Football, Football, Everywhere
By John Gilbert
The start of the National Football League season dominated the sports news over the weekend, and some thoroughly entertaining games deserved the spotlight. By chance, I had to catch a flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles for an assignment to attend the introduction of the new Ram turbodiesel pickup, and the stunning new Jeep Cherokee for my alter-ego job as automotive journalist (Newcarpicks.com), so I only got to see the first half of the Vikings game at Detroit.
I had picked against our two regional favorites — the Vikings and the Green Bay Packers at San Francisco. The Packers, because I thought they’d be good, but San Francisco is one of the premier teams in the NFL. Sure enough, it was a shootout, with Chris Kaepernick coming out on top of Aaron Rodgers this time, just as he did when the 49ers beat the Packers at the end of last season. The Vikings, because I remain unconvinced that Christian Ponder has gained enough polish by not playing through the exhibition season, and because I think Detroit and Matt Stafford are for real, particularly by adding Reggie Bush to the rushing game.
The first half was amazing, as the Vikings took a 14-13 lead and were indeed fortunate to be ahead. Adrian Peterson raced 76 yards for a touchdown on the first play of the new season, but Ponder struggled so much after that the Lions were able to focus on Peterson and hold him to only 20 more yards on 17 more carries in the game. The Lions used up their usual allotment of bad luck and bad breaks in the first half, scoring three touchdowns before getting credit for one. A couple of weird calls there, too.
By rule, if a player puts the ball over the goal line it’s a touchdown, for breaking the plane of the goal line. Also, any ball-carrier who has possession when he goes down is credited with possession if the ball is jarred loose by the rule that “the ground can’t cause a fumble.” The new rule in the NFL also says that a receiver must complete the act of receiving by keeping possession when the ball hits the ground. So Stafford hits big Calvin Johnson with a pass, and as Johnson is being hauled down at the goal line, he reaches the ball over the goal line to be sure it’s a touchdown. As he lands, the ball is jarred loose, and after review, the officials overturned the call of a touchdown and ruled the pass incomplete. The Lions had to settle for a field goal and trailed 14-6. One thought: The trendy move to reach the ball over the goal line might be better served if the ball-carrier thrusts the ball over the goal line, breaking the plane, then pulls it back. There’s no need to “down” the ball anymore, I don’t think.
At any rate, the Lions intercepted passes and ran them back for touchdowns, and made several more big plays, only to have them nullified by penalties. Then they tried a goal-line plunge, and the Detroit back appeared to get right onto the goal line before being hurled back. It was not called a touchdown, until further review, as they say. Then, to the surprise of anyone who has seen a Vikings-Lions game in the last two decades, the call was reversed, and the Lions were granted the touchdown that made it 14-13.
As I boarded the plane, I thought to myself that if the breaks evened out, the Lions were in position to take the game over in the second half, and when I got to L.A., I learned they had indeed.
DUCKS, AND EAGLES, FLY
For the last three years, my favorite college football team to watch — after UMD, of course — were the Oregon Ducks. Coach Chip Kelly’s incredible hurry-up offense, with no huddles and immediate snap after snap, was geared to prevent defenses from every getting set or having any chance of anticipating what might be coming next. I firmly believe that if the Ducks played Alabama in the last two Bowl Championship Series games, they would have one at least one of the two. At least.
This year, the landscape changes. Chip Kelly is now coaching the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Ducks are left with a new coach and a superb lineup. A big problem is they play out West, and news seems to travel slowly to the big media centers in the East, including ESPN, which does a great service by bringing us a lot of football every Saturday, but does the sport a huge disservice by having a contract to broadcast and promote the Southeast Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference. They claim that nobody can touch the top SEC teams, and the sheep that vote for the ratings follow along as if on cue.
My feeling is that nobody, not Alabama, nor any other college team, could contain Oregon’s rapid-fire attack for an entire game, but mostly I found few others who agreed, mainly because everybody had watched Alabama’s pro-style offense and pro-style defense and assumed the Crimson Tide was as good as ESPN kept claiming.
With considerable interest, I watched Oregon play at Virginia last Saturday afternoon. But I missed the first couple minutes of the game, and by the time I tuned in, the Ducks were scoring an impressive touchdown to take a 14-0 lead. They went on to rock Virginia, in front of astonished East Coast viewers and ESPN broadcasters, 59-10. Even without coach Chip Kelly, the Ducks were awesome. Quarterback Marcus Mariota, a sophomore Heisman Trophy candidate, handed the ball off on the familiar quick-strike offense, and every once in a while he’d keep the ball himself, fire passes to an array of skilled receivers, or run himself for a couple of touchdowns. De’Anthony Thomas, Oregon’s prize running back, scored three touchdowns as well.
This Saturday, No. 2 ranked Oregon (behind Alabama, naturally) plays Tennessee, another huge game for the Ducks, to say nothing of the Volunteers. The big game of the week, of course, is the rematch of the upset of last year when Alabama plays at Texas A & M. If you can, watch both those games, and watch A & M’s Johnny Manziel closely, but also watch Marcus Mariota closely. Then next week we can compare them.
