As we were at the Icehouse on Wednesday night for half price pizza and pints night, and to a lesser extent to watch the World Series, he was telling me about the ever expanding universe of Burt Reynolds. Not the mustachioed star of Smokey and the Bandit and Boogie Nights...no, Burt Reynolds is the name my brother uses as his pseudonym.

Seriously. Its been a huge, ginormous inside joke for years, for no other reason than the fact that its utterly ridiculous. I think it started when they lived in Omaha, and we were out at Happy Hour at Nico one Friday night. Across the room from us, there was a mustachioed gentleman in his mid-40s sitting in the corner booth with six young hotties surrounding him. To a large extent because of the mustache, and to a lesser extent because of the ladies half his age surrounding him, my brother mockingly started calling him "Curt Reynolds" -- Burt's fictional brother. It was a Happy Gilmore reference, I believe (Happy saying to himself as a limo pulls up, "Whoa...it must be...Burt Reynolds or somethin'!")

We sat there trying to get "Curt's" attention, yelling his name, seeing if he'd answer. Of course, he didn't, but it still was a lot of fun. We laughed all night about Curt Reynolds, practically mocking the dude right to his face, although he never figured it out, because obviously his name wasn't Curt.

He ordered a pizza from Godfather's last week and gave his name over the phone as Bert Reynolds; when I went to pick it up, I asked for the Univers order. The guy behind the counter told me there was no such order. I laughed and asked if it was under Reynolds. Of course, it was. Of course.

Great thing is you only have to win one week to get all of your money back for the entire season. Bad thing is that I never come close to winning. Well, I may not win the money, but I am undefeated in writing the most entertaining picks emails. Since I'm tired of emailing them to everyone, I will heretofore post them right here on Wood Grains every Friday.

***

Winners only, not to be confused with Members Only, designer of fashionable jackets since 1980...

Buffalo (Norv Turner: America's Least Trustworthy Coach in the Eastern Time Zone)

Chicago (If the Vikings pull this one off, I'll eat a plate of "I can't believe its not Polish Sausage". So, you know, Go Bears)

Pittsburgh (Really? The Bengals? Beating anyone? You cannot be serious!)

Tennessee (Lets see. Tony Gonzalez is still a Chief, Larry Johnson is still a punk, the Chiefs still stink. Seems about right.)

St Louis (Upset Special! No Tony "The Finger" Romo? No win!)

Baltimore (Ray Lewis is licking his chops to blow up the wildcat play. Without that the Fins are a warmer version of the Lions.)

NY Giants (JT O'Sullivan still seems more like a bad TV movie of the week actor name than a decent quarterback name. Is it just me?)

New Orleans (Delhomme won't win a shootout with Brees. That's like John Rambo meeting Doc Holliday at high noon. Lots of shots, lots of excitement, but ultimately the old guy with a surgically repaired shoulder loses.)

Houston (One team sucks, the other one merely stinks. You can always cover your nose, but when you suck, you suck. Texans win.)

NY Jets (Remember what I said about Doc Holliday? Yeah, Al Davis was the kid who loaded his firearm with gunpowder back in the day.)

Indianapolis (I would rather lose money than pick Green Bay to win.)

Washington (Losing to the Rams has to piss you off, right? Right?)

Tampa Bay (Who are Seattle's receivers these days? Does Steve DeBerg have kids?)

New England (Points: if Brady was playing, 142. With Cassel, it'll be more like 47)

Consider this: what other team could be involved in the most exciting Monday Night Football game of the year and the resulting response from three die-hard fans is this:

"Great, now we have to watch 'em next week."

As my dad, my brother and I sat in my living room watching the second punt return, we all screamed at almost the exact same time, "Why the hell do you kick to him?" Almost as if hearing us, the ESPN announcers soon wondered the same thing. Kick the ball out of bounds, kick it to the other side of the field, ANYTHING but to Bush. Good lord.

***

By a strange confluence of events, my brother AND my dad happened to be in Omaha on business during the week of a Vikings Monday Night Game. This happens roughly once a decade, or so I assume, as its never happened before...

So we ordered pizza, opened up a case of beer, and sat down in front the 52" HDTV to watch the Vikings and the Saints on MNF. My brother, ever the pessimist, thought it would be a Saints blowout. My dad wondered aloud if the game would be worth watching by halftime. I, on the other hand, put my hard earned Max Univers money on the line, picking the Vikes in my weekly Pick'Em contest. As I tied the other gamblers through the weekend's other games, a Vikes win meant $52 in my pocket. A loss and I was out my weekly $3 fee.

