The 1998 Season

Note: 1998 was the second season that I wrote down thoughts the entire year. Therefore, the 1998 season summary will come in multiple additions to my blog. Today's 1998 entry will be McCombs Named Owner thoughts.

Red McCombs Named Owner

I got up early one morning this past week feeling grand. I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don’t suppose I have ever come much closer to saying ‘Tra-la-la’ as I did the spreading, for I was feeling in mid-season form. God, as I once heard my wife put it, was in His Heaven and all was right with the world. (She added, I remember, some guff about larks and snails, but that is a side issue and need not keep us.)

It is no secret with those who have stayed with us that Mr. Cheer Or Die, though as boisterous as a Viking fan could wish when the whistle has sounded and the game has begun, is seldom a ball of fire at the breakfast table. Confront him with eggs and bacon, and he tends to pick cautiously at them, as if afraid they may leap from the plate and snap at him. Listless, about sums it up. Not much bounce to the ounce.

But today vastly different conditions prevailed. All had been verve, if that’s the word I want, and animation. Well, when I tell you that after sailing through a couple of sausages like John Randle through a offensive line I was now, as indicated, about to tackle the toast and my wife’s homemade marmalade, need I say more.

The reason for this improved outlook on the proteins and carbohydrates is not far to seek. My wife was back, filling the household with her charm and vibrancy. She had left last week for a family reunion and I had to stay back to mind our two pet dogs. And she was not here when they announced Red McCombs had won the ownership battle over Glen Taylor, my original man of choice.

I had caught myself staring at the television on the 6’o’clock news in which they announced that McCombs was the man. My eyebrows rose until they nearly disarranged my front hair. I needed someone to administer spiritual solace, which is a wife’s job. Men can’t cry even though there is nothing better for the nervous system. It does something, my wife told me once, I forget, to the glands.

Despondent, I had called my wife in North Dakota the very next morning where she was staying with her parents. Her mother answered the phone. There was no mistaking that lovely voice. As always when we converse on the phone, it had nearly fractured my ear-drum and started my dogs howling.

This woman could make herself heard not only in a open corn field but in several adjoining counties. Retired now from farming, she still tends to address me in the tone of voice previously reserved for calling in my father-in-law from the fields, while he was threshing the crop.

"So you’re up and about, are you?" she boomed. "I thought you’d still be in bed snoring your head off."

"It is a little unusual for me to be in circulation at this hour," I agreed, "but I need to speak with my wife immediately! The Vikings have made a horrendous error in judgment! Disaster looms!"

Finally getting my wife on the phone and frantically explaining the situation while flaying my arms about, I was soon winded and she had an opportunity to respond.

"I had heard the news and thought you’d be upset."

"So would you be, if, for example, another gardener that you particularly disliked had got hold of a thing you’d have given your eyeteeth to have."

"I see what you mean," she said, probably wondering why she had married a loony who could attach so much value to a football team that he dressed up crazy and at those times whom she personally would have preferred not to be found dead in a ditch with.

"It gave me the worst attack of indigestion I’ve had since you left that pasta salad on the counter over night and fed it to me the next day," I replied.

"I don’t see why this has you so worked up," my wife said.

It was a subject on which I was a well-informed source, but I hesitated for a moment, asking myself if I ought to reveal to this frail young bride what she was letting herself in for. Then I decided that the truth must be told and nothing held back. Cruel to hide the facts from her and allow her to come home uninformed and unprepared for the state I was in.

"Those inmates of the leper colony know as the Gang Of Ten at Winter Park sold this team to a man from San Antonio, Texas, and he has been looking to get a team for their own version of the Dome."

She seemed to weigh this. A moment or two passed before she surfaced again.

When she spoke, it was with a spot of wariness in her voice.

"Sounds like a wanker," she said going back to her favorite British word,

"Would you call him a wanker?"

"Not to his face, perhaps."

"If he did meet you face-to-face he’d probably think you’re crazy," she voiced.

"Very possibly, but if you think a busy man like myself has the time to go giving my opinions to a billionaire from Texas and rubbing him either with or against the grain, you are greatly mistaken."

We conversed some more and she gave me the impression, when we ended our call, of being a bit pensive, which I could well understand, and I wasn’t feeling too unpensive myself. Another possibility of a Minnesota team moving to Texas was raising its ugly head again, and the whole thing struck me as sinister. I had a …what’s the word?…begins with a p…pre-something… premonition, that’s the baby…I had a premonition that I was being tipped off by my Viking guardian angel that evil was afoot and that I would be well advised to watch my step and keep my eyes open.

I fixed myself a martini, two in fact, which is generally my limit, but with my poise shattered as it was I felt that a third wouldn’t hurt.

Indeed, had it not been a weeknight I would have been willing to go even more deeply into the thing. I once read about a man who used to drink twenty-six martinis before dinner, and the conviction was beginning to steal over me that he had had the right idea.

Then suddenly I caught myself laughing. A few months earlier, I had jumped for joy with the news of a Baltimorian man, Tom Clancy, had won the bidding process. One problem though, he had no cash, as so many people do these days.

