Saturday, May 19, 2007

Art imitating life?

Recently, Ted Mondale, son of local hero and former vice-prez Walt Mondale, just plead guilty to durnk driving charges. As his punishment, he has suggested community service coaching little league baseball.

Now, at first I was tempted to rant on about how crazy it is that the wealthy and powerful not only get such slap-on-the-wrist punishments, but the even more ludicris notion that they get to set their own penalties as well.

However, this got me thinking of a similar situation in which a powerful Minneapolis businessman was sentenced to coach little league hockey as a slap on the wrist punishment. He knew nothing of coaching, but he and a ragtag band of kids with nothing but spunk and moxie on their side won not only the local little league championship, but went on to "sequel" such wins by taking the junior olympics and later a state high-school championship. That man was of course Gordon Bombay, and his team even went on to the Stanly Cup playoffs this year, although Bombay has long since retired from coaching to run a sporting goods store founded by an old family friend.

Now, I have no idea if Ted Mondale is haunted by the fact that he failed to bring home the championship on his vaulted little-league baseball team, but it certainly seems like he's setting the stage for something great. It certainly makes one ponder if we soon could be witness to the rise of the Mighty Nazca's. It also makes you think Ted Mondale should work for a company with a more marketable name, like Duckworth or something to that effect.

No comments: