When I started last week's column on the Twin Cities, I thought I would run out of material. I ran out of space instead, so here we go again.
During the 23-year span in Minnesota, including 2 years in Africa and a year on loan to the Feds in Washington, D.C., a lot had changed. During the earlier days of that period the Twin Cities had four newspapers. Minneapolis had a morning and evening paper (the Tribune and Star) owned by the Cowles outfit. St. Paul had a morning and evening paper (the Pioneer Press and the Dispatch), Knight-Ridder papers.
Columnist Jim Klobuchar wrote for the Minneapolis papers. His daughter, Amy, is now a U.S. Senator.
From 1947-1949, St. Paul native Charles Schulz ran a comic strip, "Li'l Folks," in the Pioneer Press. That comic strip became syndicated in 1950 as "Peanuts."
With the decline in print news readership, the Minneapolis papers merged to become the morning Star-Tribune, with the Wayzata Investor Partners majority owners. The St. Paul papers merged, retaining the Pioneer Press name, now the property of Media News Group.
Less glamorous sister cities tend to suffer relative obscurity. I lived on a hill in the northwest corner of old St. Paul, but had a great view of the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis. There are some Minneapolis residents that claim never to have visited St. Paul. "No reason to go there," they claim. That's regrettable, as the oft-neglected St. Paul is an interesting city.
The lesser status of St. Paul carries over to its newspapers. The Minneapolis paper has a metropolitan edition and a broader regional edition covering the state and portions of the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin. The St. Paul paper is more oriented to St. Paul and points east, including east central Minnesota, and western Wisconsin.
The relationship of the cities and their papers seems to carry over to their sport scribes. The Star-Trib's self-anointed dean of the sport scribes, Sid Hartman, has an ego bigger than the hokey plastic Metrodome, located in Minneapolis, of course.
Hartman is an interesting character. A high school dropout with no formal writing training, he was once the general manager of the old Minneapolis Lakers. He wrote his first column in 1945. A writer for "Sports Illustrated" once insisted that Hartman's "English sometimes appears to be his second language."
No national insult could repress the egotistical Hartman-he knew he was good. His first editor claimed that writers are a dime a dozen but good reporters are hard to find. Hartman's aggressiveness and insufferable ego prevailed.
Hartman's trademark was his claim of being "a close personal friend" of those stars so privileged as to be interviewed by him. His standard line during an interview was, "My close personal friend, ...." You fill in the blanks. Over the years his "close personal friends" included George Steinbrenner, Bobby Knight, Lou Holtz, Carl Yastrzemski, and on and on.
On the Pioneer Press side, it was "The Eye," Don Riley. Although, or perhaps because, the Pioneer Press reached Wisconsin, Riley practically made his living bashing the Badger State and its sport affiliations. He occasionally hit Iowa, ridiculing the Iowans who would come north to fish for Bullheads, bringing an old shirt and a twenty-dollar bill, and not changing either in a week. He tweaked the yuppies with statements such as, "Show me a jogger and I'll show you a guy whose brains rattle."
But his favorite target was Wisconsin and, especially, the Packers who he labeled as "the Bushers." He railed against Busher fans invading the Cities, wearing their bowling shirts, and wrecking city carpeting with their hob-nailed boots. He insisted that talented quarterback, Bart Starr, was merely a "trained seal." During the early days of the Minnesota Vikings, Riley included Green Bay coach, Vince Lombardi, in his insults.
One story has it that Lombardi's wife, Marie, wanted the Pioneer Press to fire Riley because he was so mean to her husband. St. Vincent, of course, would never be phased by anything so inconsequential as needling by an ink-stained scribe. He urged his wife to calm down because Riley was doing such a great job selling tickets for them.
The Packer organization agreed. For Packer football rallies across the state in Western Wisconsin, Riley was often invited as guest speaker. Before dinner, he would be greeted with a standing ovation of boos. Riley would respond by insisting that the security guards frisk the Busher fans for silverware stolen during a previous dinner.
Ya gotta love it. Riley was doing his part to build a rivalry that would benefit pro-football. He had mastered the art of selling football tickets along with his newspaper.
On returning from a game in Green Bay, Riley once reported that the most exciting event that got the biggest cheer was when some sap in the stands had too much to drink, fell over, and rolled down a flight of steps.
Some Green Bay fans, however, failed to see the humor - and the genius - of it all. Once when Green Bay was heavily favored, Riley insisted that the Vikings would win. If they didn't, he would push a peanut with his nose from Appleton to Green Bay.
Naturally, the heavily favored Packers won. Riley did end up pushing the peanut-not physically, but in a front page cartoon in the Green Bay paper. Riley's escapade filled his mailbox with some 3,700 irate letters from 35 states and 6 foreign countries.
Riley's column long since has passed. But the self-declared "great one," Sid Hartman, close personal friend of the rich and famous, is still going strong at age 93.
