We are a people of remarkable patience here, west of the river. A topic of conversation on this board and in the community in general is why do our teams suck and our neighbors' to the east do so much better, particularly the hated Packers and the Badgers' BB and football teams. One major factor is that they are dead serious about winning and are surly and impatient about it. They fired Ray Rhodes after one season when the team went 8-8, and had they not there would have been unrest in the streets. They fired Mike Sherman after the team had won three division titles in four years and gone to the playoffs in four of the five previous years. The Badgers fired Stan Van Gundy after only two years, the second of which was a 7-11, 9th-place finish in the league - better than our program's last two. Around here we would have retained Brad Soderberg and given him every chance and then some to make it work, and then maybe given up after an 8 or 9 year experiment. And as has been discussed at length, no manager in major league history has ever had back to back seasons like Gardenhire's last two with the Twins and retained their job.
Not that we need to keep a bloody ax in the corner all the time, but I feel we would do well to be a little more demanding as a fan base, a little more surly and impatient, especially considering the amount of money we pay to watch them and buy their gear and the degree of emotional investment we make in them.
