My schism hurts.

As most of you know, every once in awhile we have guest writers here at Cold Omaha. They have to be good and they have to know their stuff. We have one of those guests today. We’ll call him Harry because that’s his name. Here’s what he says about the Vikings…

"I’m sorry after that performance last night I just have to vent about the Vikes. What a bunch of shit, they were terrible. Basically what happened last night is a clearly inferior team with a 3^rd rate QB basically said we are going to line up punch you in the mouth, see if you can stop us.

It looks like they’ve become a pass first team in their losses Peterson only attempted to run the ball 12 times. They gave up on the run in the beginning of the 2^nd half despite only being down 10 to AZ and WINNING by 1 pt. Why?

I think we’d all agree that if Favres attempts would be in the lower 20s that would be optimal. Since week 7 he’s thrown the ball 50, 28,29,25,48,45,30,27 he also threw the ball 46x in week 3. Too many times.

I think teams are basically daring the Vikings to beat them with the run. Now you see teams dropping 8 into coverage because they’re not being kept honest. I don’t care if you are getting stuffed, we stuffed Carolina a bunch but they didn’t give up and they eventually ended up breaking us down and making us 1 dimensional. We’re not converting on 3^rd down anyways so why not run it?

The safeties are awful. Tyrell Johnson is just a waste of space. Seriously put Jamarca Sanford in, he couldn’t be much worse. Madieu Williams can’t cover for shit. 3^rd and 26 and you let Steve Smith get behind you when you are playing a cover 2 shell? Come on dude it’s not that hard.

Childress wants to bench Favre? Wtf dude? That’s your baby, what kind of message are you sending by doing that? I still don’t think giving Chilly a contract extension was a good idea. Probably gave him a big head and now he thinks he’s an elite coach.

I feel like I am watching the offensive line fall apart right in front of my eyes. Even in the win against the Bengals they weren’t that good. Hutch makes too much money to be that bad. I know McKinnie was god awful last night but bringing in Artis Hicks isn’t going to solve any problems. If they don’t get their Oline fixed come playoff time; don’t even show up, forfeit and save me the heartache.

Hard for me to rip on Brinkley too much because he’s a rookie but it looks like the Panthers went right at him and he looked in over his head a couple times. Same with Winfield, I can’t rip the guy to much for all the good plays he does make but he just got abused by Steve Smith last night with zero help from the safeties as usual. There is no way Matt Moore should have 3TD against you.

Not enough pressure from the D-line against 2 backup offensive tackles, not much else to say in that department. Even Longwell was off, I know you can’t expect him to make everything but he normally makes those."

And you know what? Harry is right on with everything he says. The part that drives me insane in all of this is that Brad Childress should not tell Brett Favre to come out of a game unless Brett is injured, dead, or tells him that he wants to come out. I trust Brett more than I trust Chilli.

Do I sound like a Packer fan from 1997? Probably – but maybe that’s what Brett makes you do. He makes you believe in him. I want to believe. So does Harry. We all do.

Now let’s go win two more games, get the bye, and crush the Eagles in the second round.

It was fair, but it wouldn't have made a difference.

Yes, the Twins got screwed last night -- that Joe Mauer double would have most likely meant at least one run and probably two. But since they loaded the bases with zero outs and failed to score, you kind of have to think that maybe they would have figured out a way to not get him home anyway. Throw in the fact that both Joe Nathan and Jose Mijares completely shit themselves and gave up home runs, well...the end result of that is too obvious to require elaboration.

Nathan worries us more than Mijares. We KNOW Mijares is prone to giving up runs in bunches. But Nathan is slowly turning into Brad Lidge and we hope the Twins didn't hold on to him a season too long. He was the golden boy of the bullpen. Sure, we have confidence in him...but that's only in comparison to the rest of the bullpen.

Can the Twins win two games and send this series back to New York? No. They can't. It was a good season and we should be happy they won the division. If they want to win it again, there are several things the team has to fix over the off-season:

• Find three new arms for the bullpen.
• Get the starting staff and the former MVP healthy.
• Re-sign OCab.
• Go out and make a play for free-agent third basemen Chone Figgins.
• Figure out a way to get Alexi Casilla the confidence to contribute everyday at 2nd base.

Do those things and the Twins will win the World Series next year. For real.

Of course we had faith!

Delmon Young is finally hitting. Michael Cuddyer isn’t terrible anymore. And Jason Kubel continues to prove us right. He is an incredible hitter who just needed at-bats (and he needed to stay healthy.) Sure, this could be a career year for Cuddy and Kubel – but if it gets the Twins in the playoffs, what more do you want?

If you end up getting tickets for the game on Tuesday, please let us know how you got them. We have been in a “waiting room” at twinsbaseball.com for the last four hours and this is the only message that keeps popping up over and over and over again…

“Welcome to the Minnesota Twins Virtual Waiting Room!
The event you have requested is experiencing very high demand. As a result, all requests for seats cannot be served simultaneously.Please be patient, and your browser will be refreshed in When we refresh your browser, we will determine your status in the waiting room and if appropriate give you an opportunity to request seats.
This spike in traffic means that all consumers must be patient and wait for their opportunity to purchase tickets.
Thank you!

