Bob CollinsStar Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse appears to have stepped in it again with a column today in which he lambastes the Minnesota Twins players for celebrating when they win a game.
The Star Tribune sports department must be an utterly joyless place because this is the sort of thing that Reusse says is shameful.
Parents: The following images might be unsuitable for young children. You’ve been warned.
It was understandable the Twins celebrated Tuesday’s winning home run by greeting Dozier wildly at home plate, sending a bat boy to dump water over Dozier’s head during a postgame interview, and holding a smoke-filled dance party in the clubhouse.
It was understandable because this team and this organization appear to have lost all shame in the misery of a season that has captured huge momentum to stand as the most-disgusting in the 56 the Twins have played in Minnesota — now split equally between 28 indoors and 28 outdoors.
And you fans (who actually paid to watch the game) who cheered a win? Explain yourselves.
NBC’s Craig Calcaterra, an immensely respected baseball writer for NBC Sports, says Reusse provides “some pretty questionable crap” in coded references to Latin ballplayers.
Like saying, “there is nothing more damaging to the Twins’ future than the ongoing difficulty in getting extra-talented players from the Caribbean to become fully invested in reaching stardom.” There’s a lot to unpack there. It comes in a familiar suitcase, though, in which Latino players are seen as unmotivated as a basic proposition, which is some pretty ugly stuff in which I had assumed major paper columnists had stopped trafficking. Guess not.
Calcaterra unloads on Reusse, saying Minnesotans have a better grasp on the concept that it’s just sports.
Reusse and his ilk are the tail that wags the dog. They’ve been so for decades, pretending that their anger, real or put-on, is the true voice of sports fandom. There’s a silent majority out there, however, that doesn’t think like this. Men, women and children who enjoy a game and prefer a win but who don’t expect the self-flagellation from athletes Reusse demands and who aren’t as self-entitled as Reusse would have them be. We’ve accepted such fictions as fact from a self-important sports media for far too long. We should stop accepting it.
