The Do's and Don't of being a fan of a professional sports team

Okay, I haven’t been keeping up with my blog. It’s true. It’s tragic. It’s sad…Okay, I could go on and on. This blog was my outlet for being crazy, for saying things I could not say out loud. Yeah. Well, I finally got super riled up last weekend, to the point that I need to start contributing to this blog again. I have a few things I need to get off my chest, and I feel that this is a very safe outlet for me? Perhaps? Hah anyhoo, this post will be based on what happened to me last Friday.

Last Friday, I had the privilege of going to the Minnesota vs. Milwaukee baseball game at Miller Park! I always LOVE going there for the fun atmosphere, tailgating, the friendly rivalry…etc. However, on that fateful Friday, I went through a terrible ordeal that changed my ideas on going to Milwaukee. It saddened me. This is what happened:

I was sitting with my friends, having a good time. There was a group of teenagers behind us, and half of them knew NOTHING about baseball. However, throughout the ENTIRE game, they were talking about how much the twins are the worst team in baseball. They didn’t just say a few things, it was constantly! And it was based on no valid facts. To show how much they didn't know anything, at one point they were talking about the Toronto and St. Louis game and the boy said he hated st. louis, but then the girl says: “But don’t we hate Canada?! Duh!” Wow. Well, when it came to the Twins, it was to the point that one of the girls said: “I just can’t believe that all of these people would go all this way to see their team lose?! How stupid are they?!” As someone who is very passionate about baseball, I really was about to lose it! But when I was at that point, the twins lost and I could leave the premises! On the way out of the ballpark, many Brewers fans were incredibly rowdy and incoherent and were saying very disrespectful things…and so, this ordeal made me think about how we should act as professional sports enthusiasts. What we should do as true believers of the game. How we should act. So, here are some simple do’s and don’t of being true enthusiasts of the sports we hold dear to our hearts.

DO:

-Cheer on your team as hard as you can!

It is okay, especially if you team is tied in the 14^th inning and they score the winning run, to go a little nuts. Its okay to scream and jump up and down: “WE WON, WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Do it! They deserve it! They tried their hardest, and they deserve all the respect they can from you, the fans. However,

DON’T

-Rub it in the face of the people that don’t agree with you.

Let’s say, you are fans of the Yankees. You have just swept the Twins, who seem to always get extremely distracted by the pinstripes. Do not, by any means, rub it in the face of the Twins fans. It is extremely disrespectful and it’s unsportsmanlike conduct. How would you feel if you created a painting and then someone went right up to you and said it was terrible? It is the same thing, and if you have anything bad to say about the other team, back it up with reasoning. And this goes to another point:

DO:

-Have a spirited rivalry with someone who loves a different team! It’s sure fun to have a joking rivalry with someone, like “Oh, I bet my team will have 10 more runs than yours by the 6^th inning! Hhahahahaha” It’s always fun to be “against” someone else, a friend, because in the end, you love the same sport, and you are just hoping for a great end to the game! But this means…

DON’T

-Get into a vicious fight with someone, just because they don’t cheer for the same team as you! It is just incredibly disrespectful to get into someone’s grill just because they believe in a different team than you. Perhaps, they believe in a team because they have grown up with the team their entire lives, and even though the team is doing horrible, they are still pulling for them. That absolutely does not mean you can target them as a person just because they believe in something different than you! What happened to free speech? What happened to believing in what you believe in, no matter what anyone else says?! And, this goes on to another point…

DO:

Cheer for your team, no matter HOW horrible they are! They could be 20 games out of 1^st place, but this does not mean you can give up hope! This does not mean that the season is over! Miracles DO happen! The 1980 Mens Hockey Olympic team was absolutely not favored to win the gold medal. The team of the U.S.S.R. had been playing together for years, they had a system down, they had won the previous Olympic golds. However, this was not a reason for the USA team to give up hope. They fought incredibly hard, and it was THEM that won the gold. If you give up before it even happens, then why have hope at all?! The MN twins in 2006 were absolutely horrible. In 2009 they were horrible. They won the division BOTH years! Never, ever give up on your team. Miracles can happen! DO HAPPEN!