The Saints scored easily on their first drive just a couple of minutes into the game, and it seemed like perhaps the 24 cans of Busch Light in my fridge would not be enough. This might be a "Backup Case" game, where I had to go grab my emergency case of beer that I keep in the storage space beneath my basement steps, alongside other essentials like a flashlight, blanket, candles and a box of crackers. If the world comes crashing down, I will have light, I will have heat, I will have Ritz crackers, and I will have Bud Light.

And if the Vikings fall to 1-4, their season would be essentially over, and that's time for the emergency case.

No sooner had these thoughts entered my mind that a strange thing happened: the Vikings blocked a field goal attempt and ran it back for a touchdown. And then they intercepted a pass and drove downfield for a field goal of their own. And then they forced a fumble inside their own 10, handed it to their backup running back, who lobbed up a wobbly pass into the back of the endzone that was caught for a touchdown.

All of this was happening as their defense was being gashed for huge chunks of yards. At one point the Saints were outgaining them 251-48! When that statistic flashed on the screen, my brother made a fridge run and brought back two cans of beer for each of us, instead of one. We'd be needing that extra can, he reasoned.

At the half, it was 20-10 Vikings in a game they had no business being ahead in. The ESPN analysts couldn't even explain what had happened. The statistics lied. Running yards, passing yards, time of possession, a raucous home crowd, everything was wildly in favor of the Saints. Except for the scoreboard.

(And the turnovers, which they also led in, 3-0)

The second half, and particularly the third quarter, saw Reggie Bush run not one but TWO punts back for touchdowns. Sandwiched in between was a third return where the midfield logo tripped him up, saving what would have been an NFL-record third return in one game. After the second return, it was 27-20 Saints, the crowd was nuts, and the game had turned.

No way they could come back, right? This is the fatalistic viewpoint all Vikings fans possess. Its never "can they come back?", its always "they can't come back!". Its never "How will they pull this out?", its always "How will they manage to blow this one?"

Gus Frerotte, whose main qualification for the quarterback job is that his name is not Tarvaris Jackson, made some clutch throws, put them in position to tie the game. Then he made a HUGE throw into the endzone for the tying score.

After the defense held the Saints to a missed field goal attempt, he then drove the team downfield for a game winning field goal. On the road. In a game they HAD to win, but SHOULD NOT have won.

And then, because we're Vikings fans and we're fatalistic and what not, we drank beers as though we'd lost. My brother yelled out, "Dammit, now we have to watch 'em next week!"

He was inferring, of course, that the season would have been basically over had they lost, and we could have moved on with our fall oblivious to their sucking. But now we were in it, at least until the first weekend in November when we'll be at the game against the Texans. That will be the next time the Univers Men will gather together to watch the Vikes. It'll be hard to top this one, in terms of pizza eaten, beers consumed, kicks returned, wild turnovers, and amazing comebacks. But it will be fun regardless.

Always is with the Univers Men. You bet.

You know its bad when my brother calls me hoping for calm, because usually I'm the one wildly bouncing off walls. "Who the hell are these jokers they got from the Mets?" he asked me. I tried to explain to him that they were good prospects, and that he shouldn't rush to judge them because he didn't know who they were.

After all, the Twins had done this sort of thing before, and had come out better off more often than not. Heck, they'd even done it with the Mets before, trading defending Cy Young Award winner and World Series MVP Frank Viola in 1989 for five prospects -- three of which were key pieces to the Twins World Champion two years later.

They'd done it to the Yankees, trading the best leadoff hitter in the game in the prime of his career, Chuck Knoblauch, for four prospects -- two of which were cornerstones to their three-year playoff run from 2002-04.

My opinion was that they'd done it again -- and that one or more of the prospects would be key pieces to a winner in 2010 when their new ballpark opens.

Of course, having suffered through some of the worst baseball any team has ever played from 1993-2000, my brother and I were not too thrilled at the prospect of watching the team rebuild for the future. Yet that's exactly what they were positioning themselves to do.

They let their starting centerfielder and defacto captain walk away and sign an overpriced deal with the Angels, a move I actually applauded. Torii Hunter was great once, and he's still good now but in three years? He'll be past his prime and still making HUGE dollars, and the Angels will be wishing they hadn't given him the long contract.

They traded away their best pitcher. Oh, sure they resigned their MVP first baseman and All-Star right fielder to big contracts, but those seemed more like PR moves to keep the fanbase from a full-on revolt than anything else.

