Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Minnetonka-Born Flamethrower Credits 100 MPH Pitch to Daily Diet of 30 Raw Eggs
We are just so lucky to have Defector—where else are you going to get headlines like "Mets Prospect Might Be 80 Percent Egg At This Point"?
Get a load of this beautiful passage from writer Chris Thompson:
A true grinder will do profoundly gut-busting things in order to survive and thrive at the upper echelons of North American sports.
For pitcher Ryan Lambert, who is presently working his way up the Mets farm system, this means eating like a champion. A champion mongoose. A mongoose who has discovered a nest full of plover eggs—several, in fact. A mongoose who raids half a dozen nests full of eggs every waking day of their life. Per a report from Anthony DiComo of MLB.com, Lambert "came across an internet video" two years ago, and took from it the message that he should consume 30 raw eggs per day.
A 6-foot-3-inch, 222-pound righty, Lambert is the 18th ranked prospect in the Mets farm system, per MLB.com. He's expected to make his big-league debut this year.
Now, why are we telling you about Lambert's bizarre dietary chick—er, tic? Why, because Racket reader Tom Harmon tipped us off to the fact that Lambert is One Of Us. The raw egg guzzler is a Minnetonkan, a tidbit he shared on Opening Day, along with the fact that, counterintuitively, his hobbies include cooking.
(Credit must also be given to Harmon for the subject of his email: "Big Egg Baseball Boy is from Minnetonka.")
According to Defector, Lambert has since modified his daily raw egg consumption to "10 or so." We'll see how the reduction impacts his fastball.
Tuesday's ICE News Roundup
- In a nearly five-hour Senate hearing today, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem "defend[ed] her portrayal of killed Minneapolis protesters as agitators," while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) called her leadership of the agency a “disaster.” As for how many Department of Homeland Security goons remain in Minnesota? According to Noem, the number is still close to 650.
- Despite public outcry, Minneapolis and St. Paul hotels haven't banned ICE agents. MinnPost's Trevor Mitchell explains why that is.
- "In Minneapolis, intense immigration enforcement is disrupting HIV care for Latino communities, a group already disproportionately affected by the virus," report Sam Donndelinger and Cameron Oakes for Rewire News Group.
- According to a new YouGov poll, abolishing ICE currently has record-high levels of support in the U.S. Half of Americans now somewhat or strongly support ICE abolition, with 39% opposing. (The wishy-washy loser centrists at Third Way, meanwhile, prefer the clunky strategy of abolishing the abuses of ICE.)
Let's Peek at the Proposals for the Former Kmart Site
Now, before you get too excited, you should know that construction on the ol' Kmart site on Nicollet Avenue won't start until 2028 at the earliest. That said, it is at least a little exciting to gawk at the potential for this much-discussed hunk of prime Minneapolis real estate. So... let's!
The city of Minneapolis has received two proposals for the future of the site—one from developer Aeon and one from Trellis.
You can watch a presentation of Aeon's proposal here:
And Trellis's here:
...and then fill out this survey to let the city know what you like (and don't like) about each. Big fan of Trellis's "light-filled courtyard," personally!
How to Honor the Hortmans?
"A Hortman highway, a Hortman state park, a Hortman solar garden program and a Hortman office building are some of the proposals under consideration to honor former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman in perpetuity," reports Cait Kelley for MPR News.
Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) is the co-sponsor of four Senate bills that would honor Hortman's memory; the two were friends, and he and his wife Yvette survived an assassination attempt on the same night that Hortman and her husband Mark were killed last year. Hoffmann tells MPR he expects bipartisan support for the bills.