With the impressions of Saturday’s college games still swirling in my mind, and the information overload from Sunday’s NFL slate, I watched the first half of Monday night’s Philadelphia Eagles game at Washington. The defending division champ Redskins were favored, with the return of Robert Griffin III from knee surgery after last season, but my interest was focused on the Eagles, where Chip Kelly has moved his hurry-up offense into an NFL where everybody hopes he fails.
Every NFL team plays virtually the same offensive system and the same defensive system. Nobody has changed anything in the NFL for two decades or more. Chip Kelly has promised to do that, and quarterback Michael Vick must think he’s in heaven. Kelly has gotten the Redskins to buy into his plan, where every move of practice, every lifestyle move leading up to games and through games, is done in rapid-fire fashion. Critics said it would never work in the pros. I disagreed, but from a distance.
Jon Gruden was the color commentator on the broadcast, and he was in awe of what the Eagles did. I read once where the actual timed average of an NFL game shows 6 seconds of action, followed by 30 seconds of huddle, then 6 more seconds of action. Perfect for instant replays and all those commercials. Vick and the Eagles averaged a play every 5 seconds.
The all-time record for running plays in an NFL game is something like 93. The Eagles ran 30 plays in the first quarter, and had 53 by halftime. First game problems with getting the system sharpened saw some mistakes, and some missed passes by Vick that prevented the Eagles from blowing the Redskins off their home field. Washington, in fact, scored first after Vick botched a lateral pass on first and goal at the Washington 4, which ultimately became a 75-yard fumble recovery touchdown by Ryan Kerrigan. The Eagles never broke stride. After a field goal, Vick threw a 25-yard touchdown bullet to DeSean Jackson, one of seven passes Jackson caught for 104 yards, then the Eagles got a safety when their defense swarmed the Redskins, for a 12-7 first-quarter lead.
The remarkable thing about the game was that the big Redskins crowd was stunned into silence. They watched in amazement as the Eagles ran no-huddle snap after snap, leaving no time for replays or commercials, and they obviously were comfortable playing at a tempo that was too quick for the wearying Redskins to cope with, let alone gather their thoughts.
In the second quarter, Vick fired a 28-yard touchdown pass to Brent Celek, then he faked a handoff and ran one in himself. At halftime, Philadelphia led 26-7, and it should have been much worse; the Eagles had 21 first downs to 2 for the Redskins. Vick sent LeSean McCoy slashing through holes in the Redskins line, and part of the 184 yards McCoy collected on 31 rushes was a 34-yard touchdown run to make it 33-7 late in the third quarter. Vick gained 54 more yards on his own runs, while clicking on 15 of 25 passes for 180 more.
To their credit, the Redskins came back to score the last three touchdowns in the game to close it to the 33-27 final with a minute left. Griffin wound up with 30-49 passes for a whopping 329 yards, but 169 of the yards came in the fourth quarter, long after the Eagles had put the game away. And Griffin was intercepted twice, for the first time in his career.
But the game was never in doubt. Nor was the feeling that NFL fans all across the country had just witnessed a potential changing of the standard style in how to play football. This is not to say that the Eagles will romp undefeated through the season. Undoubtedly, some team will find a way to outscore them, but there is no question that while San Francisco and Seattle both play a somewhat similar style, and a few other teams may try it now, no other team is conditioned and primed physically and mentally to play the game at the incredible tempo of the Eagles.
NEW-IDENTITY BULLDOGS, SAME RESULT
It was evident from the start of Minnesota-Duluth’s opening football game that this year’s Bulldogs will establish their own identity. They will have to, because even though a lot of the names in the lineup are familiar, we all became comfortable identifying the last four highly successful UMD teams by the names of coach Bob Nielson and quarterback Chase Vogler.
Obviously, UMD’s great teams of the past four seasons, including the NCAA Division II championship outfit of 2010, were directed by Nielson’s fine hand, and by the dynamic and creative play-calling of Vogler. Whether those two got too much credit or not, both are gone now, Vogler to graduation after a record-setting four years, and Nielson to Western Illinois for the challenge of Division I.
We all knew that, but when the Bulldogs opened the season against a definite challenge from Sioux Falls last Saturday night, somehow we still expected a resemblance to those Bulldogs past. There was a resemblance from the outcome, a 32-7 victory for UMD, and there was the start of a new era in Bulldog football, with coach Todd Wiese stepping up from offensive coordinator to head coach, despite looking young enough to still be in the lineup. And Drew Bauer stepping into the signal-calling role as a freshman quarterback, and while he wasn’t the swashbuckling Vogler already, he ran the club with poise, passing and sending his quick-strike running backs through the Cougar line to build a 19-0 first half lead.
UMD’s freshman quarterback Drew Bauer swept left end for a 15-yard touchdown and a 19-0 lead over Sioux Falls.