The "experts" almost universally picked them to finish fourth in their division, better only than the lowly Kansas City Royals. I disagreed, but only to a small degree: I figured best-case they would finish with around 78 wins and in third place. After all, the Indians had been a few outs from the World Series the year before and returned every single player from that team, most of them young and in the prime of their careers. The Tigers spent Yankee-type money to field an offense that looked invincible. I looked at things and wondered if the Twins could have competed even WITH Santana and Hunter.

***

On Opening Night, one of the players from the Mets in the Santana trade made a big first impression. Carlos Gomez showed that he is arguably the fastest player in the majors, smacking the ball all over the field and running crazy on the bases -- and leading the team to a win in the first game of the year.

My brother, ever the realist, tempered my enthusiasm. "Their pitching is awful young, and 25% of their schedule is against the Tigers and Indians."

True. What we didn't count on is the Tigers fielding an expensive team that would lose 20 of their first 25 games, finding themselves buried by the end of April. The Indians, too, struggled, and it was the White Sox -- a veteran team I thought was washed up -- who took control of the division.

Throughout May, my Dad tried to tell me the Twins had a chance. "If they can make a run, the White Sox can be beaten!"

I figured there was no way this team of rookies could compete. This wasn't Hollywood, and these weren't actors unconvincingly pretending to be athletes. Yet there they were, hovering around .500 through May. June and July came and went, and the Tigers were proven to be frauds, falling out of the race entirely by mid-season. So too did the Indians, who traded away their best players at the end of July for prospects, effectively throwing in the towel on the season.

That left the veteran White Sox and the young Twins to battle for the division. National media types were quick to dismiss the Twins, thinking they would do what young teams do: fold in August and September. But for seven glorious weeks, the two teams battled back and forth, taking turns being in first place, neither team building a lead larger than 2.5 games.

***

When the teams last met in late July, fans were already circling the last week of September on their calendars. Three games with the Sox, at home.

"If the Twins can stay within a couple of games when that series rolls around..." we said. And here we are, in the last week of the season, and the Sox came to Minnesota with a 2.5 game lead.

The Twins promptly slapped them around the ballpark in the first game, knocking their starting pitcher out of the game early and rolling to a 9-3 win. My dad, brother and I were on the phone the entire night, sharing moments of disbelief. At one point I yelled so loudly at the TV that my neighbors rang the doorbell, concerned I'd hurt myself. "Jason Kubel just hit his second home run of the night!" I told them. I'm pretty sure they think I'm insane, and I probably am.

After all, I was wearing an authentic Twins jersey, cap and wristbands. In my living room. Shut up.

Wednesday night, the Twins won again, this time in a low-scoring high-drama pitchers duel, 3-2. Again my brother and I traded texts back and forth, and when they recorded the final out, we couldn't believe this team was in this position.

.5 game out, 4 games to play, one of which is against the team you're chasing. All at home.

The team we'd both written off in January, left for dead in April, and waited to collapse in August was now just a couple of wins away from a playoff berth in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. Absolutely amazing.

You bet.

Long before the Bush Doctrine, I had my own Max Univers Doctrine which applied to baseball players. Just as Bush unilaterally claims countries are either "with us or against us", I have long said that baseball players are either "playing for the Twins or against the Twins." What that means is that anyone who plays for the Twins is cool, and anyone who doesn't is a punk. Period.

And it doens't matter if a player used to play for the Twins, and has moved on elsewhere. One he leaves, he's dead to me at least in terms of rooting interest. For example, Jack Morris played for the Tigers for many years during the '80s, and pitched against the Twins in the 1987 playoffs. At the time, he was a bum. Then he played one year for the Twins and led them to a World Series title. For that one year, he was a great guy. Then he left and signed with Toronto, and he was a bum again. I remember booing him just seven months after his epic Game Seven performance for the Twins, purely because he was now the enemy.

My college roommate John will recall me turning my back on Chuck Knoblauch when he demanded a trade out of Minnesota. As the Twins best player, I had a Knoblauch poster on my dorm room wall (amongst other, more *ahem* collegiately appropriate wall decorations). The day he left the team for the Yankees, that poster came down. My memory is a little hazy, but I think I recall a game of Triple Play 98 on Playstation where I made the opponent play as the Twins, and then threw four consecutive pitches at Virtual Chuckster's head.

In more recent times, you have the cases of Torii Hunter and Johan Santana, both of whom departed over the offseason. In Hunter's case, I pretty much thought he was a punk even though he played for the Twins, due to his constant public ripping of teammates and management. In Santana's case, he got the Knoblauch treatment.

