Weekend Links

Here's this week's edition of the weekend links, which actually have some writing to begin with and not just links! As always, these links first appeared at RandBall, your home for soccer kisser-uppers on the Minnesota internets.

Welcome to this edition of the weekend links! First off this week: yesterday, our local pro soccer team, the NSC Minnesota Stars, put on what I think may be the best promotion I've ever heard of. The team printed up 2,000 Stars scarves, then left them various places around the Twin Cities - the downtowns, Uptown, and the U of M campus especially - with an offer for free admission attached. If you found a scarf, you got the scarf, plus two free tickets to tonight's home opener. That's the Sid Hartman statue there in the photo, wearing his own scarf.

I nearly left work to go search. As it was, I found one on my way to lunch. I left it there - I can't go to the game tonight, and I thought it only fair to leave the scarf for someone who could make it - but what an absolutely cool idea. I may buy season tickets just because I'd like to congratulate the Stars marketing department. The game's at 7:30 tonight at the National Sports Center in Blaine, against Carolina, in case you're wondering - I recommend it.

On with the links:

*Spencer Hall has some bad news for Grantland Rice, who just can't make the cut in today's world of sportswriting. Sorry, Grantland. You'll have to go someplace where they don't care how poorly and weirdly you write. Like Bleacher Report! (NOTE TO RAND: IF I CAN'T TAKE A GRATUITOUS SHOT AT BLEACHER REPORT, PLEASE REMOVE JUST THE FINAL SENTENCE OF THIS PARAGRAPH. BUT BLEACHER REPORT DESERVES IT BECAUSE THEY SUUUUCK.)

*PGA golfer Ben Crane has appeared on RandBall before, and now he's returned with more videos. Ben Crane is either insane or a comic genius, possibly both, and either way he's now absolutely my favorite golfer.

*Parker Hageman at TwinsCentric goes to the videoto try to figure out why Francisco Liriano can't throw a strike. Late on Friday, it came out that Rick Anderson and Ron Gardenhire had a discussion with Liriano about his release point, so apparently Parker wasn't too far off here.

*Finals week is coming up, and Canis Hoopus has published its final grades for the 2010-2011 Timberwolves. Let's all look on the bright side: only one F! And four D's, but still!

*And finally: The Sports Economist blog reminds us all that, when you see the "economic impact" statistics for any sporting event (in this case, the CONCACAF Champions League final in Salt Lake City), those figures are almost always wrong.

That's enough for this week. Here's hoping you found your scarf, yesterday. To all other sport teams in the area: there should be more scavenger hunt-based promotions. After my excitement yesterday, I feel very strongly about this.

If You Can't Say Something Nice...

Today at Twinkie Town, we try to find nice things to say to the members of a 9-12 ball club that is hitting as if the team had issued piano legs instead of bats. For example, Jim Thome looks great in plaid. That's what we in the business call "an intangible."

Weekend Links

I have to hurry here - I'm missing out on the French rugby match referred to in this post. (It was a joke that turned into something I actually wanted to do. I'm a sick man.) As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, which seems to be your home for creepy pictures of the eyes of Dr. TJ Randelberg.

Happy Saturday! With the Twins rained out last night, I got some serious cable surfing accomplished, and I have to say - it's a good time to be a channel-flipping sports fan. Playoff hockey, playoff basketball, baseball, soccer... it's hard to turn on the TV without seeing parts of four or five different games. (At least for me. Maybe the rest of you see the Cardinals and the Reds on channel 873 and don't think, "Oooh, how's THAT game going?")

Anyway, on with the links:

*We begin this week with the great Spencer Hall, who took to the park to play a bit of Aussie Rules Football in Atlanta. With no photographer available, you'll have to depend on Hall's renditions of the game, which I think are probably even better than photos would have been. Also, I understand that a Aussie Rules club also exists here in the Twin Cities, so if you live in the area and enjoy running for two hours while a muscular Aussie punches and kicks you, your next move is clear.

*You're not going to believe this (you philistines), but the NHL has just signed the most lucrative television deal in league history, a ten-year, $2 billion deal. The biggest news here is that every game of the playoffs will be nationally televised, unlike the current arrangement that shows about half of the games (at least in the first round). This means they'll need more announcers, and I can only hope, as I always do, that they'll spend the money and get Gary Thorne back where he belongs, calling playoff hockey.