The first half scoring concluded when Bauer carried himself, swinging around left end and running the last 15 yards for a touchdown that boosted the Bulldogs from a shaky 13-0 lead to 19-0 control. When Bauer came out in the third quarter for treatment of leg cramps on the warm September night, sophomore Eric Kline came in and promptly fired a touchdown pass to Zach Zweifel after a Sioux Falls touchdown had lessened the UMD lead to 25-7.
Zweifel is one of those returnees who played so well last season. So is Austin Sikorski, who ran for two touchdowns. And so are defensive stalwarts like defensive end Chris Vandervest, linebacker Colby Ring, and cornerback Kenny Chowa. When the offense got too much credit last season, the defense didn’t seem to mind being overlooked, but they seem certain not to be overlooked this season. Vandervest was a force throughout the game, while Ring has one sack, and jarred a fumble loose and recovered it, while Chowa snatched an interception, as the Bulldogs generally prevented Sioux Falls from ever getting into the game with a dominant first half and a solid game throughout. Vandervest had five unassisted tackles, one for a sack, in the first half alone, when UMD had 15 first downs to 5 for the Cougars. For the game, Vandervest had 8 unassisted tackles, while sophomore linebacker Nate Zibolski had 5 unassisted and 1 assistd tackle.
“Vandervest is a senior now, and he played like a senior tonight,” said Wiese, on the Malosky Stadium turf after the game. “Our defense was consistent all night, both our defensive front and our secondary. Our secondary played as good as we’ve seen, and we forced them out of any game plan they had.”
Former Eagan star Drew Brees (9) took command of the UMD offense.
As for the offense, Wiese was more than satisfied with Bauer. “Drew did a good job and was extremely composed at the line of scrimmage,” Wiese said. “I’m proud of the way the guys came out, both at the start of the game, and in the second half. We expect a lot out of our guys.”
Along with the 19-0 halftime score, UMD had established its rushing superiority by halftime, gaining 157 yards on 30 rushing attempts, while stifling Sioux Falls with 5 yards on 18 tries. Fumbles, interceptions and penalties aided UMD aggressive defense in keeping the Cougars — who were 9-2 last season — off balance. Still, freshman Luke Papilion overcame five sacks and constant harrassment to make the Cougar passing game a threat.
There were some odd plays, and calls, as the officials looked like they might be suffering more from first-game rustiness than the players. On UMD’s first drive, Bauer appeared to complete a pass to a diving receiver up the left sideline, and while photos indicated it was a catch, the officials ruled it incomplete. However, Sioux Falls was called for pass interference on the play, so all that was hurt was UMD’s statistical advantage. A couple plays later, Sikorski barged 19 yards up the middle and it was 7-0 anyway.
The Cougars attempted to keep pace, but Papilion fumbled after being sacked and UMD recovered. An interception and another fumble recovery stopped the next two Sioux Falls possessions, too, in the 10-0 first quarter.
A dizzying sequence in the third quarter also kept the big crowd of 5,217 guessing. UMD came up with another key interception near the goal line, but it was nullified by a pass interference call. Sioux Falls promptly scored a touchdown, but it was disallowed because of an illegal block. Next, UMD was called for a pass interference in the end zone, and finally Sioux Falls was able to come up with its touchdown.
None of that affected the final outcome, because the Bulldog defense helped UMD to a whopping edge in rushing yards, 275-11, and in rushing first downs, 18-2. Papilion’s passing gave the Cougars a 133-106 edge, but UMD sacked him five times and compiled a 381-144 margin in total yards. Sikorski slashed through for 104 yards on 24 carries, and Logan Lauters added 80 more yards on 15 carries, while Bauer chipped in 58 yards during 10 carries — some of them intentional.
It seemed as though the post-game wind-down lasted longer than usual, and maybe it did, as the coaching staff and players savored the long-awaited answer to the questions of how the new staff and a new quarterback would succeed when the new season started. But if it was to be savored, even the celebration was measured.
“We’ll enjoy this one for 24 hours — that’s a team rule,” said Wiese. “Then we start thinking about next week.”
The Bulldogs are on the road this weekend, returning home the following Saturday. By then, the new identity should be more firmly in place, and the only thing remaining from the old identity is winning.
New 1.8 Turbo Steals VW’s Base
VW may finally agree to give U.S. consumers the Scirocco.
By John Gilbert
ST. HELENA, CALIF. — The best thing Volkswagen is bringing to its lineup for the 2014 model year is more than skin deep — a new base engine for its whole car line. The best thing Volkswagen may bring to the U.S. for 2015 is the sportiest car in its whole lineup, a secret weapon that’s been sold only in Europe — the Scirocco.
Those were the main disclosures Volkswagen officials made to members of the automotive media, gathered at the Meadow Wood Resort near St. Helena, a small town in the heart of the Napa Valley wine-growing region north of San Francisco.
The engine is the hottest news. Volkswagen for years has stayed with a series of high-tech engines for its full line of vehicles, with a 2.5-liter 5-cylinder as its base engine, and upgrades that include a 2.0 TSi (turbocharged) 4-cylinder, and a 2.0 TDI (turbo diesel), with spot duty for a venerable V6 engine known as the VR-6.