My Santana jersey t-shirt went to Goodwill in February. The next month, when I was playing against my brother in a game on the Wii, he played as the Mets. Santana blew out his elbow in the third inning, and I cheered. Doesn't matter that he is the greatest pitcher of his generation and his best years came with the Twins. He plays elsewhere now, so its of no concern to me.

That's why I can't play Fantasy Baseball (among other more sensible reasons, time being chief among them). I can't root for players on other teams. Not in baseball. No sir.

You bet.

Why, you ask, do I hate a team that is an afterthought in their own city? Its simple, really. The Pale Hosers are in the same division as the Twins, meaning the teams play 19 times during each 162 game season. That's just a shade under 10% of the entire schedule (8.5% for you math dorks). When you play that many times against a team that year in and year out you battle for the division title, a certain hatred develops. Its bound to.

Plus, there's this: the Sox make it so easy to hate when they supply a continual string of anti-Twins quotes to the media. Hell, pitcher Mark Buehrle has supplied even stuff on his own to make Clubber Lang blush. My favorite was in 2003 when, after the Twins passed the Sox in the second-to-last week of the season en route to a come-from-behind division title, Buehrle told the media it was a shame the best team from the division missed the playoffs. To top it off, he said he would enjoy watching the Twins lose in the first round, because he was so unimpressed with them he was sure they would. Never mind that they did. Buehrle instantly went from punk to uber-punk, forever. And as you know, it is possible to receive redemption from the Max Univers Court of Punk Behavior. But once you move into uber-punkdom, there is no return.

My by count, the Sox have more players in uber-punkdom than any other team, including the Yankees. Yeah, I know, it seems weird, but its true. Derek Jeter? Uber-punk. Alex Rodriguez? Just a punk. The dude never gets a big hit, ever, so its awful tough to irrevocably stain him with uber-punkdom. No, the White Sox have five.

Thome

Buehrle

AJ Pierzynski

Jermaine Dye

Manager Ozzie Guillen

In Dye's case, his uber-punk status goes back to when he played for the Omaha Royals and he refused to sign a homerun ball that he hit and I subsequently caught. So its personal in his case.

***

Tuesday night, Game 157 of the season takes place, and it pits the White Sox against the Twins, with the division title on the line. All summer long, the teams have traded positions, with neither team gaining a bigger lead than 2.5 games. Its been an incredibly tight race, and for all intents and purposes, it comes down to these three games.

As the Twins young team has faded a bit during September, the Sox lead has grown to 2.5 games entering the series. A Twins sweep and they take over first place with the perpetually sucking Royals coming to town for the final series of the year. Certainly, they need to sweep the series.

But say they don't. Say they take two out of three; they would trail by a game and a half with three to play. Ouch, right? BUT, the White Sox have to play the red-hot Cleveland Indians in Cleveland this weekend, and the Twins host the horrible Royals. I'll take those odds.

The unfortunate drawback to this commoditization of the word "Crazy" is that when it actually applies, people believe you're just giving someone a hard time. I bring this up because of an encounter that I had with a gentleman over my lunchhour one day this week who actually was crazy. As in, medically, clinically insane. And when I told people about this when I got back to the office, they mistook "Crazy" for crazy -- because I throw around the phrase "crazy guy" like the Brothers Manning throw the pigskin.

This, of course, significantly reduced the impact of said story, which is a damn shame because its amazing. After the jump -- I shall introduce you to the dude who tried to save my life from, ahem, Russian spies. No, seriously, Russian spies.

My lunchhour was the only time I had open to go get my hair cut before my big plans on Thursday night, so I headed to the salon on Tuesday around noon. When I arrived, nothing seemed amiss, other than the fact that my usual stylist now had a piercing in her face. Not in her nose. Her face. Ouch. Not to get off topic here, but to have a piercing in your cheek has got to be a new definition of pain, doesn't it?

Anyway, after I instructed her on what I wanted done to my hair, we started chatting about the usual hairstylist/customer things: the weather, cool stuff I've done lately, cool stuff I'm about to do; you know, the usual. In the background, I hear the words "concentration camp" and "Hitler" in the same sentence, which is something you don't often hear at a hair salon. Naturally, I shut up and listened in. The guy was telling his stylist that history books lie about the realities of concentration camps, and that if she knew the truth, she would be a different person. Suddenly things were getting interesting, and by "interesting" I mean "weird".

