doodledee

Yesterday in his column, loony old Sid Hartman went off about the whole Victory Sports / Twin Cities Cable Companies stand-off. It was awesome. So awesome I waited to write about until today because I guess in reality it wasn't all *that* awesome, but it was pretty funny.

Here's part of it:

Some of the people in the Legislature didn't have any idea how popular and important the Twins are to this area until most of their games failed to appear on television.

Now the politicians are being swamped with phone calls from Twins fans, especially the shut-ins who are unhappy because they are not getting many Twins games on television. Some members of the Legislature are threatening to kill a Twins ballpark bill if the television problem isn't solved.

This reaction proves how important it is for the Legislature to pass a baseball stadium bill that is acceptable to Carl Pohlad and his family. The additional income from Victory Sports and revenue from a new ballpark would make it possible to earn more money to put winning teams on the field.

The reaction to the lack of Twins televised games told a better story than any survey that could have been taken.

It's like some sort of crazy bizarro logic that only Sid understands. A couple of pissed off Twins fans call their legislator to complain and it's somehow the most accurate referendum that could ever be devised? Even more accurate than an actual scientific poll? Well this I did not know. And to think of all the time I wasted in those stupid statistics classes. Ah well, at least I learned craps odds inside and out.

And hey Sid, let me get this straight. Are you saying there's a silent majority of shut-ins who are behind the so-called legislative phonebank 'swamping'? Well maybe next time you're out talking with the homebound, you should remind them to CALL THEIR CABLE COMPANY because THAT'S WHERE THE CONFLICT IS.

Man alive, where's that Strom wacko from the Taxpayer's League when you need him? Lock him in a room for a couple days with a copy of Excel and I bet he could make it work-out so that the cable companies would be better off *never* subscribing to Victory and instead buying each shut-in their very own baseball team. That dude has like a PhD in Deceptive Interpretation of Vague Statistics. He's a frickin' wizard.

But maybe Sid has a point. Without all this extorted money new revenue the Twins will probably *never* be able to field a winning team. And I likes me a winner. Hmm. Kind of a Catch-22. I gotta sleep on that one.

Sid Hartman: Politicians hear from Twins fans [strib]
Twins clinch American League Central title [y!] [sept 03]
Twins clinch Central crown [sptimes] [sept 02]