Curiously, while the 2.5 is the largest-displacement engine in the basic Beetle, Golf, Jetta, and Passat, it also is the dullest engine in the fleet, because the 2.0 turbo has a lot more pizzaz and potential fuel economy, while the 2.0 TDi has remarkable torque and can get up to and beyond 50 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.
For 2014, Volkswagen is introducing a new 1.8-liter TSi 4-cylinder, which is remarkably engineered to coordinate less power into a lighter package but, with direct injection and turbocharging, make the little engine feel like a much larger displacement unit. A smaller derivative of the 2.0 TSi, the 1.8 Turbo feels quick and potent all the way up the RPM scale, and it also delivers better fuel economy on regular fuel, unlike the 2.0-turbo gas engine.
“The 1.8-TSi is built out of all-new architecture,” said Mark Trahan, the executive vice president of group quality for all Volkswagen and Audi vehicles. “It has all the latest technology, including direct injection, low-friction parts, and the exhaust manifold is designed right into the cylinder head. It has 170 horsepower and 184 foot-pounds of torque, and while that torque is 30 foot-pounds less than the 2.0 Turbo, the torque peaks at 1,500 RPMs.”
It is torque, and not horsepower, that gives a car brisk acceleration, and the new 1.8 Turbo proves that it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have a lot of torque, as long as that torque all comes in when it’s most needed. In a car like the Jetta, the 1.8 hits peak torque at 1,500 RPMs, which is barely above idle speed, and it stays on a torque curve that is almost entirely flat all the way to the horsepower peak.
Compact Jetta will be among first to use the new 1.8 TSi engine with 170 horsepower and 184 foot-pounds of torque.
After driving several other VW models from Meadow Woods around the area roadways, I signed out a new Jetta with the new 1.8. When I hit second gear with the 6-speed stick, the car had so much mid-range punch that my first thought was that I’d mistakenly taken a turbo-diesel model. The turbo-diesel has so much torque at start-up that it rivals the hotter GTI/GLI sports models, and that’s the way the Jetta felt. But instead of the tubro-diesel, the Jetta had the new and plenty zippy 1.8-liter turbocharged gasoline 4-cylinder . VW has gone to fewer cylinders and smaller displacement to find a far superior engine. Read more
Panic-time can wait, for Vikings
Maybe it’s not time to panic yet, because after all we still have another exhibition game to go before the National Football League begins its long run into winter. Exhibition games are, mostly, a joke. Each team works out its own schedule for developing all the elements necessary for a strong regular season, and mainly they don’t play the regulars so that they can take a long look at the potential of new players that might represent the future.
But if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan, a serious cloud of concern hangs heavily over the club. Not panic, maybe, but definitely concern.
With one exhibition game left, Vikings fans have no idea if the third year of the Christian Ponder Experiment has a chance to be different from Years One and Two, or if the Vikings will try to masquerade as a contender by handing the ball to Adrian Peterson and playing good defense.
Frankly, I refuse to get too excited about any exhibition game. That means I kiss off the apparent ineptitude displayed by the Vikings in three exhibitions and trust their explanation that they aren’t playing Ponder much, and they didn’t play Peterson at all, because they didn’t want to risk any injuries to two such stalwarts.
Then I watch parts of a couple other exhibition games. I notice that nobody gets worked up when Aaron Rodgers doesn’t do much with the Green Bay Packers, but newcomer Vince Young steps in and wins the backup quarterback job with an impressive performance. And Detroit buries the vaunted New England Patriots 40-9, with ace quarterback Drew Stafford looking pretty good, and backup Kellen Moore looking sensational. Chicago looked pretty impressive, too, with Jay Cutler looking very good, armed with a newly replenished arsenal of varied receivers and running backs.
It was not just sarcasm when I projected a few weeks ago that the pressure on Christian Ponder to rise to the role of prominence is emphasized more because of the Vikings division — if Ponder plays his absolute best this season, he might still be only the fourth-best quarterback in the division, behind Rodgers, Stafford and Cutler.
With Ponder looking comparatively shaky, if not entirely lost, in sparse duty through three exhibitions, I now must amend that bleak prospect: If Ponder plays his absolute best this year, he might not be any better than sixth-best in the division — behind Rodgers, Stafford, Cutler, Moore and Young.
I really liked Vince Young when he played at Texas, showing immense skill and capability, and then stepping in with glowing prospects for more than adequate chances in the NFL. He didn’t really make it. In fact, he failed in two starting opportunities with different teams, then he sat out all last season with an injury, and lost his chance to run a team. Personally, I think he came into the NFL at the wrong time, at a time when teams had established offenses, and made any new prospect fit into that system, while Young didn’t. Nobody was about to turn an entire offense over to a guy who would just as soon run as pass, as if an exciting college style might work in the NFL.
