Awesome article (and mini video documentary): The Wednesday Game: Former baseball MVP Justin Morneau creates an icy ‘Field of Dreams’ in Minnesota

BleedGopher

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per Russo and Hayes:

It’s 16 degrees with a windchill making it feel like 3.

A dozen buddies gather on a freshly scraped and resurfaced sheet of ice in a western suburb of Minneapolis for a nighttime pickup hockey game in the backyard of a magnificent home. The ice is so illuminated you’d swear you’re inside an NHL arena if not for the wonderful, unmistakable scent of a wood-burning fire next to the rink and, of course, the frosty temperature. Christmas lights stream the fencing and bushes that surround the rink, and soft music plays from speakers mounted at both ends of the ice.

The setting is perfect, and so is the symphony of sound coming from pucks striking the boards and skates carving the ice. Quips and chirps and snickers pass from the lips of laughing, smack-talking pals as they get ready for their weekly game.

“How are we going to pick teams?” Justin Morneau asks after they agree to split the players into four groups of three.

“Lefties vs. righties?” somebody responds.

“Tall guys vs. short guys?” asks another.

“How about Canadians vs. Americans?”

“What about our old uniform numbers?”

“Why don’t we put our sticks in the middle?” Joe Mauer pipes up.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s old school,” says Wes Walz.

“Buff, Buff, Buff, where are you?” Paul Martin yells out.

“Right here!”

“Buff, we need you. Get out here,” Jordan Leopold yells.

And with that, Dustin Byfuglien, minutes after arriving on his fluorescent yellow four-wheeler for the sole purpose of being a spectator, at least on this night, falls to his knees and slides out to center-ice.

Like kids on a neighborhood pond, the former professional baseball and hockey players toss their sticks into a pile for the ritual of choosing teams before a game of shinny.

Wearing a plaid flannel shirt untucked and flowing over his cargo pants, “Big Buff” — the hulking former Winnipeg Jets defenseman who a few years ago walked away from the game with two years and $14 million left on his contract — begins separating sticks at random into four piles with a wide, gap-toothed smile.

With the teams picked, Morneau blurts out, “Anthems? Hats off, boys!”

With no American or Canadian flag hanging, players remove their helmets, toques and Santa hats and turn toward the southern end zone, where a half-hour earlier Morneau and Mauer, with grins creasing their faces, fastened a Mauer Chevrolet banner onto the fence because the one thing that had been missing during the three years of this “Wednesday Game” was sponsorship signage.

Leopold, Prosser and Martin comically begin singing, “O Canada.”

After they decide which two teams will start the round-robin tournament of games, Nate Prosser skates to the sideboards to exit the ice.

“You got benched already?” Mark Parrish chirps.

“Yup, right to the Pross box,” Prosser says. “Nothing changes.”

As Big Buff puts another log on the fire, Parrish says it’s so cold he can barely feel his toes inside his skates.

“This is like early October in Winnipeg,” Byfuglien deadpans.

On the ice are former Major League Baseball players and NHLers with resumes that include MVPs, batting titles, Gold Gloves, Hobey Bakers, NCAA championships and All-Star Game nods. Their professional playing days may be behind them, but they still starve for competition and for the camaraderie they once found as active players.



Go Gophers!!
 







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