The fu-manchus of yore
Trent Makela
As the son of first-generation Minnesotan immigrants, I had little choice in the sports teams that adorned the poofy winter coats of my childhood. I was a fan of the underdog and dressed in Vikings purple whether I liked it or not.
In the home country they embrace the role of unlikely winners so deeply that they adopt it by choice. The beloved Twins, not the Yankees, are owned by Major League Baseball's wealthiest owner — Carl Pohlad. Yet, they are consistently crippled by a payroll at a Ramen Noodles-type level.
Ol' Carl gets a real kick out of trading Minnesota's stars for bare-bones salaries every summer. In fact, he just wiped baseball's best pitcher off his shoe for the equivalent of a box of Peeps. He's cheap, but I like to think Carl's motivation comes from underdog love. I picture him as a tot in a sandbox rooting for small, defensively-sound Legos to overtake the big, steroid-slowed Yankee action figures.
It's hard to think of the Ronan basketball team as underdogs after seeing the school's intimidating shrine to past mustached, short-short wearing champions in the lobby of the Ronan Events Center. Believe it or not, though, the Chiefs won their only boys' state championship in 1960. It would seem, then, that last weekend's trip to the state tourney in Billings must have been a big moment in the program's history. The shuffling of feet that followed Ronan's baskets told a different story.
Ronan was, sadly, the most underrepresented team at the tournament. It's true that the six-hour drive to Billings doesn't come cheap or easy, but possibly breaking a 48-year title drought seems worth sleeping amongst the oil refineries for a weekend.
Browning fans swarmed the gym for each game up to the championship after traveling 11 more miles than their Ronan counterparts. Their team played a similar running, energy-driven style that bounced the Chiefs around a packed Glacier Gym at divisionals. The Indians' legs swung light with the visible boost of their manufactured home-court advantage, while Ronan silently lost energy late in their games and lost both contests by a single possession. After watching this year's home games against Polson and Columbia Falls, I know that there are plenty of Chiefs fans to pack any stadium in the state. I hope in the future those fans (and ol' Carl) can show their team's true wealth and give their underdogs wings.