Since then, of course, we’ve seen a startling transformation in the NFL. Robert Griffin III took over at Washington, Cam Newton got free reign at Caroline, Russell Wilson burst into the clear in Seattle, and Colin Kaepernick turned San Francisco upside down. All of them are spectacular quarterbacks, capable of game-breaking plays while running or passing with equal explosiveness, and pro football showed that with the right degree of open-mindedness, a new quarterback with a new outlook and a combination of flash and confidence can lift a franchise up from mediocrity to contention.
Perhaps the most intriguing of this fall’s prospects is at Green Bay. Aaron Rodgers is just fully emerging as a true superstar. No, he won’t make us forget Brett Favre, but he is the triggerman for a Packers team that should again be a division, conference and Super Bowl contender. But it seems to be a brilliant bit of strategy for the Packers to displace a fully adequate backup quarterbacking system with the potential of a mercurial alternative in Vince Young. We don’t anticipate Rodgers getting bogged down in any game, but his effectiveness might even be enhanced if the Packers can look at an occasional situation where Vince Young can jog onto the field for a play or two, passing or pitching or scrambling to break loose running in a way nobody wants to see Rodgers run. Then, with a well-qualified intern making the incision for a first down, the master surgeon comes back in and finishes the operation in the end zone.
Personally, though, I will be watching the Detroit Lions as often as possible, because I’ve been a Kellen Moore fan since he was back at Boise State, running the Broncos spectacular offense on that strange blue turf in Idaho. In those days, Boise State was one of the most entertaining college teams to watch. The game plan was always brilliant, and Boise State would come up with trick plays almost every time they got the ball — brilliantly conceived and executed trick plays that worked with astounding effectiveness. And Kellen Moore was that tall, lanky left-handed quarterback who ran the show.
Moore’s greatest skill seemed to be an ability to loft passes that were more perfect than high-velocity. He’s lob the ball over safeties who were scrambling to get into position. There were those who wrote him off as a pro because he didn’t have Rodgers-style bullet capabilities. I always thought that his keen ability to find a target and put his passes where only those receivers could get them would make him one of those quarterbacks who only needed a chance to play in order to excel.
For his whole college career, Moore had to play out there in Boise while other teams refused to play Boise State. College football has long had its ridiculous pecking order, where the powers-that-be made sure that no odd newcomers penetrated their realm. It still holds for the Southeast Conference, which has a lot of good teams and might be the best conference in the country, but which also protects its turf by buying off the decision-makers at ESPN with a sinister partnership that assures ESPN of top games to broadcast and perpetrates the illusion that no team from anywhere else should be elevated to the Bowl Championship game. So the routine came about that nobody wanted to play Boise State, so then they could look at Boise’s 11-0 record and say, “They don’t play anybody,” while making sure they couldn’t play a tougher schedule. When they did get a chance, Boise State blitzed even strong teams, which made the other powers more reluctant to play the Broncos.
When Moore’s senior year ended, I thought he would become a great pro quarterback, but he was not a super-high draft pick. Detroit got him to sign a contract, and he quietly played in the shadows. I think he was No. 3 with the Lions while learning the system, but time passes, and now he’s not only No. 2, but he’s capable of stepping in to help Stafford and the long-suffering Lions be a true contender.
Coming back to the Vikings, I’ve believed in Ponder’s future because he, too, is a smart player who knows what must be done, where his pass must go, and how to run an offense. Still, he showed very little except occasional bursts so far. Of the division’s quarterbacks, none has the built-in advantage Ponder has, which is the opportunity to hand the ball to No. 28, Adrian Peterson, for at least half the team’s offensive plays. That should make Ponder’s job easier, because opposing defenses have to psyche themselves up to try to form a posse to head off Peterson before he gets free. That means that Ponder can throw a play-fake at Peterson and should find multiple receivers open for a few pinpoint passes, which, in turn, should open up Peterson even more.
The problem, going into this summer’s exhibition season, is that Ponder rarely if ever showed the capability to get the ball to his receivers with the needed zip and mostly with accuracy. Soem spectacular lunging, leaping, one-handed catches are impressive, but the top quarterbacks on other teams are putting precision passes right on the chest, or into the hands, of top receivers. Sure, Percy Harvin went out with an injury last season, and I, like most Vikings followers, cut Ponder new dimensions of slack. This summer, the Vikings rounded up a new herd of receivers, and even took Joe Webb, the potentially great backup quarterback, and converted him to wide receiver.
With all that playing out, I found it alarmingly strange that the Vikings gave Ponder only two snaps in the first exhibition, and only two series in the second. Yes, you worry about any starting quarterback getting injured in an exhibition game, but Ponder is not a superstar being held out because we know he’s going to come in with Rodgers-style polish when the gun sounds. In the third exhibition, Ponder looked like an untested rookie trying to impress with a scattershot array of passes. That is, after dropping the football on his third play to give the San Francisco 49ers the ball on the Vikings 11. It was a tribute to the Vikings defense that they held the 49ers to a field goal on that sequence.
