Greetings blog faithful, on a beautiful Thursday in the Twin Cities. It’s beautiful on many levels, including the real sense and feel of autumn being in the air with leaves that are turning brilliant colors, and the most amazing sports news in a long time. After having not been in the playoffs since 2010, and after losing 103 games last year with most of the same players, the Minnesota Twins clinched a spot in the Wild Card playoff last night. That would be the first time in MLB history a team has gone from 100+ losses one year but then to the playoffs the next. It’s been an amazing ride, watching these guys, and the word that best describes them is “resilient.” Every time you think “Well, here we go again” they find a way to put any bad things behind them and turn it around. They’re an easy team to root for. Teamwork, brotherhood, family.
Barring a total collapse by the Red Sox this weekend, they’ll venture east to The Bronx to take on the Yankees on Tuesday. Still a game left today in Cleveland and a final home stand against Detroit, but on Tuesday it will be a “winner take all” one-game playoff to see which club moves on. Do they have a chance against the Yankees? History says maybe not. It’s not easy to walk into Yankee Stadium and come out the winner of a playoff game. But I’ve learned this in 2017: Never EVER count these guys out. This is a wonderful team all of Twins Territory can be extremely proud of. I know I am (says the season-ticket holder.)
But what’s also a beautiful thing is that I’m sitting in the Delta Sky Club waiting to board my flight to my hometown. It’s St. Louis weekend for the NHRA Mello Yello tour and I can’t wait. I’m even going in a day early, as compared to all the other races I’ve been going to for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” publicity purposes, just because I can. For two decades, the St. Louis race always meant a homecoming for me, but when you’re there working full-time, especially for Team Wilkerson with primary sponsor LRS being “just up the road” in Springfield, there was rarely any time to sightsee or connect with old friends. This time, I’m making the time.
Tonight, after I land and check in at my hotel, I’m having dinner with Jim Keegan. Quick, book readers, tell me who Jim Keegan is and why it’s great for me to be getting together with him. I’ll wait. (Play theme music). That’s right, he was my classmate at SIUE who went through the TV/Radio program with me, in the Mass Communications Department. We were pretty much the stars of the program there, and really good friends who could crack each other up at will. Basically Jim was my best friend who wasn’t part of the athletic program, while I was in college. Can’t wait to see him tonight. I may be wrong, but I think it’s been 27 or 28 years since we were last together.
Then, on Friday, I’m having lunch with Art Holliday. If you live near St. Louis you know who Art is, but for those who aren’t familiar with him, I’ll explain. Just as we were getting out of college, a young man about the same age as all of us started working at the NBC affiliate, Channel 5 in St. Louis, as a sportscaster. We all liked his work, because he seemed just like us. A couple of years later, when the Toronto Blue Jays moved me back to St. Louis to take over the midwestern states as a Scouting Supervisor, I found an apartment out on the west side of St. Louis, in Maryland Heights where all the cool kids lived, and discovered quickly that Art and his wife lived just a few doors away. Art and I met, became friends, and played a ton of tennis together. I don’t believe I’ve seen Art since 1989 either, and he’s amazingly still working at Channel 5 although he’s been out of the sports department for many years. In the time he’s worked at KSDK, I’ve held 277 different jobs. OK, not that many, but I’ve done a lot of different things.
On Friday night, I’m meeting my niece Kimberly (and hopefully her husband Chris although I don’t know that for a fact) at Farotto’s for what is now an annual tradition. There will be much pizza and toasted ravioli consumed.
As I wrote in a prior blog, I’m then taking former roomie and teammate Stan “The Count” Osterbur to the race with me on Saturday. As opposed to Jim and Art, I have actually seen Stan recently, at last year’s SIUE Hall of Fame induction, but it will be great to provide him with his NHRA Nitro indoctrination. Ear plugs? Yeah, probably.
With the extra day, I’m going to be able to do so much more and see so many other parts of my home town. I really am looking forward to this. And I’m looking forward to the race and the interaction I’ll no doubt have with the LRS people, as well as book buyers seeking signatures. To that end, we’ve not only been doing a lot of St. Louis area publicity work but have leapfrogged it a bit by doing some pre-Dallas work as well. On Tuesday, I did two lengthy interviews. One was a radio gig with a station in Amarillo, the second was with the San Antonio newspaper. I, quite literally, had a sore throat by the time we were done. The radio interview was 56 minutes long! I think that’s a world record. The newspaper conversation was “only” 35 minutes. Both were very enjoyable and we did, indeed, see a spike in sales after the radio bit. That Elon Werner guy is a pretty decent publicist. Just sayin’…
On the home front, we’ve had that big swing in the weather, finally. On Saturday, Barbara and I joined our friends Mary Beth and Joe Gillis at the Afton Art Fair. Afton is a little town due east of us, on the St. Croix River, and its annual art fair is classic “small town America” wonderfulness. Plus, the artists have some incredible stuff to offer. We came home with a lot of it. And, one item was not only pricey, and big, but also very heavy. It was a good thing I could go get the car and drive it right up to the entrance of the fair, in the small town square.
We love to watch Minnesota nature, especially the wide range of birds we have here. We feed them in the winter and now we can accommodate a family and their nest in style with this heavy steel birdhouse, all created and welded by a local guy who comes up with some great ideas. We chatted with him quite a bit. He told me he spends each winter making about 100 new steel birdhouses and then sells them all summer at fairs and flea markets.
He also sells them from his home, and he said, “Every year I put them in the ground out in back of my shop, just to keep the shop free of clutter, and it never fails that every spring I’ll have to hang signs on a few, that say ‘Sorry, Occupied!’ It would be pretty hypocritical of me to kick out the birds so that I can sell their house.”
He made a wide range of designs, but we loved this one the best because it’s so “Minnesota Cabin” looking. It makes a great addition to our back yard, and Buster and Boofus have already noticed that it attracts small birds in a hurry. They’re pretty mesmerized.
And yeah, that’s a small deer head welded to the front, above the “front door” and the roof is made of diamond plate.
BREAKING NEWS:
We take you now to our reporter, Bob Wilber (often spelled Wilbur) “live” from the Delta Sky Club on the F concourse at MSP:
“Hello everyone, this is Bob Wilber on the scene just moments after being alerted, by my publicist Elon Werner, that I’m not just in the online version of the St. Louis Post Dispatch today, but apparently I’m in the print version on Page 2! What? Couldn’t get me on the front page?”
This is actually unbelievable and a thrill. My hometown paper!
And yes, PR does work. A huge spike in Amazon sales last night and again today. At one point, back up to No. 85 in the category. That’s stunning for a book that’s been out for four months. Wow. Great work, Elon!!!
In other breaking news, the Sky Club today featured grilled Italian sausage and hot dog buns, plus freshly made hot pretzels, which allows a visitor like me to do double-duty with the small packets of mustard. Efficiency!
I need to get this wrapped up and then get over to my gate. F-14 is a fun one, as anyone who has traversed MSP could attest. It’s at the very end of the most congested concourse in the place. Awesome!
See you all next week.
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Bob Wilber, at your service and worried he might have mustard on his chin.