DON’T:

Cheer against your own team, no matter how terrible they are playing at the moment! Okay, I admit it. I have booed AGAINST the Minnesota Twins this year. More than once. SHOCKER! Haha! I was at a game this season where the twins were losing 11-3! OH and another where they were losing 15-3!!!!!!! At that game, I started screaming that the pitcher should be cut from the team, and I booed every time someone on the Twins did something wrong! This is the exactly WRONG way to act as a fan. No matter what happens in a season, you STICK BY YOUR TEAM! Like you would your own child, you would stay by them no matter what they did, and you would support them in the end. Don’t ever give up on your team. They may surprise you in the end, and hey, you would feel kind of stupid if your team wins the World Series after you were booing them the whole season?! Never give up hope. Never stop believing. Do you believe in miracles?!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

big news!

I guess i only blog when big things happen in my life. BAM.
So you're wondering. What does this picture have to do with my life? Well, that guy who is lookin happy in the chicago white sox uniform while a Justin Morneau does not look too happy, is Jim Thome, who has been part of the much hated chicago white sox team for quite some time and was part of the team that caused a part of myself to die during that fateful game 163 in 2008. Now, he is a MINNESOTA TWIN. Yikes. Oh yeah, did I mention that he WON that fateful game for the white sox and is the reason that they did not get to the playoffs in 08? I just get sad thinkin about it... well NOW, he's on my team. What am I supposed to feel now! I do believe that I should feel good. He wanted to be a twin, likes the team and will only be hitting from the bench. Yeah, he hit 57 home runs against the twins. So what. Now, he can do that for OUR benefit against other teams! I think that the twins should've tried to get some players that they really need...third basemen?! But, this will be good! When we're in game 163 against the white sox, he can hit the winning home run AGAINST them! :D

HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR. wow.

The year is 2010.

It has been for 10 days now. WOW. Where did the time go?! Last time I checked, I was jumping on my bed listening to Spice Girls and NSYNC and the year was 1998!!! All of a sudden, there is a 10 after the 20. GAH. After I freaked out for a bit, I began thinking about my life, the world, the country, the state…everything, and what could happen this year. I also started thinking about my New Years Resolutions, that I do every year. This year has the potentential to be HUGE if I just set my mind to it. Really. Here are some of my resolutions, that I wanna get out there on the world wide web so that I really do have to accomplish some of these!!!:

- Get a real teaching job and finish my current internship on a high note.

- Move out of my parents house, and move to a different state, possibly out of the Midwest. SHOCKER. (I am about as Midwest, Minnesotan as someone comes. Yes, I go to California every year for spring break, so a part of me is there, but I have always lived in Minnesota, have spent many summers working in Wisconsin, and went to college in Iowa. Yeah, I need to get outta the bubble for a few years.)

- Travel. A lot. this means GET OUTTA THE COUNTRY!

- Become a real adult and actually start paying my own bills.WOAH!

Okay, I am freaking out just reading these serious resolutions. Become an adult?! What?! I can’t be singing high school musical and hoping that Edward Cullen will fall in love with me forever!?? Haha okay, I’m not that crazy, but seriously. I may be growing up this year and actually be on my own. Hey, I’m 23, so I kinda makes sense! Well, now I’m talking about what could happen to me this year(WOAH!), I have predictions of what could happen this year. OOO! Its just always fun to see what happens, right!? Here are some things that I think could happen this year:

-The Minnesota Vikings win in the 2^nd round of the playoffs. They lose against the Arizona Cardinals, because apparently to the Vikings, Minnesota native and Holy Angels great Larry Fitzgerald is UNSTOPPABLE.

- An NFC team will win the Superbowl. As AWESOME as the Colts are this year, I just have a feeling it is not their year...WOAH.

- Target Field Opens…after the first two games versus the Boston Red Sox are postponed due to snow!!!!!!!! Wow, wouldn’t that be a SHOCKER!?