Matt Cassel didn’t look much better as backup, making it two poor performances after an impressive first game. Joe Webb is still there, and we were reminded of that when he outbattled a D-back to make a spectacular leaping catch for a touchdown. Oh yeah, we thought. There’s Joe Webb! Hmmm…He could be coming in as the ideal back-up QB, couldn’t he? Remember, he looked great in that role — sort of Minnesota’s Vince Young to Aaron Rodgers, stylewise — until last season. When things broke down, the Vikings gave Joe Webb his long-overdue chance, and he flubbed it. Played poorly. But failing in one big, pressure-filled chance isn’t much chance, compared to three years of anointed starting stardom for Christian Ponder. My thought is that using Webb as a ready back-up for Ponder might help make Ponder a better quarterback than he’s become.
Anyway, Vikings fans, three exhibition games don’t mean we should panic. We have a fourth exhibition this week…then we can panic.
SENIOR MOMENTS
Maybe they should change the name of the MSMABA. That stands for Minnesota Senior Men’s Amateur Baseball Association, a wordy title that stands for the Over-35 group of teams I’ve been involved with for over 25 years. I argued at the beginning that it should be MSBA, for Minnesota Senior Baseball Association, because that would be simpler. But maybe “Senior Moments” would be the ideal name.
With the painful demise of the SeaFoam Hawks to something more of a rebuilding hopeful team for the future than a contender, we have depended form a few years on a bit of an upsurge at state tournament time to make the long winter easier to endure before trying again. This past season, we had a diversity of talent. When we had all our top players on the field, we could compete with anybody; when we didn’t, we couldn’t. My guys would always say it was still fun, to which I would counter that it can be fun while winning, also.
When it came time to schedule the two-weekend state tournament, I made one request of the league. If we were going to be scheduled on Friday, could we get the late game, because we had three players who were working late and would miss the earlier game? The result: We were scheduled for 6:30 p.m., the earliest game, in Prior Lake, with Interstates 35W and 494 under construction, and the likely alternative of Hwy. 169 closed down to one congested lane. That meant we had to play without the left side of our infield, including two of our top three hitters, and we got hammered 10-0 by New Hope, a good team.
We had to come back and play an early game on Saturday, against the K-Town Outlaws from Kensington. We were missing a half-dozen players because of the hour, so we were down to nine players. I played second base, and I moved Sam, our first baseman, to right field, and played Jay, our backup relief pitcher, to first base. Mike, our first-game pitcher, played shortstop, and Matt, our left-fielder, went to third base for my son, Jack, who was stuck at work. You could call it a makeshift lineup, and I was something less than confident.
But Gary pitched a masterful game, and we played our best game of the season — winning 6-2 and outhitting K-Town 15-3. Unbelievable. Personally, it has been a tough season for me, after years of being comfortable making big plays that might help us win, to the realization that I might make a misplay that costs us a game. But on that hot afternoon, I hit two fastballs squarely to left for my best two hits of the season, and Jay, at first base, hit three shots among our 15.
That brought us back all flushed with confidence for this past weekend, where we had our top guns back, to face an Edina team we had beaten early in the season. This time, their big left-hander screwed us into the ground with a great curveball, and we were unable to make up a late deficit, losing 5-3. Mike Snow, back on the mound, pitched one of his best games of the season, giving up only four hits, but we wasted his effort.
In the world of bracketing, we wound up playing our final game Sunday against K-Town, and it was a disaster that started manifesting itself over Saturday night. Around midnight, I got a text message from former Gopher hockey star Jay Moser, our shortstop and No. 3 hitter, saying he had wrenched his back, couldn’t move, and wouldn’t be able to play the next day. I was counting on him to back up Gary, our pitcher, then I got a text from Gary, who said he was injured working on a rock wall late Saturday, and definitely would be unable to play, let alone pitch Sunday. With Jack, our third baseman and next in line to pitch, facing an important meeting at work, we were in bad shape for our finale. Mike, our speedy center-fielder, was solid, as was Sam at first base. Matt and Huck, our top two rookies, were also set, as was big Steve, who has become a good catcher while constantly begging for the chance to pitch, and Derek, who faces a weekly battle with his wife whether he should be freed to play.
As I drove from Duluth to Shakopee for the game Sunday morning, I was almost constantly on the phone. I was about a half-hour from Shakopee when Jack informed me he could get free to play, but he was in Oakdale, on the far east end of the Twin Cities, and he had damaged a suspension piece on his car and couldn’t drive it that far. I immediately called our players already in the dugout and told them to start without me, and I turned abruptly to go pick up Jack.
Negotiating construction highlights on the roads to Shakopee, we missed the start of the game, and our team, playing with eight players, was trailing 4-1 when we arrived. Jack ran onto the field and took third base, while I hauled the equipment belatedly to the dugout. With no warmup, Jack got up twice and got two hits. I went in at second base, and got up twice without two hits. We lost, 6-1. Most impressively, Mike Snow said he felt fine, instead of exhausted, and pitched all the way for the second day in a row. Again he gave up only four hits, and for the second day in a row we wasted his effort.