Not Red McCombs, though. In the evening of his life he has more than a sufficiency. It would not be going too far, indeed, to describe him as stinking rich. For a great part of his adult life he had been an automobile dealer and had made a vast fortune.

I can well imagine that a casual observer, if I had confided to him my qualms at the idea of this Texan owning my Vikings, would have raised his eyebrows and been at a loss to understand, for McCombs is undeniably rich, cordial, returns all calls, takes no bull, and never moved the Denver Nuggets when he owned that NBA franchise.

So I decided to ask my Packer fan neighbor for an impartial view of his thoughts on the McCombs deal. He was standing outside watering his yellow tiger lilies, humming a light song. It died on his lips as he saw me, and he stood staring at me aghast. He reminded me of one of those fellows who spend the night in haunted houses and are found the next morning dead to the last drop with a look of awful horror on their faces. I greeted him and he swallowed painfully in return.

"You seem upset about something," said the Cheesehead snidely.

"It’s this McCombs thing, and I’ve come to ask your opinion," I replied, speaking austerely, for the old codger’s attitude had offended me. I could make allowances for him, because naturally a man who follows the Packers faithfully doesn’t like suddenly finding Mr. Cheer Or Die in his midst, but I did feel that he might have made more of an effort to lighten up.

This painful encounter, a conversation really, if you could call it a conversation, might have been expected to depress me, but this was far from the case. For this Green Bay fan reminded me of one simple fact: that McCombs, and this man alone, would own the team. Something I’ve wanted for over seven years now. It was to all intents and purposes with a song on my lips (‘Beating on the Cheeseheads’) that I made my way back home. He had pointed out one positive, but somehow still it wasn’t enough.

To say that when I turned in to bed I fell into a dreamless sleep would be deceiving my readers. I passed a somewhat restless night. I could have sworn, indeed, that I didn’t drop off at all, but I suppose I must have done, because the next thing I knew sunlight was coming through the window and my wife was making me breakfast.

I laid in bed and thought back, clearing the morning cob webs from my mind.

Twenty-four hours earlier I had been in front of the television sinking forward in my chair, face buried in my hands and my dogs in the throes of nausea. It has always been my policy to look on the bright side, but in order to do this you have to have a bright side to look on, and with the announcement of a out-of-state bidder becoming the owner of the Vikings there wasn’t one. This, as the Germans once said in 1945, was the end.

Then the call to find my wife, and having to first deal with my mother-in-law whose strong personality finds no difficulties, when displeased, in reducing me to a spot of grease in a matter of minutes. Did I mention previously that pheasant hunters who crossed her farm land without permission were rebuked so harshly by her that they are never the same again and for months go about in a sort of stupor, starting at sudden noises?

But here now was my wife and some order was returning to my life. As stated in the beginning of this column, I was ravenous at breakfast and busy marmalading my toast. When yesterday it didn’t seem possible, the sun had actually risen again. The day looked bright.

"Read the sports section," said my wife.

"I’m sorry?"

"The paper. Pick it up and read the sports section," she said again.

I was unable to follow her motive. But I did so anyway and read with great zeal every story about the possible new Viking owner.

"What does it say," she asked placing more sausage on my plate.

"Says here he’ll never move the team out of Minnesota," I said skeptically.

"Didn’t you once tell me that when you lived in Texas that a hand-shake held more water than any legal document ever could?" said she.

"Why, yes, I did." And I saw it all then. And her idea was a good one. My wife’s brain has been enlarged by constant helpings of fish, and she has the most annoying habit of seeing things before I do but here again she had found a formula acceptable that would give me a good night’s rest the remainder of the year. A rush of emotion filled me as I picked up the phone. Minutes later Dan Hildreth and I were going to be attending the McCombs press conference that would introduce our possible new owner to the Viking fans around the world.

After the press conference as the media throng pushed forward to speak further with Gary Woods and McCombs, I found myself face-to-face with the man himself.

"Uh, Mr. McCombs, I’m a Viking fan and season ticket holder and there is a favor that is within your power to bestow."

"Name it, son. Ask of me what you will."

"If you could see your way to telling me Texan to former-Texan that you won’t move the team and shake on it, it will go a long ways to your eventually being accepted amongst the Purple Faithful. Purple Pride I believe you called it, sir."

He stuck his hand out and I gazed upon it. The late morning light played on it, and another man’s hand never looked so steady, so self-assured.

As I took the hand I said, "I suppose you know that you can never break our hearts by moving."

"I realize that, son. And you don’t have to worry."

"Because the people of Minnesota and the sports world in general couldn’t take another hit like that."

"Very well," said McCombs. "So be it. This team will always be in Minnesota."

I gave him a wink. While a part of me felt like a father reluctantly throwing his child from the sleigh to divert the attention of the pursuing wolf pack, as I believe happens all the time in Russia in the winter months, I went away knowing that I have to place my trust in a Texan’s handshake. And I will make a point of doing so.

Posted by maasx003 at November 7, 2004 08:12 AM