to spend money on a player like Crede. When Target Field opens in 2010, by the way, they need to be at least in the $80-$90 million range to retain credibility with the fans who helped pay for that field. I have a feeling that resigning Joe Mauer and a couple of the starting pitchers will easily put them in that range.

5. There is really nobody else out there. Personally, I would stay with the platoon of Buscher/Harris rather than trying to make deal with somebody like Mariners third baseman Adrian Beltre. Beltre strikes me as a Head. Case.

So there you go. I think something is going to happen with Crede this week. It sounds like he with end up with either the Twins or the San Francisco Giants.

Anyway, pitchers and catchers reporting is enough to put a smile on my face. I guess we'll see what happens.

Jeff

Joaquin Phoenix Interview - Have You Seen This?

Talented (and somewhat creepy) actor Joaquin Phoenix recently appeared on the David Letterman show to promote a new movie and, of course, his "budding hip-hop career." What ensued is nothing short of bizzare. Phoenix joined the ranks of Farrah Fawcett and Crispin Glover in appearing on the Late Night show in an incoherent, babbling fashion.

Phoenix is either so high that he is not aware that he is actually being interviewed, or this whole thing is a hoax and a big joke. Either way, it's bizarre.

What do you think - real or hoax?

Jeff

A-Fraud

While we're on the subject of athletes on dope....

We have a fraud listed as the Home Run King in major league baseball. We have a fraud who has been called one of the greatest pitchers of all time and a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. Now we have A-Fraud (thanks Joe Torre!), Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, admitting to steroid use from 2001-2003 when he was with the Texas Rangers.

I'm no longer surprised when I hear that a professional athlete is caught using steroids. Especially when they go from looking like a wide receiver to looking like a linebacker in the span of a few years. That's a lot of push-up's, man. Rodriguez admitted to the steroid use today, a few days after the story was leaked. Here is what he had to say in an interview with Peter Gammons:

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla.

"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time."

Yep, there can certainly be a lot of pressure when you sign the richest contract in baseball - 10 years, $275 million. My Eau Claire public school math tells me that contract is worth $27.5 million per year over a decade. It's a hard life.

I'm sure those players with less God-given talent than Rodriguez, who didn't take steroids , felt no pressure. The players who "did it the right way" through hard work and without performance-enhancing drugs, felt no pressure. But, he had to be THE BEST. He had to be better than ALL of the rest - at any cost. The funny thing is - Alex Rodriguez probably had enough natural talent to be considered the best. Now, with this admission, that possibility is ironically thrown out the door.

Baseball has got two black-eyes, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to steroid use. On one hand, you have narcissistic players like Rodriguez who feel the need to cheat to "be the best." On the other hand, however, you have players who used steroids to simply "make the team." Such was the case with little-known Twins reliever Dan Naulty. I read this quote from Naulty a while back, and it really hit me:

Naulty, a former reliever for the Yankees and Twins, is haunted by his steroid use. He can't shake the thought of how many lives he affected with his choice to use the drugs. He thinks of the players whose jobs he took through his juiced-up performance.

"My choice has impacted hundreds of people," Naulty said in an interview with The Post.

The one person he thinks about the most is Mike Trombley. The two pitchers' lockers were next to each other in Twins spring training in 1996. They were competing for the last spot in the bullpen.

Near the end of spring training, Naulty was told he made the team, meaning Trombley was bound for Triple-A.

"He was the guy sitting there saying, 'Why is this happening?' " Naulty said. "I was throwing 96 [mph]. He threw 87-90, but they wanted 96 instead. There's no way I could have thrown 96 without drugs.

"When Mike Trombley gets sent to Triple-A, the dominoes fall all the way down to rookie ball where someone gets released. That's what has penetrated my soul."

The use of steroids has tarnished the game. It has thrown into doubt many of the records that have been set over the past 15 years. A-Fraud is just the latest case.

My hope is that The Grand Old Game can clean itself up and once again become the great game it was meant to be. Until then, we will always have Kent Hrbek .

Jeff

A Wild Question

I took my 6-year-old daughter to her first-ever Wild game against (hated) Nashville last night. It was a blast explaining the nuances of hockey to her, and watching her reactions as she experienced hockey in person for the first time. She had plenty of questions, of course, but nothing that a typical fan from Nashville wouldn't have asked. You know - "what is icing," "what is offsides," "how many points is a goal worth? " Unfortunately, the Wild didn't hold up their end of the bargain and lost 2-0. It was one of those games in which they go into an offensive shell and refuse to put the puck on the net. Nashville goalie Dan Ellis was named the "Player of the Game," but he realistically could have earned the shutout while sitting in front of the net in a lawn chair while reading the newspaper. Let's just say he didn't have to do too much. The Wild picked my daughter's first game to play one of their offensive "dud" games.

On the plus side, goalie Niklas Backstom was very good again last night. He let in one soft goal, but deserved to win the game. He has single-handily won many games for the Wild this year while appearing in his first NHL All-Star game. He is 25-17-2 this year with a fantastic 2.20 goals-against average after going 33-13 last year. So here is my question:

Why has the Wild not signed Niklas Backstrom, a free agent at the end of the year, to a long-term contract?

Now, one of the biggest misconceptions of the Wild is that they don't spend money. They do. They are always near the salary cap on a yearly basis. They should be, after all, considering they play to sell-out crowds in arguably the best arena in hockey. They just don't spend it on top free agents - EVER. The Wild will spend money to retain their homegrown talent (i.e Mikku Koivu, Brent Burns, Nick Schultz, Pierre-Marc Bouchard), but they simply do not bring in top notch free agents. This makes it more important than ever that they retain their all star goalie.

They are going to save about $7 million a year by letting Marian Gaborik leave via free agency because of injury and hackey-sack concerns. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that he is gone. Now, more than ever, the time has come to sign Niklas Backstom.

The longer this gets delayed, the more money Backstrom is going to demand. With each shutout, his contract demand will grow. General Manager Doug Risebrough has been eerily quiet about the negotiations, even as the fans grow restless. I think Mr. Risebrough has been taking queues from Twins General Managers Terry Ryan and Billy Smith. There are a lot of similarities between these guys.

I normally don't get too concerned as a fan about this stuff. (Plus, I'm too busy helping with homework to think about it too much). I figure that the GM's know more than I do, and I let them do their jobs. I can't figure this Backstrom situation out, however. He's an All-Star goalie on a team that can't score, for God sakes. He's not a free agent, he is "home-grown talent." I'd hate to see their record without him.

Maybe next year, we will.

Sign him.

Jeff