I thought it seemed pretty hot, which I attributed to anxiety, then I heard the temperature was an all-time record 97 degrees in Shakopee, with a heat index of 115.
My plan was to hang it up after this season, to turn over the equipment and the anxiety to some younger player, closer to the scene in the Twin Cities. After we were done, though, a half dozen players said how much they were looking forward to next season, and pleaded with me to continue. I didn’t commit. But like an unspecified addict, after a terrible year hitting, I had gotten three hits in two tournament games — more than I attained all season. Nothing makes next year look better than that.
Amateur Baseball can have Gordie Howe Moment
By John Gilbert
It was my personal Gordie Howe Moment.
There are those who think Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player in history, and his achievements as a no-compromise, tough, determined and high-scoring right wing with the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings is the stuff that makes the Hall of Fame work. Gordie, however, just did what he wanted to do on the rink. He played by his own rules, his own code, and anyone violatimg it would pay swiftly and surely.
But Gordie Howe would be just as quick to say that all his accomplishments were fun, and nice to be stored in his memory, but his greatest thrill came after he retired from the Red Wings, when he came back to play in the rival World Hockey Association for the Houston Aeros, only because of the opportunity, at age 50-something, to play with his two sons, Mark and Marty. They were good players in their own right, Mark an outstanding winger and Marty a very capable defenseman.
I had the opportunity to write about Gordie Howe in both incarnations, when he played in that red Red Wings jersey, and when he played with his sons with the Aeros. I thought it was really neat what he did, particularly that he was capable of being a solid player at age 50, and that he could play on the same team with his two sons, sharing ice time, sharing the bench, the dressing room, and the trips to faraway cities.
Impressed as I was, it took a lot of years before it truly hit home how big a deal it was until, on a different level, in a different world, I got to experience something similar.
My lifelong love of baseball started as a youth player, long before my long and acquired affair with hockey, as a writer, came to be. The baseball connection was from my dad, of course. He had played third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds long before I was born, although he was never pushy about trying to make me play.
When Jack, the first of our two sons, came along, I couldn’t wait to play catch with him, and to toss rubber balls to him that he could swat back at me with a tiny bat. I made sure he felt comfortable swinging left-handed. I like to hit left-handed, but, like my dad many years ago, I’m right-handed. My dad always said he regretted I didn’t swing from the left side because he thought I had a naturally fluid swing that way. My urging of both my sons, Jack and Jeff, was more pragmatic. Probably 90 percent of the pitchers you face at any level are right-handed, and their curveballs are much easier to hit if they’re breaking toward you than sweeping away, out of reach. And left-handed hitters get a two-step head start to first base, which might make the difference in turning 10 percent of all ground balls into singles, or at least into threats.
It also was an objective of mine to push every player on all the teams I coached to play defense in a fundamentally sound manner — two hands on every catch, turn to the inside when making a double play, leave your fingers inside your glove rather than the faint-hearted trend of poking a finger outside the back of the glove for protection from owies. And, even short tosses should be overhand. Also, I was a senior in high school before I became confidently aggressive swinging, so I stressed being aggressive to these players. Starting at age 9 and on up — don’t take strikes; if you swing at a head-high pitch, you might be surprised how far you can hit it; and I won’t criticize you for swinging at a ball out of the strike zone, but if you take a strike, we’ll talk.
Both Jack and the younger Jeff became good baseball players, and solid hitters, but they also were very good hockey players — clever and creative playmakers and also tough, when the situation demanded it. It left some indelible memories, because I coached those teams.The first team I ever coached in hockey, in fact, was an “in-house” Bantam team after Jack had gotten cut from the traveling team tryouts. So did a neighbor kid named Joe DeLisle. Whenever they played together, they happened to fit together like a hand in a glove, and while I always balanced lines, I played those two together because they scored in amazing quantities and both could score and they enjoyed setting each other up.
We surprised everybody, including ourselves, by losing only one game that whole season, and I remember that loss better than most of the ones we won, because it was a bitter, nasty game played outside on the opposing rink. It started snowing, hard, and our foe wouldn’t clear the rink. So I directed our dads to shovel off from the blue line in, but only on the end we were going to shoot at. Then the other side’s parents thought it might be a good idea to shovel the rest.
We lost that game by a goal, and the main reason was because Jack set up Joe DeLisle for a good scoring chance, and one of the opposing players cross-checked Joe from behind, dropping him to the ice. Jack didn’t hesitate, charging to Joe’s aid and flattening the kid. Typically, the young kid refing had missed the first play, but he couldn’t miss Jack’s steam-rolling retaliation, so he threw him out of the game. Sorry, but I couldn’t have been prouder of my kid issuing the proper amount of justice, even though we lost by a goal. After the season, we faced the same team on an indoor rink in the league playoff championship. game. We beat them 8-3. Once again it was a rough and nasty game, especially after we got ahead. At one point, we were two players short, and Joe DeLisle scored two short-handed goals while we were two men short. Funny how you remember such things, 30 years later. (Yes, it was that Joe DeLisle, who later played and became captain at UMD.)