And so is the Packer-Viking rivalry. If it has not yet achieved the status of the cross-border Packer-Bears rivalry, the cross-river rivalry with the purple and gold is close to that exalted status. The scribes did their part.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net
During the 23-year span in Minnesota, including 2 years in Africa and a year on loan to the Feds in Washington, D.C., a lot had changed. During the earlier days of that period the Twin Cities had four newspapers. Minneapolis had a morning and evening paper (the Tribune and Star) owned by the Cowles outfit. St. Paul had a morning and evening paper (the Pioneer Press and the Dispatch), Knight-Ridder papers.
Columnist Jim Klobuchar wrote for the Minneapolis papers. His daughter, Amy, is now a U.S. Senator.
From 1947-1949, St. Paul native Charles Schulz ran a comic strip, "Li'l Folks," in the Pioneer Press. That comic strip became syndicated in 1950 as "Peanuts."
With the decline in print news readership, the Minneapolis papers merged to become the morning Star-Tribune, with the Wayzata Investor Partners majority owners. The St. Paul papers merged, retaining the Pioneer Press name, now the property of Media News Group.
Less glamorous sister cities tend to suffer relative obscurity. I lived on a hill in the northwest corner of old St. Paul, but had a great view of the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis. There are some Minneapolis residents that claim never to have visited St. Paul. "No reason to go there," they claim. That's regrettable, as the oft-neglected St. Paul is an interesting city.
The lesser status of St. Paul carries over to its newspapers. The Minneapolis paper has a metropolitan edition and a broader regional edition covering the state and portions of the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin. The St. Paul paper is more oriented to St. Paul and points east, including east central Minnesota, and western Wisconsin.
The relationship of the cities and their papers seems to carry over to their sport scribes. The Star-Trib's self-anointed dean of the sport scribes, Sid Hartman, has an ego bigger than the hokey plastic Metrodome, located in Minneapolis, of course.
Hartman is an interesting character. A high school dropout with no formal writing training, he was once the general manager of the old Minneapolis Lakers. He wrote his first column in 1945. A writer for "Sports Illustrated" once insisted that Hartman's "English sometimes appears to be his second language."
No national insult could repress the egotistical Hartman-he knew he was good. His first editor claimed that writers are a dime a dozen but good reporters are hard to find. Hartman's aggressiveness and insufferable ego prevailed.
Hartman's trademark was his claim of being "a close personal friend" of those stars so privileged as to be interviewed by him. His standard line during an interview was, "My close personal friend, ...." You fill in the blanks. Over the years his "close personal friends" included George Steinbrenner, Bobby Knight, Lou Holtz, Carl Yastrzemski, and on and on.
On the Pioneer Press side, it was "The Eye," Don Riley. Although, or perhaps because, the Pioneer Press reached Wisconsin, Riley practically made his living bashing the Badger State and its sport affiliations. He occasionally hit Iowa, ridiculing the Iowans who would come north to fish for Bullheads, bringing an old shirt and a twenty-dollar bill, and not changing either in a week. He tweaked the yuppies with statements such as, "Show me a jogger and I'll show you a guy whose brains rattle."
But his favorite target was Wisconsin and, especially, the Packers who he labeled as "the Bushers." He railed against Busher fans invading the Cities, wearing their bowling shirts, and wrecking city carpeting with their hob-nailed boots. He insisted that talented quarterback, Bart Starr, was merely a "trained seal." During the early days of the Minnesota Vikings, Riley included Green Bay coach, Vince Lombardi, in his insults.
One story has it that Lombardi's wife, Marie, wanted the Pioneer Press to fire Riley because he was so mean to her husband. St. Vincent, of course, would never be phased by anything so inconsequential as needling by an ink-stained scribe. He urged his wife to calm down because Riley was doing such a great job selling tickets for them.
The Packer organization agreed. For Packer football rallies across the state in Western Wisconsin, Riley was often invited as guest speaker. Before dinner, he would be greeted with a standing ovation of boos. Riley would respond by insisting that the security guards frisk the Busher fans for silverware stolen during a previous dinner.
Ya gotta love it. Riley was doing his part to build a rivalry that would benefit pro-football. He had mastered the art of selling football tickets along with his newspaper.
On returning from a game in Green Bay, Riley once reported that the most exciting event that got the biggest cheer was when some sap in the stands had too much to drink, fell over, and rolled down a flight of steps.
Some Green Bay fans, however, failed to see the humor - and the genius - of it all. Once when Green Bay was heavily favored, Riley insisted that the Vikings would win. If they didn't, he would push a peanut with his nose from Appleton to Green Bay.
Naturally, the heavily favored Packers won. Riley did end up pushing the peanut-not physically, but in a front page cartoon in the Green Bay paper. Riley's escapade filled his mailbox with some 3,700 irate letters from 35 states and 6 foreign countries.
Riley's column long since has passed. But the self-declared "great one," Sid Hartman, close personal friend of the rich and famous, is still going strong at age 93.
And so is the Packer-Viking rivalry. If it has not yet achieved the status of the cross-border Packer-Bears rivalry, the cross-river rivalry with the purple and gold is close to that exalted status. The scribes did their part.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net
