The Maple Street Press 2011 Twins Annual

Tomorrow, the 2011 edition of the Maple Street Press Twins Annual hits newsstands everywhere. (At least, to the extent that there are still newsstands around.) This is the second year that John "Twins Geek" Bonnes has gathered the best and the brightest from the ranks of Twins online journalists to create an annual for Twins fans, and this year, he's included me.

Over at Twinkie Town, I put up a couple of "deleted scenes" from my article in this year's annual. If you're interested in getting a copy of the annual - 128 pages full of Twins goodness - you can order online at TCAnnual.com as well as making the trip to Barnes & Noble (or wherever).

Weekend Links

Hooray! It's the Weekend Links again! As always, these also appeared at RandBall.

Happy Saturday! I have done my best to not think about or talk about our latest tussle with winter, here in Minnesota, but it seems clear that my subconscious has had enough; when I opened up my list of weekly outstanding internet stories, I discovered that every single one of them is Twins-related. I'd like to believe that I'm not that shallow, but in between writing this sentence and the last one, I got distracted for a good half-hour by the Twins official site. To thine own self be true: 6:00 tomorrow evening, the Twins take on the Red Sox, and the game will be on the radio. Forget the cold. I'm going out to the garage to putter around while listening to baseball.

As I prepare for another season of yelling at Dan Gladden ("Dan! You're on the radio! You need to keep describing the play as it happens, or we can't tell what's going on!"), let's get on with a very Twins-focused edition of the weekend links:

*Jesse Lund at Twinkie Town interviewed Twins Assistant GM Rob Antony, and it's a pretty good insight into the off-season workings of the Twins' baseball operation. Plus, Antony gives his opinion on Carl Pavano's mustache, so it's a must-read for that alone.

*Also at Twinkie Town, Stu (of RandBall fame) has begun a series of poorly researched and factually incorrect AL Central team previews, and the first one - the Royals - is awesome. This series is potentially the best thing ever to happen to the internet, so stay tuned.

*Nick Nelson goes deep inside the numbers to study just why Denard Span's season at the plate in 2010 turned out so badly. For a counterpoint, Parker Hageman thinks that maybe Span was just unlucky. Either way, Span needs to rebound in 2011.

*And finally this week, a bonus Hageman link: Parker thinks that Michael Cuddyer's sore knee may have made him into a slap hitter last year. It would help if Cuddyer didn't have to play every day at first base this year, but in the interest of not jinxing certain Canadians, we will speak no more of this.

That'll do it for me, but before I go, a shameless plug: next week, the Maple Street Press Twins Annual hits your local newsstand. (It's also available for online orders now at TCAnnual.com, if you're bad with delayed gratification.) If you clicked on any of the links above, trust me - you'll find more of that sort of thing in the Annual. I think it's worth your time.

Eleven Things Joe Mauer Didn't Say On Jimmy Fallon

Last week, Twins catcher Joe Mauer went on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to promote the video game "MLB '11 The Show." Mauer answered some two-year-old questions from Fallon, then beat the host in a quick round of video-game Home Run Derby, hitting his only home run to the opposite field (naturally).

With this in mind, we can probably retitle my Twinkie Town post from last week, which was titled "Eleven Things Joe Mauer Won't Say On Jimmy Fallon." He didn't say any of them, which is not too surprising, considering two of them were highly insulting to neighboring states and at least one was insulting towards the show itself.

At any rate, the whole thing's part of my longer effort to spend most of the offseason saying ridiculous (as opposed to useful) things about the Twins, so even though it's now out of date, I encourage you to check it out.

Weekend Links

(These links also appeared at the startribune.com RandBall blog, which as always is your home for fun on the internet.)

Happy Saturday! It's mid-February, so I think I'm supposed to be writing about how boring sports are between the Super Bowl and the NCAA tournament - but I just can't do it. Locally we've got the Wild making a haphazard playoff push, two Gopher teams careening towards their conference tournament, and the Timberwolves doing a fairly convincing impression of last year's awful squad; 'boring' isn't the word that comes to mind. 'Frustrating,' maybe. 'Bipolar,' perhaps.

Of course, maybe I'm just in a good mood because the Wild and the hockey Gophers both scored five goals and won convincingly last night. On with the links:

*Speaking of the Wolves... well, maybe the less said the better. Canis Hoopus is spreading the sarcasm so thick that they've given up on the trowel and are just throwing glops on with bare hands, and that's always fun.

*It's easy to assume that Tsuyoshi Nishioka is likely to have a swing that's similar to Ichiro's. Parker Hageman puts together the visual evidence to show you why that assumption would be completely incorrect. (Short version: Nishioka swings a little bit like Joe Mauer. Ichiro swings like a tennis player who has somewhere to be.)

*In honor of Valentine's Day, the visual artists at The Dugs put together some baseball valentines. Look for a special appearance by Ozzie Guillen in there, which may be the highlight.

*Spencer Hall has some ideas for improving the NFL, which involves, in his words, "stealing the best elements of Australian, Arena, and Canadian Football." I realize that this sounds like madness and/or the type of thing that gets written in February because there's no football to talk about, but it bears the hallmarks of enlightened thinking. Sample sentence: "The game has to be freed from its constraints, and that includes moving the launch point of the ball from a single, easily assaulted point."

*And finally, it's time for Links About Niche Sports! Steve Rushin at SI wrote about how an astonishing goal in England got his old dad to start talking about soccer. And over at ESPN, American cricket journalist (no, really) Peter Della Penna has your five Cricket World Cup storylines to follow, which I'm linking to in my continuing quest to throw in links that nobody will click on.