Because both Jack and Jeff loved hockey so much, they let their baseball go, which I understood, although I was disappointed because both of them were better hitters than I ever was, with awesome hand-eye coordination. By around then, I had found this 35-and-over senior men’s league and resumed playing myself. Great fun, and when you’re nearing 50 and you hit a fastball square on the barrel, you’re 18 again. We had some good teams, and some great teams, and a few bad teams, but I always tried to make sure we had good guys on the team, cohesive and united in playing hard as possible, but for fun.
Even though I hit well on those teams, it was a definite thrill when Jack got old enough to play with us. He’s now one of our best hitters and plays third base in a manner that would have made his grand-dad proud. My play is tapering off, and it’s a battle to get in any kind of shape, and to get my arm back to strength after I injured it. I’ve shifted to second base for the shorter throw, and often I realize our team is best off if I do my managing from the bench while younger and quicker guys fill my position.
Younger son Jeff is living out in Washington state these days, although my wife, Joan, and I still hold out hope that he’ll get serious and move back to Minnesota. He does visit, and this summer he said he’d love to play on our team. I made the move of putting his name on our roster and when he came to visit, he did reserve one Friday night for us. He put on SeaFoam Hawks No. 22, and a new pair of spikes, and rode with us to Waconia for a game.
We’ve had a tough year, although when we have the right players, we’re solidly competitive with most teams. Waconia has a very good team, and after thinking about the options, I put Jeff, who hadn’t played for over a decade, at first base, I played second, while Jack was at his usual third base. We got behind 5-1, but we battled back, and we played solid defense. Jeff caught a ball and doubled a runner off second. And later, looking as good as he had ever looked as a 15-year-old when his team won the championship, Jeff smacked a single to center to drive in a run. We lost 5-3, but it was a good game. Jack and I failed to get a hit — rare for him, not for me — and Jeff got the only hit for the Gilbert Clan that night.
Later, Jeff said how big a thing it was for him to play a game with us, and how he might not get many more chances to play with his ol’ dad, ever.
I thanked the team for a great effort, and especially for allowing me to indulge myself for the chance-of-a-lifetime to experience a “Gordie Howe Moment.”
It was heartfelt from me, and it was actually pretty emotional. The spell was broken, though, when one of my players honestly said: “Who is Gordie Howe?
Nissan Driving Itself Into Future
Future Nissan Leaf equipped for driving and parking itself.
By John Gilbert
NEWPORT COAST, CALIF. — One of the more common questions consumers ask automotive journalists is that, given the impressive expansion of innovative driving controls on contemporary cars, how long will it be before we have cars that will drive themselves?
That answer is a lot sooner than any of us might have expected, based on a visit to Nissan 360, a complete introduction to all the new cars and trucks that will be coming out for 2014 in all 170 countries of the world where Nissan sells vehicles. The show started in late August and lasts into September of 2013 to attract waves of auto journalists from all over the world, as a celebration by the Japanese company for its 80th anniversary of building cars.
Few vehicles in those 80 years compares to the Leaf, Nissan’s all-electric subcompact, which has now sold 74,000 units worldwide to become the top-selling electric vehicle (EV) in the world. But no other Leaf can compare to the model I climbed into on the “Autonomous Driving” course, designed as part of a revised layout at the abandoned El Toro airbase.
When it comes to drives-itself vehicles, there are models from Lexus and Ford and Lincoln that will parallel park themselves in no-touch fashion. But Nissan goes well beyond that with the autonomous Leaf. I was instructed to climb into the passenger seat by a polite Japanese engineer, who sent one of his young associates to sit in the driver’s street, but to carefully fold his arms to avoid touching any controls or pedals. Another engineer was in the back seat. The engineer himself stood off to our right, as we were positioned on the right side of two parallel rows of parked cars, simulating a shopping center parking lot, with cars filling all available slots.
Our man clicked the key fob, and — no-touch — we were moving forward, then turning left to drive down between the two double lanes of parked cars. As we slowly moved along, a driver pulled an SUV out of a slot on our left and drove away. We approached and passed that slot, as our Leaf pulled wide to the right, then it deliberately backed up in a smooth arc, backing perfectly into the opened slot and stopping perfectly.
Autonomous Drive means no-hands driving and parking.
I suggested that if you lived in an apartment building with a similar parking lot, you could stop at the door, grab your computer bag and a couple bags of groceries, and go inside, pausing to click the fob — and sending the Leaf away for find an open parking slot and park itself. He said that would be easily possible. Not bad for wintertime.
When the fob was clicked again, from 200 feet away, our Leaf left the parking slot and circled around to the left, arriving on a larger road-course for another test. Away we went, making the curve and heading back along the left of a row of parked cars. A motorized image of a person suddenly zipped out from between two of the parked cars, right into our path. It was too close for braking, but without hesitation the Leaf swerved to the left, around the wayward pedestrian, then veered back into our lane and continued on. Read more
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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