*The Vikes Geek would much rather have a new Vikings left tackle than a new Vikings quarterback. Having seen Bryant McKinnie play on a regular basis, I'm inclined to agree.

*Twins links this week: Parker Hageman breaks down Jason Kubel's adjustments at the plate, while Aaron Gleeman says the 19th greatest Twin of all time is somebody I'd honestly never heard of.

That'll do it for me; I've gotta run. There's a French rugby match on at 10:25 this morning that I just can't miss. (ESPN3 has really put a dent in my free time.)

Delmon Young's Weekly Review of Literature and the Arts

At Twinkie Town this week, I absorb a new fact - that Delmon Young's favorite book is The Great Gatsby - and wonder: what if Delmon is much more literary than we thought?

Also, I put up a preview of Monday night's game (with a couple of jokes), and later, a recap (with fewer jokes, except for "Drew Butera drove in three runs," which looks like a joke but actually happened.)

Weekend Links

It snowed this morning. It's supposed to snow again later this week. It's now been over five months since the first snowfall of the year. This is ridiculous.

At any rate, here's this week's weekend links, which as always first appeared on RandBall.

Happy Saturday! Quite often, I lead off with something about the weather, but I just don't want to talk about it this week. On with the links!

*We start this week with a look at what the Timberwolves need to do this off-season, as summarized by commenter Brandon. Somehow, I read through the whole thing in a pretty positive frame of mind... until I got to the part about the current state of the rotation, where I realized two things: A) Brandon thinks the Wolves are short four starters at the moment. B) Brandon is completely right.

*The ladies of Babes Love Baseball, Sooze and Marea, got a chance to interview Joe Mauer and his mom. Though Mauer is suffering from bilateral leg weakness, neither Joe nor Sooze nor Marea collapsed during the interview, so I think we can consider it a success all around.

*About 85% of the conversations I've had in the past week have gone like this:

Person A: How about those Twins, huh?

Person B: I know. (shakes head sorrowfully)

And with that in mind, two Twins links: first, Parker Hageman examines the root causes of the Twins' offensive failure. Second Jesse Lund at Twinkie Town examines Francisco Liriano's last start, and, despite the disastrous number on the scoreboard, has some positive thoughts.

*I really enjoyed this article from SI.com, which looks at a company that analyzes pitching videos to explain why some guys are "sneaky fast," and how a guy who hits 91 on the radar gun can actually be effectively throwing 93 or 94.

*And finally: Spring football's in full swing, and that means it's time for Spencer Hall to bring out the spring edition of the Howard Schnellenberger Top 25. The usual rating (PG-13 for adult situations and slight nonsensicality) applies.

That'll do it for me. Here's hoping the sun comes out and the Twins win. And not in that order.

The Twinhua News Agency

This week at Twinkie Town, I spent some time poking fun at the Twins' current culture of, shall we say, misinformation. The team keeps insisting that it will be fine and that nothing is wrong with Joe Mauer and that everything is okay. It's very Pravda-esque, and since the official propaganda arm of the Chinese government is the Xinhua News Agency... well, writing about the Twinhua News Agency just fit perfectly.

Weekend Links

All weekend baseball games during prime yard work season should be played at midday. I feel very strongly about this. What am I supposed to listen to while raking leaves that I planned to rake in November, a plan scuttled by seven inches of snow? While you ponder that, here's the weekend links. As always, this was first published at RandBall, the very best sports blog in all of Minnesota.

Happy Saturday! The last time we met, two weeks ago, we had three inches of snow on the ground and I was writing about our January-esque weather. Today, I'm planning out a day full of yard work. This doesn't make a lick of sense and we all should complain to someone, if possible.

After two weeks away, though, I've got a backlog of links to get through, so on we go:

*I liked this analysis from John Bonnes, detailing the delta stream of future probabilities resulting from a single Drew Butera at-bat late in a game in Toronto. And while we're talking about Twins-related analysis, you can't do better than Parker Hageman - who this week is studying the video and correlating a slight change in Denard Span's pre-swing hand positioning with Span's new troubles with hitting the fastball. Marvelous stuff.

