Great Reusse column: On Father's Day, Ryan Saunders missing his 'best of friends'

Reusse at his best with this fantastic story about Ryan Saunders spending his first Father's Day tomorrow without his Dad. Per Pat:

This will be the first Father's Day for the Saunders family without Flip. It will be extra difficult emotionally, as was last Christmas, as was what would have been Flip's 61st birthday Feb. 23, and other family birthdays that have passed.

Ryan is oldest of the kids at 30. Mindy is 28 and married. The twins, Rachel and Kim, are 24.

By all accounts, Flip was well-honed in the fatherly art of doting on his daughters. The relationship with Ryan was different. It included a mutual devotion to basketball.

"It was more than father, son; we were the best of friends,'' Ryan said. "He loved phone calls. He had four or five cellphones in service at all times. When I still was an assistant in Washington after he left, we would talk 10 times a day.''

Ryan was 9 when Flip was brought to the Timberwolves by Kevin McHale for the 1995-96 season — first as general manager, and 20 games into the schedule as coach. Saunders had that job until the middle of the 2004-05 season, and many times Ryan would ride to the game with his dad.

"He always took Highway 55 … never the freeway,'' Ryan said. "I think one reason was to go past the main building for Golden Valley Lutheran College. It's the Perpich Center for Arts now, but to him, it was always the place where his coaching career started.

"Whenever we were getting close to that building, he would hit his Barry White CD and play 'Can't Get Enough of Your Love.' "

http://www.startribune.com/on-father-s-day-ryan-saunders-missing-his-best-of-friends/383502691/#1

Go Gophers!!

I enjoyed it so much that I read it a second time a few minutes later. Flip was a special man.

As much as people on this board rag on Reusse, you have to admit the guy can be a really talented writer. You can tell when he really cares about a column - when he writes about Saunders, or about town-team baseball, he's without question the best columnist in the Twin Cities.

Of course, there is the flip side where he writes stuff just to make people mad or provoke a response - which he admits is his goal.

That summarizes Pat to a T. Ultimately when I agree with Patrick he's a pretty good writer and when I don't he's a lazy hack. Go figure.


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short ornery norwegian said:

As much as people on this board rag on Reusse, you have to admit the guy can be a really talented writer. You can tell when he really cares about a column - when he writes about Saunders, or about town-team baseball, he's without question the best columnist in the Twin Cities.

Of course, there is the flip side where he writes stuff just to make people mad or provoke a response - which he admits is his goal.

Click to expand...

So Reusse is a good Gopherhole participant. [emoji41]

Nice article. Too bad a guy has to make a living being a critical smart aleck when you actually get it.

Light emerges from the shadow. He's good with the human interest stuff when he wants to be, but he has been mostly mailing it in for a lot of years now. I get it. It's hard to be on top of the game for a long time, and he's getting old.