COLUMN: St. Louis suit salvages sunshine out of sadness

HOME STRETCH COLUMN
By: 
Pete Temple
Express Sports Editor

     I often think of April as one of the best sports months of the calendar year, second only to May.

     April marks the start of the NHL and NBA playoffs, and the MLB season. Major League Soccer, which is drawing my interest a bit more each year, is under way as well.

     And my personal favorite moment – when the gates open on the first live horse race of the season at Prairie Meadows – coincides with my annual trip to the Drake Relays.

     There are times, however, when all this fun can turn sour. For that, I give you Wednesday, April 12.

     As a Minnesota native, I still pull for the Minnesota pro sports teams, and three of them managed to lose on the same day. The Timberwolves wrapped up another disappointing season by losing to Houston. This was going to be the year the Woofies, with rising young stars Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, were going to make some noise and possibly squeak into the playoffs. Instead they went 31-51, winning just two more games than they did last year.

     The Twins started 5-1, shocking the world, but a pair of losses to Detroit, including Wednesday, have brought them to earth. I hope I’m wrong, but I have a hunch where this is headed.

     The worst one, though, was the Wild’s overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues. This was Game One of an NHL Stanley Cup playoff series. The Wild tied the game on an awesome goal by Zach Parise with just 22 seconds to play, and it was all I could do to avoid jumping and screaming into the late-night darkness as my wife and boys slept. I didn’t stay up for the overtime, and it was just as well; the Blues won it (and of course it has gotten worse; the Wild is now down 3-0 in the series as of Sunday).

     It didn’t go much better for my sons. Ian’s Pirates (and by extension, my second favorite MLB team) got shelled, and his Heat (my third favorite NBA team) won its final game but missed the playoffs despite a 30-11 second half of the season.

     It was slightly better for Levi, whose Bulls (my second favorite) won to wrap up an NBA playoff spot. His Cubs lost, but he has the consolation of knowing that there might only be two or three teams in all of MLB – sadly – that have even a remote chance to knock this monster of a team off its throne.

     There was, however one bright spot on Thursday morning after the Wednesday of Woe: the news that the city of St. Louis is suing the NFL in a variety of ways for financial damages caused to the city when the Rams moved back to Los Angeles.

     In a way, it’s hard to feel too sorry for St. Louis, which brought the Rams from L.A. in the first place, all those years ago.

     But then you think of the NFL, the collection of billionaires whose prime joy is getting taxpayers to build them fabulous new stadiums (stadia?), and moving the team if the city refuses. Some of them do, and keep the team (Minnesota). Some of them don’t, and lose it (St. Louis, San Diego, Oakland).

     The NFL used to be all I lived for in the sports world. But as concussion information and lifetime damages increasingly come to light – not to mention the annual disappointments from having the teams I like falter and the teams I dislike thrive – the NFL has fallen to a distant fifth (fifth!), behind even Major League Soccer, in my pro sports interest.

     St. Louis doesn’t have a prayer, of course, of winning this suit, or squeezing much more than a few dimes out of the billionaires’ club in a “settlement.” To the league, it might not be any more annoying than a mosquito bite.

     But anything that puts the screws to the NFL – even a little – is fine by me.

     

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