This post was written on Thursday pre-July 4th weekend, though it appeared on the 2nd. This is always tougher because I have to choose subjects that Rand won’t link to or talk about – hence, the mini-essay about soccer television ratings. One of these weeks I’m just going to write entirely about super-niche sports – Australian Rules football, South African rugby, and that sort of thing – and I’ll see if Rand actually puts it up. Anyway, the following appeared first at RandBall, everyone’s favorite Independence Day sports blog.

Happy Fourth of July Weekend! If Memorial Day is the official beginning of summer, then Independence Day marks the weekend when you realize that summer is slipping through your grasp and is in fact already one-third over. That summer list you made – you know, back in February when you were stuck inside and cursing your lot in life – is starting to look a bit daunting now. Let’s face it: you are not going to buy a motorcycle and ride it to Saskatoon, just for the pure thrill of the open road. You have chores to do. But you can still spend a weekend sitting in a lawn chair and blowing stuff up, and frankly, isn’t that all you really wanted out of summer, anyway?

On with some holiday weekend links:

*John Bonnes looks at the Twins’ lineup cards this year and comes to a realization – they’re almost like snowflakes, not a one alike.

*Meanwhile, Parker Hageman examines Scott Baker’s season, looking for the reasons that the shoulder-slumping righty is so much better this year than last.

*In television news: last week, I encouraged you to watch the Gold Cup final between the USA and Mexico. For those of you who did, and had to squirm through the home team’s embarrassing 4-2 loss to the Mexicans, I apologize… but you were not alone. Almost nine million people watched the game – more than Game 7 of the Stanley Cup and almost as many as the final round of the US Open. Now, eight million of those viewers were watching the Spanish-language broadcast on Univision, which indicates that Mexico’s presence in the final may have been a driving factor in that number. Even so, to me it’s yet another indication of soccer’s status as a non-niche sport in America.

*And with that in mind, it’s time for Episode 2 of the NSC Minnesota Stars documentary, in which the crew talks to team CEO Djorn Buchholz, and interviews midfielder Ely Allen, who managed to give himself a possible concussion in the kitchen. Also look out for interviews with assistant coach Carl Craig, the only person in the video whose language had to be edited. (He’s from northern England, so I find it hilarious; he sounds like’s about to jump through the screen and smash a pint glass over your head.)

That’s enough for the Fourth – now get out there and get those fireworks! No, not those. The good ones. You know the ones I mean.

Usually at Twinkie Town on Mondays, I write a sarcastic joke post in the morning, and then a serious game recap following the game in the evening. Well, this time around I started the day off with a serious review of Alex Halsted’s “100 Things Twins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.”

Then, that night, the Twins lost 15-0 to the Dodgers… and I couldn’t help myself from writing my most sarcastic game recap ever. These things happen, I guess.

This week in the weekend links, I forget about the women’s World Cup, we talk soccer, and local humorist Stu makes fun of Joe Mauer. It’s all happening! As always, these first appeared at RandBall, your home for goofy pictures stolen from the internet.

Ah, summer; it’s a time for baseball, and for the NBA and NHL drafts, and for breathless, pointless coverage of NFL minicamps. For those of us who are soccer-inclined, it’s also a time for international soccer, and for USA fans, it’s a Gold Cup summer. Quick summary for the uninitiated: the Gold Cup is a biannual soccer tournament in which all of the North American and Caribbean teams play each other for three weeks before the USA and Mexico play in the final. The USA can’t beat Mexico in Mexico, and the Mexicans usually have trouble winning in America, mostly because America helpfully schedules most of the matches for Ohio in February when it’s about 23 degrees outside. (I think Bud Grant may coach the team.)

Anyway, the final is tonight, at 8pm, and while it’s in America, it’s at the Rose Bowl, which if anything is usually a road game for the USA. Unless you’re really looking forward to the Rugby World Cup, this might be your one chance this summer for some good old fashioned nationalistic cheering.[Proprietor note: What our misogynistic friend meant to say was, the Women’s World Cup also starts Sunday!]

And the first two links are about soccer in America, so away we go!

*Spencer Hall muses on the one-year anniversary of Landon Donovan’s goal in the World Cup against Algeria, certainly the best USA soccer moment of the recent past. It turns into a few thoughts on what it means to be a fan. It’s the same reaction I remember having at the time: that right there, that is why we are sports fans.

