Sports

The Minnesota Gophers football team wraps up the regular season with a trip to Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa, on Saturday. The Gophers (6–5) will face off against the Iowa Hawkeyes (9–2)  in the schools’ annual battle for Floyd of Rosedale. Kickoff is slated for 11:02 a.m.

If you’re a college football fan, you know this border battle is one of many traditions for the Golden Gophers. In the MHS Press book Minnesota Sports Almanac: 125 Glorious Years by Joel A. Rippel (with foreword by Patrick Reusse), you’ll find all kinds of stats and stories of the Gophers football program (dating back to their first game in 1882), including other infamous Big Ten trophy showdowns (the fight for Paul Bunyan’s Axe against Wisconsin, for the Little Brown Jug against Michigan, and for the Victory Bell against Penn State). And in Rippel’s profiles of Minnesota’s national title teams in the 1930s, ’40s, and 1960, under the leadership of highly respected coaches Bernie Bierman and Murray Warmath, you’ll learn the real history behind the recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal that Minnesota, Tulane, Southern Methodist, and the University of Chicago are all former college football powers that at one time “had it all — and lost it.”

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We wanted to offer you something positive on a strange, snowy day in Minnesota - a little video featuring the photos of Layne Kennedy and the voice of Greg Breining, the authors of Hard-Water World: Ice Fishing and Why We Do It.

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So, this week, everyone’s a Twins fan, but how well do you really know Minnesota baseball?

The first five people to answer the following questions correctly will win a free copy of our book Baseball in Minnesota: The Definitive History by Stew Thornley!

Send your answers to info-mhspress@mnhs.org. We will write you for a mailing address if you are one of the lucky winners.

Here we go:

1. What year did Kirby Puckett join the Twins?

2. On what date did Harmon Killebrew hit his first homerun for the Twins and how far did the ball go (estimate)?

3. In the spring of 1965, there was a lot of flooding. For the home opener, 4 members of the Twins were marooned on the wrong side of the swollen Minnesota River. They had to be flown to the game by helicopter. Name them.

Good luck all!

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