Vows Are Made To Be Broken

December 14, 1980. That was the last time that I willingly left a professional sporting event early. It was the dead of winter at Metropolitan Stadium and the Vikings trailed the Cleveland Browns by three touchdowns late in the third quarter. My 13 year old spirits were quite low. My core body temperature was even lower and was crashing at an alarming speed.

As the onset of a severe case of frostbite before the beginning of the fourth quarter became increasingly likely, my father dutifully whisked my brother and me away from our air conditioned end zone bleacher seats and loaded us into the family station wagon for a warm ride home. At that point, I was simply too cold to argue. It was also at about that point that the Vikings scored ...The First Touchdown. We heard the crowd cheering for that one from the parking lot.

I began to regain feeling in my all of my fingers, and most of my toes, when we were about halfway home. I regained full functional use of both eardrums at about the same time that the Vikings scored...The Second Touchdown.

It wasn't until we pulled into the driveway at home that I realized we had made a grave, grave error by leaving that game before it was over. I made this horrible realization at precisely the same time that the Vikings scored...The Touchdown: the Hail Mary pass from Tommy Kramer to Ahmad Rashad in the final play of the game to beat the Browns 28-23 in one of the most dramatic comebacks in Minnesota Viking history......and my seat at the stadium had someone else's butt in it.

I learned my lesson that day. I vowed to never leave a game early again. I kept that vow for over 24 years. Then I had to go and see the Twins last night. The wife and I sat through six of the most pathetic innings imaginable before we threw our hands up in disgust and walked out of the stadium with the hometown team trailing the fourth place Detroit Tigers 7-1. Trust me, the game wasn't nearly as close as the score suggests.

The 2005 Twins have done what 24 years of abject failure foisted upon me by the combined forces of the Minnesota Vikings, Timberwolves, North Stars, et al could not do. Today, I became one of "those people"; the ones that I've ruthlessly disparaged in years past. Today, I left a Twins game early to...(gulp)...beat the traffic.

Am I ashamed? Hell yes! But I'm not nearly as ashamed as the Minnesota Twins should be for expecting their fans to actually pay for what I witnessed at the Metrodome yesterday. It'll take a whole lot more than raising the roof to make that stench go away.