I heard an interesting baseball story on the radio last week. The Anaheim Angels (major league baseball team), that I grew up calling The California Angels, is planning to change their name again next year to: The Los Angels Angels of Anaheim. Is this a joke? I think it’s for real, but it sounds a bit contrived to me.
But it did get me to thinking about this: The Minnesota Vikings of Eden Prairie. Why not? Eden Prairie is The Home of the Vikings, right out there in Winter Park, on the north side of 494, right off Viking Drive. Turn right at the Viking ship.
The Minnesota Vikings’ football club maintains its corporate offices and practice facility in Eden Prairie. They play in the Metrodome, of course, but their day-to-day home is in our town. It’s interesting to have the Vikings here. A number of their players live in Eden Prairie during the season. You can catch an occasional glimpse of a familiar player at the Mall or your favorite restaurant.
Last year when Randy Moss had his unfortunate traffic encounter with a traffic officer in downtown Minneapolis, Eden Prairie Mayor Nancy Tyra-Lukens received dozens of e-mails and a few letters from angry people across the country lambasting the City of Eden Prairie for letting Moss “get away with this atrocity” or alleging that City officials were derelict in their duties for “not keeping these blankity-blank football players under control”. I am not kidding. I responded to a few of them on behalf of the Mayor, but then I decided to let them rest of them go – right into the e-waste basket where they deserved.
Why did we get this crank feedback? Because the story about Randy’s incident was released by the Vikings press office with a byline that sourced it from “Eden Prairie, Minnesota”. If you’re a crank and you’ve got to get something angry out of your brain via e-mail, a few Google clicks and you can dump a nonsense e-mail right into the e-lap of the Mayor of Eden Prairie.
So, we take the good and the bad. But mostly I think it’s good. I like having the Vikings here. It adds a little cache to our city.
So try this on to size: The Minnesota Vikings of Eden Prairie.