Oh well…work happens on Tuesdays and the last I checked, they don’t like it if you skip work for a sporting event. So…yeah…we will watch it in glorious HDTV and be happy.

If you are one of those people telling us the Twins will get swept against the Yankees, we kind of agree with you. But anything can happen in the playoffs so let’s get there first. And yes, we realize by posting this we probably just jinxed the Twins and they won’t win on Tuesday. But we can’t help it, we are excited.

Grudge Match

What you see right there are the former owner and former GM/Coach of the reigning MMF Fantasy Football Champion, Richard's* Rampage. The guy on the left "drafted" the winning team. The guy on the right reassembled the team after that horrible draft and then went on to coach, manage, and direct the team to the Championship.

Well...after a bitter off-season of in-fighting and disagreements, the guy on the right was once again granted his own franchise and guess who he played the first week of the season? That's right, the schedule makers pitted these two against each other and Kent's Squad Without Flaws crushed the former Richard's* Rampage (now simply called The Dicker) 85-65.

Feels good to be a winner.

Brett Favre is a Viking.

We didn't think this day would ever come, but we are extremely excited that it is finally here. You won't be able to keep us away from Miami when the Vikings make it to the Super Bowl.

Wow.

Just wow.

It has come to this...

That's Carl Pavano. The Twins traded for him today. He's probably better know by his nicknames...American Idle and Glass Joe. He's also known as one of the guys who has dated Alyssa Milano.

On occasion, he pitches. Back in the day, he won 18 games for the Florida Marlins and then signed a gigantic deal with the Yankees where he fell apart faster than that suit I bought at the Men's Wearhouse. If we were living in 2004 and the Twins acquired Carl Pavano, I would be giddy. It's 2009 and it will take a lot more than that to get me excited when it comes to the Twins.

But...it can't get much worse for the hometown 9 -- at least Pavano could eat up some innings over the next couple of months. Or he could get hurt during his first start as a Twin this weekend.

Yup.

We are not ashamed to admit we love the Backyardigans. It's the best kid's show around by far....not that there's a whole to compare against right now. Max loves it. So do we.

Fine line between love and hate.

We have to admit that we would like Brett Favre to play for the Vikings next year. While we spent the better part of...15 some odd years rooting against him and the hated Packers, he would be an instant upgrade at quarterback and would give us a reason to believe again.

Is it possible to hate someone for so long and then forgive and forget all that crap just because he's wearing a purple jersey?

Yup - pretty sure it might be possible. We'll see.

Done defending Delmon

For those of you who have stuck with Cold Omaha over the last few months of inactivity – we say thank you. Since you are still here, you probably know we’ve loved Delmon Young’s potential for awhile now and we think he is going to be a productive major league hitter.

Someday.

But it isn’t going to happen for him in a Twins uniform.

Sure, there was a time when our man-crush on Delmon almost rivaled the love affair we have for Jason Kubel’s game. But Delmon is floundering here in Minny and while he probably won’t benefit much from a change of scenery in the short term, the Twins will most definitely benefit if they deal him and pitcher Phil Humber for any kind of bullpen help they can get.

The Twins can’t get any offensive consistency with Delmon in the lineup. He takes too many bad swings, he’s less than athletic in the outfield, and he’s a liability on the base paths. The bullpen is leaky and the lineup needs some consistency. You can’t have consistency with four outfielders battling for three spots. You just can’t.

We don’t do much any research for this site, so we don’t know whether Delmon has any options left when it comes to being sent down to the minors. But sending him down would be a good alternative for the Twins right now.

It would be better for the Twins if Delmon could be slow, make errors, and swing at the first pitch and pop-out down at AAA for awhile instead of doing it in clutch situations with the big club.

And remember -- we are a fan of Delmon. But one way or another, its time for him to go.

His name is Pudge. And he is funky.

Ivan Rodriguez is a lot of things. He's a former American League MVP. He's won 11 Gold Gloves. He is a Latino Legend and he can still rake and play defense like he did back in his days with the Marlins and the Rangers.

The best thing about Pudge? He might be a Minnesota Twin very very soon.

We are a little worried about Joe Mauer. We can’t figure out if the baby Jesus is going to get 450 at-bats this year or 50 – so adding a guy like Pudge to the mix would make us happy.

Sage Rosenfels is not the answer.

Why do the Vikings need another career back-up quarterback on their roster?

Has Brad Childress learned nothing from the Brooks Bollinger/Gus Frerotte/Brad Johnson/Tarvaris Jackson cluster-bleep over the last three years?

Sign Jeff Garcia, trade for Matt Cassel, or just let T-Jack play next year -- but please, oh please do not trade for Sage Rosenfels. He isn’t the answer. He can’t be a starter for a full season in this league. He’s tried. He can’t do it.

Joe Crede plays 3rd base for the Twins.

It was going to take some really good news to get us back. And...okay...we are back.

Joe Crede is a Twin.

Let's play.