Patrick Mahomes' record-breaking contract provided a reminder of a few Twin Cities sports moments.
That's right. I've been here more than 30 years. I know that Minnesotans will claim a connection to any athlete with a tenuous local connection, even if that athlete merely drove at high speed through Luverne or Grand Portage.
Mahomes, of course, is the son of former Twins pitcher Pat Mahomes. As a reporter covering the Twins, I remember writing a 2-inch note on Mahomes leaving the team for the birth of his son. I failed to predict that the son would become the richest athlete in sports history.
The news on Mahomes' 10-year, $503 million contract emerged first on the Twitter feed of a Kansas City liquor store employee, who sold six bottles of Dom Perignon to Chiefs executives and correctly presumed that the celebration was connected to the quarterback.
This kind of thing has happened before. I was a rookie backup beat writer covering the Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News in 1989 when a reporter from a small radio station in Florida suggested that the Cowboys were trading their best player, Herschel Walker, to the Vikings.
How would that guy know, we asked? He had a connection to Jimmy Johnson's family.
Twice, the late Dark Star broke big news in the Twin Cities — once before he became a local media figure. A conversation at a bar led him to call into a radio station to correctly state that Bud Grant would be returning to coach the Vikings. And when Chuck Knoblauch was lobbying for a long-term contract, Dark Star wound up mediating between Knoblauch and the Twins, resulting in a five-year, $30 million contract and a lot of inside information.
For the current Vikings, Mahomes' deal is a reminder that angst over large price tags in sports are usually short-lived.
