Why Are There so Many Minnesota Twins Fans on Bleacher Report?

Look around the MLB section of Bleacher Report and you’ll see all sorts of articles dealing with the Minnesota Twins. Where did they come from? Why are they here?

To understand this, we must first understand the media market in Minnesota.

It sucks.

The largest newspaper in the area, the Star Tribune, is one of the worst major metropolitan dailies in the country. In terms of prestige, try finding how many Pulitzers the paper has won, then compare that number to other papers of similar distribution and you’ll see what I mean.

The local TV stations are no better, and their sports coverage lacks any depth.

The sports columnists in the area are at times bad, at others completely incoherent. Jim Souhan spends most of his columns trying to be funny, which he’s not, and making pop-culture references that don’t fit anywhere in the subject matter and are otherwise incomprehensible.

Patrick Reusse isn’t as bad. He’s arrogant, snarky, and shallow; relies heavily on old sports cliches; and is generally not very informative, but at least he knows how to write.

Sid Hartman. Sheesh. The guy is an 88-year-old high school dropout who somehow convinced someone he knew how to write. An arrogant simpleton who acts as a cheerleader for the local sports teams, his writings provide nothing of value.

Often, a “good” sports columnist is someone who has written mediocre columns over a long period of time. Sid is a “great” sports columnist because he has written terrible sports columns forever.

Just last year, the Star Tribune finally got around to adding a few bloggers to the mix and they’ve been pretty good. The Pioneer Press, the other Twin Cities paper, also has a guy, Phil Miller, who’s been blogging about the Twins; his insight is refreshing.

But this is all too little, too late.

Fans have been forced to look elsewhere for in-depth analysis of the Minnesota Twins. The new media, blogs, websites, and the like have accomplished the task quite successfully. It’s frustrating being a fan in Minnesota without intelligent media coverage and Minnesotans finally took the burden unto their own shoulders.

Also, the weather in Minnesota is so unpleasant everyone has tons of time to pound away at a computer.