- Since I’m kinda talking about the MN Twins, here are some predictions for their season. If this happens…that would be FREAKY, right?!

- The season begins with a major SLUMP, due to their very difficult April schedule in their new park, and I actually predict that they will be last or second to last in the division for all of the month. Things will start to pick up in the middle of May when the ice has thawed from Target Field and things will start working!! They will have a FANTASTIC June, leading up to the All-Star Break where they will be second in the division, behind the Chicago White Sox. As long as we are talking about the division, I believe that the Detriot Tigers will be absolutely no threat, and perhaps this will be the year the Royals will start to show some potential. Still not sure about the Cleveland Indians, but the White Sox will be a major force to be reckoned with. Gah. However, I think that there will be a HUGE push after the All-Star Break and the Twins will be on top and win the division with weeks to go in September, and I think they will be winning 90 + games this year. As great as they will be, I still believe that they can only escape the 1^st round of the playoffs if they don’t play the Yankees. I do actually predict that they will win more games against them this season than last season…hahah all they need to do is win ONE! Hahah. Okay, but another predicition is that RON GARDENHIRE WILL WIN HIS AWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Another thing I forgot: JOE MAUER. I believe he will re-sign with the MN Twins, because if he didn’t he would seriously be BANNED from the state that he grew up in and loved all of his life. And his best friends will not ever speak to him again. He wants a winning baseball team…BUT I predict the Twins will be World Series bound…NEXT season. He’ll just hafta wait around…and I think he will! He is totally gonna re-sign in September/October, just to keep us guessing!

- And moving on…I believe that the snow will not be completely gone until around April 15. WHOOO HOOO! I am predicting a very snowy late March, when I am having a fabulous time tanning by the pool in Southern California…yay.

- There will be another Halloween Blizzard. It seriously could happen.

- Angelina Jolie will have another child. WAH!? Hahah…ooo and Madonna will adopt another kid from another country. Wouldn’t that be a SHOCKER?!

- This summer will be HOT and DRY. Last summer when I was in Northern Minnesota, it was COLD and WET the whole summer, so it just has to be the opposite this year, right?!

- This year, we will have a BROWN Christmas. It has been VERY white the last few years, so I have this feeling with our hot summer we will not have much of a winter here in MinneSNOWta.

Okay, some of these predictions may be off the wall, but hey, could happen! What are your predictions?! These are FUN, so I encourage all of you to just see how this year turns out! I think it will be GREAT!

Sleigh Ride! Sleigh Ride!

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling,
ring ting tingling too
Come on, it's lovely weather
for a sleigh ride together with you,
Outside the snow is falling
and friends are calling "Yoo hoo,"
Come on, it's lovely weather
for a sleigh ride together with you.

As redunkulous as that song is, I was able to experience its true meaning today when I went for my first ever sleigh ride. Unlike this picture, we were essentially on what is used for a hayride.... so i was actually just sitting on hay holding on for dear life while two HUGE belgian horses pulled us and it was AMAZING! The snow slowly was falling to the ground as we went on this one hour ride, and it was incredible cold out but all of us on the ride sat together and got warm. It was just amazing, year the bells on the horses ring ting tingling...haha it just seemed like a perfect christmas season activity that made me almost EXCITED and happy to be living in a place with snow and the ability to have sleigh rides such as this...

OH what a perfect day. I recommend a sleigh ride in the near future. It is a very well worth it adventure.

What can make my glass half empty

and....BAM I am gonna talk about sports, because that's what i do. Sorry roommate! I just wanted to say something I am going to put OUT THERE. Okay, and I also think you would like to hear this, roommate.
I have a problem. We all have problems, but mine is HUGE! haha actually, not so much...
I am a VERY positive person. Like, I could be really REALLY tired going through the worst day ever with a HUGE SMILE on my face, still singing High School Musical songs. It's FUN! It makes me very upset to admit that I do have a negitive attitude about one thing. That is.....
DRUM ROLL......................................