*Kyle Nelson, writing for Inside Minnesota Soccer, has the strange-but-true story of how a bunch of second-division players almost ended up playing for the men's national soccer team in an important World Cup qualifier. (Longtime US soccer viewers may now insert their own "anybody's better than Jeff Agoos" jokes here.)

*In stadium news, the Vikes Geek doesn't seem too happy with the Vikings. To put it mildly. Chalk at least one fan up in the "Let The Bums Leave Town" group.

*The baseball season's already started, which makes this particular preseason prognostication a bit late, but I still encourage you to listen to Michael "Ken Tremendous" Schur and Joe Posnanski make their 2011 baseball picks. I'm not normally much of a podcast kind of guy, but this one's worth it.

*And finally, if you're not in the mood for serious discussion, Spencer Hall has some theories about what team luge might look like.

That'll do it for me this week. I'll leave you to admire the awesome new Star Tribune web design. (Except for the comments that don't all fit on one page. Again. I thought we were past this! Everyone finds this incredibly annoying, right, or is it just me?)

The Twins 2011 Season In Review

One of my first columns for Twinkie Town, back in early 2007, was a slightly-tweaked ripoff of Dave Barry's annual Year In Review column - the tweak being that it was about the Twins, and written before the year even began.

It's become an annual thing, and though many of the jokes are similar - all of the Livan Hernandez jokes have become Jose Mijares jokes, for example - it's still fun. The 2011 version is up at Twinkie Town. As I wrote on Twitter - fifth time's the charm!

Five Ways To Pad A Weekly Column

Last Monday at Twinkie Town was the final Monday of spring training. Starting tomorrow, I have to come up with actual things to write about on Mondays. For now, though, I just made five top five lists - I lacked the creativity to come up with ten things for any of the lists - and called it good enough.

Theoretically, there was space for twenty-five jokes in this piece. I am happy with about four of them, maybe as many as five. I am batting .200 at best. I am the Drew Butera of comedy.

Weekend Links

These links are actually from last Saturday, March 26. But Rand went on vacation last week - there must have been a national pug convention or something - and so there weren't any links today, April 2. This has thus given me the opportunity to post the links this week and pretend that I did it on time. As always, these links first appeared at RandBall, your home for vacationing high school sportswriters on the internet.

Happy Saturday! So how are you enjoying January, the third time around this year? Mine even came complete with a little bit of midwinter sickness, which is always entertaining. I've spent the past three days exploring to see what kind of fun new interactions I might be able to find between various over-the-counter cold medications. So far I haven't found much, but I'll let you know if I come up with anything good.

*We start this week with - what else - obscure sports! Australian Rules Football started this week, to much acclaim from genius Spencer Hall, who calls it the greatest sport on the planet. I checked out some of a game on ESPN3.com, and I have to admit - the Aussies are serious about their violence. There's a lot of shoving and punching outside the confines of the game. Everybody acts like this is normal. At one point, the cameras caught one player mule-kicking an opposing player in the crotch. Understandably angry, the kickee retaliated with a full-force kidney punch. This didn't turn into a brawl and the announcers didn't even mention it. Anyway, I can give Aussie Rules my niche sports endorsement, because it looks like a game you and your buddies would invent when you were ten years old and bored in the backyard.

*The guys behind the baseball webcomic "The Dugs" are giving it up, which is too bad because the site was genuinely funny. As proof: this. It's philosophy and baseball wrapped into one!

*Parker Hageman has studied the video, and has figured out what might be going wrong with Kevin Slowey. Wednesday night when the Twins were on TV, I watched the game differently, thanks to Parker's work. I can't think of a much better compliment than that.

*When the Big Ten announced it was going to start a hockey conference, I immediately went to the Western College Hockey Blog to find out what to think. Key quote, regarding the conference tournament: "Apparently the feeling is that Michigan fans won't travel to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a conference tournament, and Minnesota fans won't travel to Detroit for a conference tournament, so the top idea as of now seems to be to hold the Big Ten conference tournament in Chicago, where fans of neither team will travel. That seems smart."

*And finally, two things I always like: when Michael Russo goes off on someone (it's Mikko Koivu this time), and when Steve Rushin reminds me of my childhood.

That'll do it for me - and apparently, for RandBall, at least for a week. I'm not sure where we should take the discussion in the meantime. Maybe over to Paul Douglas's blog. After this winter, that guy seems like he could use a little Stu and a little Clarence Swamptown.