Ready for the Worst

I arrived in New York much like one starting over would arrive anywhere new; I had a suitcase and an address in my hands, and was having trouble deciding which streets went north and south. I was as excited as I was apprehensive, as sure as I was unsure. Manhattan is somewhere around 1,100 miles away from the Twin Cities, and the difference goes beyond geographical.

If you can believe it, the Vikings play at 1 p.m. here—maybe obvious to those with a basic understanding of time zones and Minnesota’s geographical relation to New York. Sadly, the time difference (however indistinguishable from the team’s vantage) appears to have little bearing on their play. Every fall Sunday in New York the streets are spotted haphazardly with the colors of jerseys from teams across the country. The Bengals, the Eagles, the Cardinals—you name it. In the West Village there is a bar owned by a Packer fan, a place where those beer-swilling, foamed-headed fans gather each week (although, certainly a person whose blood runs as purple as this writers’ would have no reason to further investigate said establishment.)

And what of us Vikings followers? Those downtrodden, cynical, forever-on-the-verge-of-giving-up fans that hardly make it out of their tree stands most Sunday afternoons? It is no overstatement: purple and gold jerseys are few and far between east of the St. Croix. After finding a suitably empty bar in North Brooklyn, I bunkered down each week on a stool in the corner, ready to watch the Minnesota Vikings alone in the largest city in this country.

To my surprise, that scene was broken by the arrival of some other dislocated Midwesterners. First, it was, most unfortunately, a Packer fan. A Milwaukee native and University of Minnesota grad, this Packer fan at least had the courtesy to ignore me. But each week the Viking fans showed their faces at that odd 1 p.m. start time. In flannel jackets no less, one even sporting camouflage hunting pants. One day I turned to find Craig Finn, that Twins-loving, rock band-fronting singer from the Hold Steady. Here, I thought, is a slice of home, Minneapolis on a bar stool beside me.

He had more to say about Minnesota’s professional baseball team—and, in fairness, they had just completed a whirlwind week, sweeping the rival White Sox before squandering a spot at the playoffs—than the purple ones. And the Twins are a decidedly more pleasant topic placed beside a Vikings-Lions game in October. Our Twins are the underdogs that never quit, a collection of no-names that can’t stop winning. Facing very realistic bad expectations, they came out of the first season post-Torii Hunter just one game out of the playoffs. Meanwhile, the 0-4 Lions were beating our other state representatives.

That difference is a little hard to come to terms with. On one hand, the Twins are everything that is right with the sport of baseball; they are a small-market team that always overachieves; they draft well, they use their farm system well, and they have one of the most traditional and fundamental-leaning coaches in the majors in Ron Gardenhire. We love their players. We love Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, and we loved Torii Hunter and Kirby Puckett.

Meanwhile, the Vikings have recently been cast as a group of delinquents. Drugs, boats, fights—though it is hard to imagine them landing a punch, if their quarterbacks are any indicator of their collective accuracy. Ownership ponies-up huge contracts to players who may or may not actually return that investment. And they lose. They lose in the most painful ways possible. They fumble, they give up ridiculous touchdowns to punt returners, twice in one game (OK—so they won that game. But still!). Their head coach so closely resembles a former sitcom character (think military father figure), that one sometimes is ready to forgive his bad challenges and dubious play-calling; if only he really were Major Dad. At least we would know that it was a failed experiment, a PR-ploy, anything but reality.

The now Vikings find themselves poised on the brink of the playoffs, one victory away from a home wildcard game. To make it worse, they don’t even have to win to get in; if Chicago loses its last game the Vikings can back in to the 2008 NFL playoffs. The Vikings have lost some unfathomable number of potential playoff-clinching games in the last five or six years, including last week at home against Atlanta, and could buttress their reputation as perennial choke-artists this week with a loss. Let’s just say that an entire fan base is more than prepared for that unbearable result.

As for the fans, rest assured, the old saying is true: You can take the Viking fan out of Minnesota, but you can’t take Minnesota out of the Viking fan. I’ll be right there with the rest of them, every Sunday, that rag-tag bunch that call themselves Vikings fans (not publicly, if we can avoid it). We’ll be the ones shaking our heads for three hours, asking “What was that?” every other play.