Yes. This lovely organization. I am going to admit some things right now:
-I rarely get through an entire twins game on TV without leaving the room in disgust, or because I'm too nervous, thinking Joe Nathan or someone like Delmon Young is going to completely blow it for us.
-I did not pay attention to Twins Baseball this summer while at camp. YIKES. I didn't want to experience heartbreak.
-I have a list of twins players I want to leave, to make my team better.
-When I go to actual games, I watch the whole thing, but I am always waiting for them to lose.

OKAY, this is a serious issue. I know. I decided that for the new year, I am going to start actually being POSITIVE about my team that I LOVE almost too much. Okay, not enough. I am just gonna get what I don't like out there, and you know what, my reasons for not liking these MN Twins things are redunkulous. HAHA. Just getting it out there. HERE:

TC The Bear: Stood infront of my locker in High School, and could not move. I got late to a test becuase he couldn't move. This grudge is rediculous.

Jesse Crain: Oh Jesse...he always seems to screw things up, and shoulda left with Juan Rincon. I will give him a chance this season.

Joe Nathan: Gives me heart attacks. Blows saves....BUT RARELY. It just feels like it is all the time. He always has a low ERA and high save count. This should not be a real grudge.

Delmon Young: I think I just don't like him because he has SOOOOOOOO MUCH POTENTIAL! I actually liked him when I found out he was traded to the Twins! He was runner up for Rookie of the Year...and then he has not been that good since becoming a Twin. Hey, I will root for him, hoping he gets better.

The New York Yankees: Okay, they are seriously the one thing that really makes my blood boil, and they are on this list because they twins CAN'T BEAT THEM! OOO they went what... 0 and 7 against them last season? WHOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOO! They just need to stop looking at the pinstripes and Derek Jeter's beautiful eyes and then they will be SOLID! :D

Okay, this was rediculous, but hey, had to get it out there. If I can look past these things, things will be EXCELLENT in 2010! I always have this feeling the twins are not going to do well, but NOT THIS YEAR! They will be amazing! I will NOT STOP BELIEVING! I will ALWAYS BE THERE FOR THEM! I will ROOT FOR THE TEAM that will SAVE BASEBALL!

Just had to put that out there.

ROCK ON!

I wanna wash my hands, my feet and hair in snow...gah.

Today was a very long day. Didn't get much sleep, got in to work at 8:15 am, left work at 9:40 pm...so i'm pretty tired, as I sit here eating rice with a slice of American Cheese on top. Apparently when you're that tired, you can only think of really weird things to eat! Also because I'm this tired I'm kinda weirdo loopy, so BE PREPARED!
Thanks to my roommate that shares my wall, I apparently am not going to talk about sports. WAH? That's my life, right? Oh yeah, and High School Musical, Twilight and being LOUD! hahahha No, I'm going to talk about something that stresses us midwesterners...us CRAZY PEOPLE every day...and actually those poor people in the east coast and omg ALABAMA as well!

SNOW!

Here I am in February of 2007, awkwardly sitting on a pile of snow at lovely Luther College. I was crazy. I was SMILING. WHA? I had just spent 3.5 weeks on the beaches of Hawaii, tanning and being super lazy and happy in the sun while all the crazy people in the midwest got PUMMELED with snow. I get back and I miss the snow. Oh yeah, and 2 weeks later, I had to go from Demoines Iowa to Decorah in the most horrific snow storm I have ever seen. It took a normal 3 hour drive 8 HOURS...At one point I couldn't see the road very well, so I asked a friend to look out the window. The response: "Uh, you're actually almost in a cornfield." Yeah, snow does not agree with me AT ALL, even though I am crazy and decide to drive through storms!
But that's what we are like, us Midwesterners. We like to put ourselves through pain. We like it when a HUGE storm comes in. Hey, if an inch of snow fell in...let's say Florida, everything would be shut down for a week! Here, we maybe will have school cancelled one day if a foot of snow falls. We are TOUGH. And we have this positive spirit that alot of people just don't have. Hey, I gotta say I like it.
Even though, i would LOVE for the snow to only stick around two weeks before Christmas and maybe a week after, I can live with it. It makes things exciting. Hey, I would much rather have crazy snow storms than a hurricane. We can get through this snow...it will be around for 4 more months at LEAST, but hey we will have fun.
We are CRAZY, but hey we have fun. Now, I'm going to go look out at the cold, miserable, bare and dead looking scenery and just think: HEY, the sun will come back in JUNE, and it will be okay! :)

