Vikings pre-season, Twins play Pirates and other Minnesota sports news

INTERVIEWER: This weekend, the Vikings are scheduled to play their first home game of the preseason. On the line to tell us more about that and all things professional sports, Wally Langfellow, Eric Nelson. Wally is the creator of Minnesota's Score Magazine and the host of 10,000 Takes sports talk show on radio and TV. Eric is the co-host of that show and the Minnesota Vikings reporter for CBS Sports Eye on Football Show. Hey, guys, how are you?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Good. I'm not outside breathing Canadian smoke air.

[LAUGHTER]

INTERVIEWER: Hey, they scaled that back a little bit, so the air is only slightly bad, evidently. So, OK, let's talk Vikings. The Titans, have they been practicing together? They're going to play Saturday, right?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: They have been practicing together this week. Eric will get into that a little bit more in a minute. But you are correct. They do play on Saturday. Wildfire smoke from up in Canada should not be an issue because, of course, the Vikings play indoors at US Bank Stadium, where I am guessing that those pivoting doors will probably be closed because if it's warm out, the air conditioning is on.

So they don't want to let that cool air out into Downtown Minneapolis. But if you want to go, good opportunity to go see an NFL football game. You will not be seeing many starters, if any. Tickets are cheap. I just checked before we hit the air. $4 before the fees that you would pay on a secondary-market ticket. But nonetheless, pretty cheap. You probably could find some. There's the old joke. I went back-- I went out to-- I left two tickets for the Vikings preseason game by my windshield, and I came back, and there were four.

[LAUGHTER]

But that's preseason football for you. It's just the opposite in the regular season, though. Don't get me wrong. But that's just how it goes in the preseason.

Of course, Vikings lost last week to Seattle, and they will hope to reverse that and come away with a win or at least find out who can play. That's basically what preseason football is. Find out who's going to be your second and third stringers.

INTERVIEWER: Say, Eric, what's this deal about practicing with the other team? That seems like that's a new deal.

ERIC NELSON: Yeah, these are called joint practices, not to be confused with the legalization of joints in the state of Minnesota--

INTERVIEWER: Stop it.

ERIC NELSON: [LAUGHS] --that happened last week, as we all know. But, yes, this is becoming trendy. And I think it started about 5, 10 years ago. So what happens is, this week, Tennessee is down at the TCO Performance Center in Eagan doing these combined practices with the Minnesota Vikings.

And look, I think this, actually, has more intrigue than the actual preseason game on Saturday in Minneapolis, because, as Wally said, you're not going to see any starters on the field. But I went last year when San Francisco was here. And if you're a fan, this is like football utopia.

On one field, you might have the Tennessee offense going against the Minnesota defense. On another field, it's reversed, Tennessee defense, Minnesota offense. You'll see special teams going on. And you might see somebody like Derrick Henry of the Titans, who's one of the top running backs in the NFL.

Or you might see Amani Hooker, who played at Park Center High in the Twin Cities and now plays safety for Tennessee, not to mention the Vikings stars that you go out and want to see. At least Justin Jefferson's on the field, right? At least Kirk Cousins is throwing footballs to him. So I think these joint practices are a good thing for the NFL.

And the other thing is Minnesota always seems to be a team that hosts a joint practice because the weather here, typically in the summer, sans the Canadian wildfire smoke, is good. It's cooler here than Nashville where the Tennessee Titans are based. And next week, the Arizona Cardinals will be here for joint practices, and we all know that it's an oven right now in the desert Southwest in Phoenix.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, gosh, yes. OK. So that's interesting that they're doing that sort of deal. I'm wondering about the Twins. I'm going to switch focus here, talk about the Twins. It looks like they had some problems with Detroit, Wally.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Well, they've had Detroit problems all season long. They lost 8 of the 13 games, including yesterday's season slash series finale. They lost 8-7. It was a game where they actually led 4-0. Then, they trailed 8 to 4. They did come back in the ninth inning and made it interesting.

But reliever Griffin Jax really imploded in the middle innings, got roughed up pretty bad, and Detroit put up four against him, took the lead, never looked back. But I guess the good news is in the American League's "Comedy Central," as I call it, they are still in first place. Because the division is a mess. Cleveland is 4 and 1/2 games behind them and really making no moves to-- it doesn't look like they're going to do anything down the stretch here to catch the Twins.

I'm relatively confident-- and I say "relatively--" that the Twins will end up in first place and win the American League's Comedy Central. It just is not very good baseball in this division. But you know what? Just make the playoffs. And that's been the old adage. And I think that the Twins will be there, and maybe they can snap that 18-game postseason losing streak that goes back about 20 years now.

INTERVIEWER: Wow. Eric, what do you think?

ERIC NELSON: Well, yeah, the Twins really should be able to win the American League Central, but there's a lot of baseball left, and they better make sure they take care of business or Cleveland might sneak up on them. I doubt it, but you never know. The team they're going to play this weekend, Pittsburgh-- the Twins and Pirates don't play a lot. Pittsburgh comes out of the National League Central. Twins are in the AL Central.

So it's an interleague match up. And the Pirates are tied for last in their division with Saint Louis. So, potentially, Minnesota can get fat against this Pittsburgh Pirates team. If you're looking to go out and check out these games-- and look, Minnesota's in first place. I would think there'll be good crowds this weekend at Target Field.

Pittsburgh has a guy by the name of Andrew McCutchen, who was an MVP a few years ago, outstanding player. He's in the twilight of his career, but he's certainly worth watching. Bryan Reynolds is another outstanding player for the Pirates. And we're going to have Cathy maybe gridlock in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday night. The Twins will start at 6:10 PM against the Pirates. And then, the Titans and Vikings will kick off right around 7 PM. So both ends of downtown Minneapolis will have major sporting events going on.

INTERVIEWER: And thank you for the traffic update there, Eric Nelson. People who don't want to be in the crush, just steer clear. Say, I thought it was interesting about the teams practicing together in the NFL. It sounds like the NBA has got something different, too. What's this deal about an in-season tournament?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: It seems odd. It really does. Now, this is something that the MLS-- Minnesota United soccer folks have been doing for a while now. But the NBA is adding an in-season tournament. And then, the Timberwolves announced their schedule. They'll play San Antonio, Sacramento, Golden State, and Oklahoma City. And those four games-- it's called Pool Play when they play against those four teams. Those will count along with their regular season schedule.

So those games count like they normally would on your regular season schedule, but they also count in this tournament. And if they advance out of that group of four, then they will play in a knockout round. And it could add a couple more games to their schedule, and the winner wins the NBA cup. What that means, I don't know.

I mean, I think that there's more money in it for the players. They're trying to boost-- they're trying to boost what people might think is interest in the game during the regular season. But the odd part about it is they're playing in November. I would think that if you're trying to boost interest, it would be like later in the season when people get kind of bored in the middle of the season with the regular season. But I don't know. It's a new scheme to try and make more money, I guess.

INTERVIEWER: Real quick comment here, Eric?

ERIC NELSON: Yeah, it's cause for me to ponder, though. The Timberwolves, as we know, in their 32year history, have won absolutely zilch. So what if Minnesota wins this NBA cup? Does Governor Tim Walz make it a statewide holiday? Do we shut down churches, supermarkets, grocery stores, all that stuff? Will there be a parade, a confetti shower? I mean, Minnesota is a title desert. We need to celebrate whatever we can get, right?

INTERVIEWER: [CHUCKLES] And on that, we will wish you both a good day. Thanks, you guys. Wally Langfellow, Eric Nelson, our sports guys. Always interesting here on Minnesota Now from MPR News.