I glanced into the mirror and made a face at my stylist, the one with the piercing in her cheek, who responded with a non-verbal look that was so expressive it almost made me laugh out loud. I knew exactly what she meant, even before she leaned over to whisper about the Crazy Guy.

Here's the thing. When she said "Crazy", I figured he was crazy, not "Crazy". As I continued to listen to him, I quickly discerned that the dude was, in fact, "Crazy", as in, he was a nutjob.

Keep in mind, if I were writing this guy as a character in a book and assigned him this dialogue, no one would believe it. You can't make this stuff up. That's how crazy it is, so keep that in mind. Distilled down, here's the essence of his story:

***

The Russians have infiltrated our government and our cities, waiting for the signal to attack. When they do so, they will put us all in Concentration Camps, and only Christians who have taken the Lord Jesus as their Savior will be saved. Everyone else will be, and I quote, in "a lot of trouble".

How does he know this? Because he has been chosen by God to receive a special channel on his Cox Digital Cable box that the Russians are secretly using to communicate with one another. This channel, called PT109, is located in between the frequencies for Discovery Health and 62O, the local sub-channel for WOWT. It is normally only visible to those who have modified their cable boxes to receive it using special codes from the KGB, but God has chosen him to receive it on his cable box so that he can warn the world of its impending doom.

God has asked him to broadcast what he knows to the world, but since the mainstream media doesn't believe him, they won't give him access to the airwaves which they control. This is why he operates a ham radio station, hijacking and overpowering the signal of local stations to get his message out. Additionally, God gave him a list of people he has been instructed to contact personally to save from the horrible death sure to befall them once the Russians execute their plan. His calls it his Ark of Salvation.

The trouble is, the United Nations knows about him receiving the decoded Russian signal over his cable box, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has the U.N. running around-the-clock surveillance everywhere he goes to monitor his evangelizing. Again, I quote, "They're watching our conversation right now, listening in even! I have to be careful who I choose to bless with the truth, because some people are programmed to subconsciously transmit information to the Russians while they sleep!"

The United Nations, acting on Putin's request, flies planes around his house several times a day, just high enough to not arouse suspicion among his neighbors, just low enough to take high-resolution photos of his every move. They usually perform the fly-bys at night, but not always.

***

At this point, after listening to all of these ramblings, I was overcome with extraordinary feelings of misunderstanding. Russians? A special digital cable channel? The United Nations? Vladimir Putin? Spy planes? What the hell is going on here?

We both were done with our haircuts at roughly the same time, and I eagerly stood in line at the cashier behind him because I had to get a glimpse of this guy up close. The first thing I noticed was that his haircut was solid; his stylist had done a boffo job making him look like an average, ordinary handsome man, which is no easy task when the guy believes he's on a mission from God to save the world from Russian spies. The second thing I noticed was that he had a look of extreme conviction in his eyes when he said these crazy things -- he REALLY believed everything he said. Including this next sentence, spoken to the stylist in reply to her thanking him for his business and telling him she'd see him next time:

"Oh, I probably won't be back. I was sent to you by the Lord to save you from the Russians, and since you won't accept my help, I unfortunately have to move on to the next person on my Salvation List. The Russians are probably hot on my tail as I speak. Never fear, for you can listen to my radio broadcast this weekend for instructions on how to modify your Digital Cable Box to receive the secret Russian signals so that you can save yourself! God Bless you, and thanks for the haircut!"

No longer able to stand in silence while this ridiculousness occurred around me, I said something to him before he could leave. "You, sir, have made my day. God Bless YOU!"

He understood this to mean that I was thanking him for saving me, when in reality I was thanking him for the laugh of a century that was about to happen as soon as he left. Shaking my hand, he looked me straight in the eyes with the sort of steely glare that pierces walls, and told me, "Yes, I know, for the prophecy told me you would be here!"

And then, still grasping my hand in a firm handshake, he pulled me in to whisper in my ear. "Beware of the Russians, for they knew about you! They are following you, spying on your house, your work, EVERYWHERE! May God be with you, for you will need His assistance when the Russians come for you!"

And with that, he turned around and walked out the door, opening the unlocked door to his ordinary-looking Chevrolet before driving away. I looked at the stylist and said, "What in the world was that all about?"

"Oh, that guy is crazy, don't mind him."

I guess we shouldn't throw the word around so cavalierly, because in this case the dude actually WAS crazy. But people thought I was just saying that to be saying it, when clearly, crazy is not even a strong enough word to describe what's going on there.

You bet.