The Curse of the Gary Anderson

Last night, I was sitting on my couch with my brother, marveling at this thing called Cable TV, which I have only seen once in the last month. Marveling at the moving pictures, we started watching ESPN, in which our lady Gopher Volleyball team was playing against the Texas Longhorns in the NATIONAL semi-finals. We are talking BIG TIMES. As a 11 seed, it was amazing that minnesota got this far. I was getting excited, thinking, "WOW a minnesota team might actually get to a CHAMPIONSHIP!" And then...reality set in. Miss 10 foot 1 on the Longhorns started swinging, making the gophers look like confused 5 year olds on their first day of kindergarten. Then they lost, of course, killing any hope that minnesota can play sports. We are very unfortunate, like boston did, to have a curse. We just can't win anything with this curse intact. This is called the Gary Anderson curse.

On that wonderful crisp January day in 1999, I was in the middle of an eventful and glorious skiing vacation with my family. On that Sunday, the Vikings were playing for the NFC Championship against the Falcons. We had a decision to make: go skiing on this sunny day, or watch the 15-1 Vikings CRUSH the falcons. Of course we chose to watch the game! We had nothing to lose, because we were GOOD and we were going to win! I mean, we already had a "Going to Miami" song based on Will Smith's song, and we knew we were a SHOE-IN for the superbowl. Well, Gary Anderson decided that "Hey, I suck" and missed a VITAL field goal, his first of the season. And thus, the minnesota curse began.
We are a state in which our last championship occured in 1991, thanks to my lovely minnesota twins. We have come so close, yet FALLEN, disgracefully too many times since. 1998-1999 season of football was a time in which we had the chance to be amazing, yet we FELL, and the curse into the 2000s began. During the 2000s, we had had a ALOT of hope. This is what happened in the decade:
Minnesota Twins: After almost a decade of losing seasons, the twins bounced back, with a great 2001 season and new coach, ron gardenhire. After gardy took charge with his feisty attitude(that gets him ejected from games sometimes!), the twins won 5 AL central titles, getting to the AL championship series only once, and losing HORRIBLY in the first round of the playoff every other time...huh.
Minnesota Vikings: The decade brought perhaps the most embarrassing moments for the state of minnesota, thanks to the ridiculous vikings. YIKES. The 2005 boat incident, and randy moss' antics made this an interesting time after them being good in 1998-9...now that there is a new coach, and good people such as Jared Allen, Adrian Peterson and Brett Favre, the team has turned around, but could the team ever win a superbowl after starting the curse? AND, they have lost 4! WHOO HOO!
Minneosta Timberwolves: Yikes. After losing Kevin Garnett and having Kevin McHale ruin EVERYTHING that the team had, they could perhaps become the worst NBA team in history this season. WHOOO HOOOOOOO!
Minnesota Wild: They got rid of everyone and are attempting to come back this season. They have yet to make it to a Stanley Cup.

And so, our sports teams have bad luck. Thank you Gary Anderson! Who is going to stop this curse? My bet is on this guy:

You can't really tell from this picture of him stretching, but Minnesota native Joe Mauer is everything that greatness should be. Missing the first month of the season, he came back ready to go with a BLAST of a homerun(that i witnessed!!) and was unstoppable the rest of the season, winning the AL Batting title with .365 average and helping the mediocre twins become amazing in September(of course!) and win the AL Central Title!!! He has received awards in the postseason such as AL MVP, gold glove and silver slugger. He also has one year left in his contract. He wants to go to the world series, and if he doesn't, he may just go to the dark side to get it. It is VERY crucial then for him to win a championship with this team, and he and every twins player is going to do whatever it takes to win this title, and keep him in Minnesota for years to come, because in the end the curse will be BROKEN!!!!!!!!!