The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

"[Bill] Meissner has the storyteller's gift," writes Tim O'Brien, "for creating living characters, living speech, living emotions, living drama."

Skol, baby.

The Twins' Justin Morneau fairly dominated all-star weekend, first winning the Home Run Derby (even if Josh Hamilton broke the record for most dingers in a single round), and then, in the bottom of the 15th inning of the All-Star Game, he tagged up on a sacrifice fly to right and hustled his buns to score the winning run, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief because they could finally go to bed.

Skol.

^{AP photo by Tom Olmscheid}

What the hell? This is what we've been waiting twenty months for?

Here's the lead from CNN: "Illegal steroids have been in widespread use in Major League Baseball for more than a decade and used by some of the game's top stars, former Sen. George Mitchell said in releasing a report Thursday."

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.

On a perfectly sunny day for a baseball game, as thousands of fans swarmed to the dust heap that is to be the future home of the new Twins Stadium, a good half-mile away a small but dedicated group of curmudgeons gathered outside Cuzzy’s Bar on Washington Avenue. They were preparing for their own little celebration. “We’re geniuses, you know,” boasted Julian Loscalzo, chewing on a fat cigar and quaffing the first of many beers. “My good, personal friend Sid Hartman used to call us geniuses, back when he was all for the Dome,” he explained, his words punctuated by hoarse laughter.

Beyond a long window that offered a panoramic view of the Minneapolis skyline, the end-of-the-workday exodus was already under way. Traffic was snarled on the streets stretching all the way downtown. Dave St. Peter had his back to the window, and he was looking and sounding like a man whose day was just getting started. St. Peter has a big, open, Midwestern face—it could be the face of a small-town high-school principal or insurance salesman—and he somehow manages to come across as both relaxed and impatient.

A red sun is setting over the lake, its hue cast through the shutters of a rustic living room where a small television atop a white wicker stand is tuned to a Twins game. “Get some hits, damn it,” seethes the increasingly agitated sports agent on the wicker couch. “Crying shame.” The agent glares at a listless Twins hitter, stands abruptly in anger, and steps out to tend to his steaks on the outdoor grill. His son—the other lawyer in the room—remains on the couch reading the New Republic, shaking his head in parallel disgust.

I feel like throwing up: Willie Mays is screaming at me. He’s slammed the brakes on, and his sports car is screeching to a halt, and he is throwing me out. I feel nauseated, even though I’m perfectly aware of the fact that the “Say Hey Kid” of yore has famously turned into the Say Hey Asshole of bitter ex-athletes, and even though I’ve been warned to expect an unsettling, possibly random dressing-down. One just doesn’t expect Mays to go to Defcon Five at the mere mention of Ray “Hooks” Dandridge, his Mr. Chips roommate with the minor league Minneapolis Millers in 1951.

There’s no tarp on the ball field at Cretin and Grand, though snow sprinkles the brownish grass and the morning promises more. A white portable fence arcs in awkward sections from the right to leftfield foul lines, where orange foul poles stand uncertainly against a wicked northwest wind. For a clueless pilgrim seeking the heart of American small-college baseball, it’s all a bit underwhelming.