That'll do it for me. Enjoy your various Saturdays, because it sounds like spring ends tomorrow and goes straight back into winter. I should NOT have put the shovels into storage.

Weekend Links [RandBall]

Here's this Saturday's Weekend Links, which also appear at RandBall.

Happy Saturday! Today is, of course, Hockey Day Minnesota, the now-annual celebration of local hockey (and excuse to play high school games outdoors). I've always liked this event, because it feeds into the "State of Hockey" marketing that the Wild created a decade ago. It may not apply to the entire state - the inner cities and the great hockey-less swaths of western and southwestern Minnesota come to mind - but it's nice to have one thing that's different about our state. So I encourage you: sit down and watch some outdoor hockey this morning. Head down to your local arena to catch a game tonight. Be a Minnesotan; be part of our tradition. It's Hockey Day!

A few thoughts and some good reading for you:

*We start with hockey - of course - and the story of how Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke became Canada's leading advocate for gay athletes. It's a really touching story, and heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. And while we're talking hockey, I really enjoyed Michael Russo's profile on Andrew Brunette on the occasion of Bruno's 1000th NHL game. Brunette truly has to be in the running for "best NHL player ever that couldn't beat most goalies in a footrace."

*While we're in profile mode: why not tackle SI's profile of Jake Plummer, the man who did what we'd all like to believe we could do, and walked away before he'd stayed too long. (Including bonus education about the game of handball!)

*Via commenter fasolamatt is this week's fasolalink: some guidance on when to use substitutes in a soccer match. Given that fasolamatt has a long-lost twin that referees state soccer matches, this seems oddly appropriate.

*We have some proof that things are looking up for the Timberwolves: the team's TV ratings are up 86%, second in the NBA to only Miami. Kevin Love continues to work his magic, even through the television screen.

*And finally: I think I need to check out this Onion SportsDome show on Comedy Central, because this is truly inspired genius. It's the "Kwame Brown Lottery," a (fake, of course) look at which team has to be saddled with the failed former #1 draft pick. (Hey, at least the Wolves finally won one of these things.)

That's enough for me. Enjoy the weekend, and the warm weather. You've earned them both.

Poetry and Pep Talks [Twinkie Town]

I'm just going to warn you right now: this week's Twinkie Town column isn't funny, isn't long, and is centered around a semi-original poem. As a rule of thumb, I don't write poetry - I'm absurdly bad at it, as evidenced by my attempt to rhyme "elapse" with "perhaps" - and so this might be one to skip.

In my defense, I was writing following the Super Bowl, when I was depressed by a Packers victory and also by the five pounds of cheese and cheese-based food that I consumed during the game, so I'm not sure it's completely fair to blame me for what happened.

Weekend Links - Now With Bonus Content! [RandBall]

(Editor's note: Just for the pure heck of it, this week, instead of linking to the weekend links, I'll publish them in full here. I'll also add a few of my own emendations, in bold. Again, just for the heck of it.)

Happy Super Bowl Saturday! When I was a kid, today was the day for "Oh look, the pregame show is on!" jokes. I suspect that if you check out the comics page of the newspaper, one or two of today's strips may make this reference. These jokes are similar to any and all jokes made about there being too many college bowl games, in that the very same jokes have been made for decades, and yet still people won't quit. Though if we banned recycled jokes from the comics page, then the creators of "Blondie" and "Crankshaft" and other such purveyors of crap would be in the bread line.

The truth is that any joke about "too much football" is clearly ludicrous, because the Pro Bowl - by all accounts, the single worst football game televised at any time during the year, including the Pop Warner championships - drew the most viewers it's had in eleven years, and got better ratings than the average rating for the World Series. (Readers of America: if you are watching the Pro Bowl, it's time to re-examine your life, and make judicious changes.)

With that in mind, then, on with the links!

*We start with an update on the ever-more unbelievable saga of St. Paul native Dean Johnson, who ran the local Thunder into deep debt and eventually out of business. He popped up a few months ago, riding in to "save" FC Liege in Belgium. Brian Quarstad at Inside Minnesota Soccer has the story of what happened next, which sounds like something from "60 Minutes." It's a fascinating read. In a train-wrecky sort of way. The best part is that his family is quoted, basically stating that he's clearly nuts.

*Parker Hageman has some theories on why Scott Baker got hit so hard last year - as well as the graphs and video captures to back them up. He's also got some reasons for optimism, as well. Great stuff from Hageman.

*Every time the Vikes Geek writes about the Vikings' stadium campain, I sit up and take notice. This edition's key quote: "The Vikings' claim [about their financial woes], while true, tells not even one-tenth of the revenue story for the team." Just a reminder: the Vikings make plenty of money, but not as much as they maybe could, and that is why they want the public to spend an enormous amount on a stadium. Seriously, I want the Vikings to stay here as much as anybody, but giving away a near-billion-dollar facility to increase club profits from "sizable" to "enormous" seems like bad policy.

*And finally: Nick Nelson points out that, if Joe Nathan hits his goals of pitching six or seven more years, he could well be on the road to a very, very exclusive club. And no, I don't mean the limited club of guys who've come back from Tommy John surgery in a year or less.

That'll do it for me. Enjoy the warm weather today; if you're like me, your brain has now shifted into "spring is right around the corner! WHOOOO!" mode. Which makes it even worse when the temperature drops back below zero, like it will this week. February: a month for depression.