Keith Yandle Jersey from panxing18's blog

Walking in the freshly cut, bright green grass on Wednesday while directing the Minnesota Vikings through their first practice of training camp was, naturally, the best place for Mike Zimmer to be.

”It takes a little bit of the sting away,” Zimmer said, pausing to recover from a crack in his voice, ”of losing a great friend, a great coach, a good man.”

The Vikings and the rest of the NFL were stunned on Sunday when Sparano, their tough-loving offensive line coach, died suddenly at age 56 of heart disease .

”It’ll be a hard few days, but we’ll get through it and we’ll get back to work and do the things that we do,” Zimmer said, ”and that’s what he’d want us to do.”

After two days of workouts for rookies and others selected for early duty either due to relative inexperience or a recent injury, the Vikings will take a break Friday to attend Sparano’s funeral in the Twin Cities area. Then the entire team will convene for the first full practice on Saturday.

”The most important thing is when you’re a family, the family is what helps you get through it,” said general manager Rick Spielman, who like Zimmer had to stop for composure several times during an interview session with reporters.

As evidenced by and during the run last season to the NFC championship game Keith Yandle Jersey , the Vikings from the top down have forged an environment as tightly knit as any point in their history. This is an organization that has seen plenty of dysfunction over 57 years. The solidarity comes in handy at a tragic time like the unexpected loss of life, but it can also intensify the grief.

”We had quite a relationship,” said Zimmer, who was on the same staff as Sparano for the last four of his 13 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. ”His wife, Jeanette, I told her the other day, she reminds me a lot of my wife. She’s the sweetest lady.”

Zimmer’s wife, Vikki, passed away in 2009. His father, Bill, died in 2015. So he’s had unfortunate experience in straddling the fine line between proper mourning and pressing on. What’s clear to the Vikings, at least, is that Sparano would pick the latter.

”If Tony knew we were having this talk about him, I could just hear him in his very endearing way what his opinion on this would be,” Spielman said.

With darkened sunglasses he wore since a teenage accident with hot oil from a deep fryer while working at a restaurant, Sparano had an intimidating presence. A significant portion of the screaming audible during a typical Vikings practice came from Sparano, who as a fellow understudy of former Cowboys head coach and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Bill Parcells came from the same hard-nosed mold as Zimmer.

”He was a lot like me, probably the only person in the building who was grumpier than I was Youth Sebastian Aho Jersey ,” Zimmer said. ”But he really cared about his players. I’ve sat in with him in offensive line rooms a lot, and he had a way of poking the stick at the guys and then putting his arms around him.”

Sparano’s daughter was married in Texas just 2 weeks ago. He told Zimmer last month he felt his health was the best it’d been. Since Zimmer hired Sparano in 2016 to help instill a tougher mentality in the offensive linemen, the two early-to-arrive-and-late-to-leave coaches spoke often, and not just about football. As a former NFL head coach, Sparano served as a sounding board for Zimmer, as was their shared mentor, Parcells, the source of many of Sparano’s customary colloquialisms.

”Instead of saying, `It’s one or the other,”’ Zimmer recalled, ”he’d say, `It’s a horse apiece.”’

That could’ve been applied, for example, to an assessment of a couple of potential draftees. Spielman fondly remembered Sparano’s thoroughness, taking the time to study video of a tackle prospect when he played guard in a years-old game.

”I’ve never been around a coach who put in so much time and energy into everything he did,” Spielman said.

There was a soft side to Sparano, too, when it came to his family http://www.dallascowboysteamonline.com/kavon-frazier-jersey , whether immediate or football. Zimmer smiled as he recounted playing in Spielman’s charity golf tournament on the course where Sparano’s house was, not far from the team’s old headquarters.

”We get to whatever hole he was on, and he’d have a big cooler out there with beer and wine,” Zimmer said. ”He gave me a bottle of wine so we could play the rest of the course. That’s Tony. He was a genuine person who cared an awful lot about a lot of people.”

—

— DJ LeMahieu and the Colorado Rockies are quite comfortable on the road. Even against baseball’s best teams.

LeMahieu homered, German Marquez pitched seven solid innings and the Rockies closed out their first four-game sweep in Atlanta with a 4-2 victory over the Braves on Sunday.

Colorado improved to 30-16 since June 26, and each of those 46 games came against teams with winning records at the time. The Rockies are 8-2 in their last 10 games against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston and Atlanta, facing the Astros and Braves on the road.

“Yeah, it’s tough teams but we’re definitely not nervous or scared to play anyone with our team,” LeMahieu said. “We all know we have a really good team here. It makes it easy to show up at the park.”

LeMahieu put Colorado in front with his third-inning drive to left field . He has hit nine of his 11 homers on the road, including a tiebreaking solo shot in the 10th inning of Saturday night’s 5-3 win.

“No explanation,” LeMahieu said when asked about his road success. “Just kind of random, I guess.”

Rockies manager Bud Black said his team, battling Arizona for the NL West lead, is playing “good, all-around clean baseball,” but still can hit better.

Atlanta’s four straight losses, tied for its longest streak of the season Craig Anderson Jersey , followed a five-game winning streak.

“In this business, every time you think you have something figured out, you get kicked right in the teeth,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said.

Marquez (11-9) won his fourth straight road decision. He allowed two runs and five hits, struck out five and walked one.

“Hopefully we can keep this rolling all the way to the World Series,” Marquez said through a translator.

Marquez allowed a run in the first when Freddie Freeman doubled and scored on Johan Camargo’s single. He then threw four straight scoreless innings before Camargo’s single in the sixth drove in Freeman again.

Trevor Story led off the second with a tying homer off Atlanta’s Anibal Sanchez (6-4) into the Colorado bullpen behind the left-field wall.

Following LeMahieu’s homer in the third, David Dahl doubled and scored on Nolan Arenado’s single.

Sanchez struck out eight in 6 2/3 innings. He was charged with three runs and five hits.

Wade Davis gave up a one-out single to Inciarte but had three strikeouts in the ninth for his NL-leading 35th save.

Colorado’s only previous sweep in Atlanta was a three-game series from Sept. 12-14, 1997.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Rockies: LHP Mike Dunn (left shoulder inflammation) will begin a rehab assignment on Tuesday with Triple-A Albuquerque. He has been out since July 7. “It’s going to be a lengthy rehab assignment,” Black said, adding Dunn will need “multiple outings.”

Braves: LHP Sam Freeman (left shoulder inflammation) was activated off the 10-day disabled list. LHP Kolby Allard was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett.

STREAKS END

Braves rookie Ronald Acuna Jr. was 0 for 4, ending his 11-game hitting streak. His team-record streak of reaching safely in nine consecutive plate appearances leading off a game also ended with his fly ball to center in the first.

WEST WOES

The Braves fell to 9-18 against the NL West this season. They are 40-19 against NL East teams.

ROAD KINGS

The Rockies improved to 37-29 away from Coors Field. They have won their last four series in Atlanta; the Braves won two of three in Colorado from April 6-8.

UP NEXT

Rockies: LHP Tyler Anderson (6-5, 4.39 ERA) tries to bounce from a rough outing at Houston when he gets the ball in the opener of a three-game series against visiting San Diego on Tuesday night. The Rockies are 16-5 at home since July 2.

Braves: RHP Kevin Gausman (7-9, 4.22 ERA) starts when Atlanta opens a seven-game road trip at Pittsburgh on Monday night.