With Mike Veeck and the St. Paul Saints, second chances are often first part of the story

The shutdown of sports in this country in mid-March 2020 due to the arriving pandemic created a complication for those expected to find a sports topic a few times per week for a daily newspaper.

When stumped, you couldn't go with the traditional fallback position: "I'll go to the game and something will rear its head.''

What was discovered during those months of sports-nothingness is that there are dozens of topics out there. You just had to look a bit harder or flat-out stumble into one. All this time for contemplation also left me lamenting fine opportunities lost to routine ballgames.

This is a thought that still bugs me:

"Hey, dummy, when all the fellas were alive, why did you not drop in at Billy Bye's place on a northern lake, when all the Gophers football legends from the late '40s/early '50s — including Bud Grant — would gather for a weekend and tell their tales?''

Played golf with Billy up there. Heard about the gathering for 20 years. Never went there.

Ancient times, you say? No problem. Great tales live forever.

I mean, Dennis Anderson told us about 55-year-old grizzly bear attacks in Glacier National Park in last Sunday's Star Tribune, and it was riveting.

What's been plaguing me for a while now is those half-dozen columns a summer I left sitting there when Mike Veeck's St. Paul Saints first started playing their form of baseball at Midway Stadium.

I have a problem with cute. I also have a problem with fawning — from the media.

The Saints and Veeck had both non-stop cute and fawning from the local media. But the deal was, you didn't have to write about a pig . . . or sumo wrestling . . . or a nun giving massages (as a bad apple at St. Gabe's in Fulda, Minn., I'd never want a person with that background in position to wring my neck).

There were stories available about people:

Could've been about a guy I used to work with at the Pioneer Press, Wayne Hassell, who proudly sat right behind home plate for all Saints games — just because they were taking place in St. Paul, not the hated rival, Minneapolis.

Four or five players every summer with outstanding back stories.

Veeck even had Dave Stevens, the dynamo with no legs, try out for the team. I put him on the list of Turkey of the Year contenders for having no chance.

(Note: Dave thanked me later for the publicity,)

Lots of sneaky shots at Veeck made it into print. Enough of those that there was a theory I must have disliked his father, Bill, and was taking it out on Mike.

Truth was, Mike's father was fantastic.

As owner of the White Sox, Bill was witnessed wading into a dispute taking place in the Comiskey Park stands in front of the press box. Next thing we saw was Veeck's wooden leg sticking up in the air. The combatants had pulled him into the fray.

Later, I sat with Bill Veeck in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. Beautiful, sunny day. Veeck was wearing shorts, a shoe, no shirt. He had five, six beers. Indeed, drinking like a man with a wooden leg.

Bill was given the ultimate show of respect from the inebriated Bleacher Bums that day. When he went to the skanky men's room underneath the scoreboard in center field, they waved him to the front of the line with chants of "Make room for Bill!''

I've gotten to know Mike Veeck in the last 15 years, and he's good people.

This week, I was talking to him about Darryl Strawberry, and the coup of bringing him to St. Paul in 1996. We also talked about the newly released documentary on Mike and the Veeck family titled, "The Saint of Second Chances,''

The documentary debuted and received good reviews recently at the Tribeca Film Festival. It will be shown Sunday at the Icon Theatre at West End in St. Louis Park. The Veecks will be there.

This conversation was ending, and I hemmed and hawed, and said:

"It's time for me to apologize for taking those shots at the Saints and at you for the first decade — or longer. I'm troubled by those, and also for passing up free columns.''

And I knew Mike Veeck would accept the apology — because he's a saint of second chances.