*The Run of Play thinks that soccer is like that woman you know you shouldn’t chase. The only issue I take with this piece is that it seems to wonder if America will ever embrace soccer, a question that I find to be about ten years out of date. Occasionally, you still read the “soccer’s about to catch on!” article, or the “America will never like soccer rabble rabble” opinion piece, but I have some news: while we were all talking about it, soccer arrived. Kids play it. The games are on TV. Die-hard crowds show up for MLS games across the country. Believe me, I know from niche sports, and soccer isn’t a niche sport in America, not any more. Like it if you want, hate it if you want, but arguing about it won’t change that it’s already here.

*Enough about soccer; let’s talk Timberwolves! Most of the local basketball literati had a strange reaction to the Timberwolves draft – they actually think there’s now a light at the end of the tunnel. The Wolf Among Wolves blog is upbeat, always a surprising reaction for a Minnesota basketball fan. (Granted, this was before we found out that the Wolves had mistakenly drafted an ineligible player, which while unfortunate, is also hilariously funny – but still.)

*And finally: RandBall correspondent Stu is funny, which you already knew. Joe Mauer is boring, which you also already knew. But the former teased the latter for his dullness this week, and frankly, that’s a combination that we like to see. Well done, Stu. Well done.

That’ll do it for me; I’m off to make sure that RandBall correspondent Dave MN doesn’t punch anybody in the face. (You know how he gets when discussions about hops get started.)

Today’s Twinkie Town column is titled “Ask A Twins Coach,” and is written in the vein of the long tradition of fake advice columns. It features Steve Liddle dealing with some self-esteem issues.

I’m not sure what else I can say to give you the correct idea, which is that this week’s column makes no sense.

As always, this week’s RandBall column – now with 58% more straw men! – appeared first at RandBall, your future home for the best NHL Draft coverage on the internet.

Now that Joe Mauer’s back in the Twins lineup, I feel like we all need to sit down and have a little chat about our attitude towards his injury absence. Now, don’t get me wrong; it was fun to make jokes about bilateral leg weakness, mostly because it seemed like such an absurd diagnosis. It didn’t quite approach the time Matthew LeCroy was held out of the lineup with gout, but still, bilateral leg weakness was only about two clicks less silly-sounding than “housewives’ knee.” Even so, I was a little bit astonished by the number of people who confidently and happily expressed the opinion that Mauer wasn’t hurt and was just being a wuss. Here was the cornerstone of the franchise, the much-beloved local hero, unable to play because a combination of (somewhat murky) factors had combined to rob him of all leg strength. Somehow, though, instead of causing mass panic, this translated in the minds of many fans into, “Jeez, what a pansy.”

To those who’ve seriously questioned Mauer’s toughness – and you know who you are – I suspect maybe you need to rethink your attitude. I know that bilateral leg weakness sounds goofy, and that since you can’t quite imagine what it feels like, it’s easy for you to conclude that it doesn’t hurt at all. But if someone else’s injury doesn’t seem like it hurts, that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous that you think it doesn’t qualify as a legitimate injury for someone else.

Now that we’ve beaten the stuffing out of that particular straw man, on with the links!

*Spencer Hall continues his “The Amateur” series by taking part in an Indoor Football League practice (that, for confusing reasons, was held outdoors.) Specifically, he attempts to field an onside kick, which in all forms of football is akin to trying to catch a pork chop being tossed into the middle of a pack of coyotes. Poor Spencer nearly has his head cleaved from his shoulders, but there is video, which makes it worth it for us, the interested viewers.

*A couple of weeks ago, it seemed like the MLB Draft would be the only bright spot in an epic slog of season-long Twins disaster. Since then, the home nine has won a dozen games and brightened things up considerably, but that said, it’s always fun to look at the guys that might be the future. John Sickels at Minor League Ball has a quick overview of the team’s first ten picks; Aaron Gleeman has a short review as well. (Both are a little more positive than commenter Clarence Swamptown, who emailed me within minutes of the team’s first pick, already comparing infielder Levi Michael to Todd Walker.)

*Parker Hageman points out that Delmon Young is holding his hands higher at the plate, which should assist him in getting a bit more leverage at the plate (code for “not hitting the ball weakly, like he’s using a large stick of beef jerky.”) I’d be more enthused about this, except that it seems like Delmon goes through this every year and it takes the coaching staff two months to convince him that swinging with his eyes closed, or whatever his problem happens to be at the time, isn’t the answer. I just wish it was up to a different team’s coaching staff, is all.

*And finally: CNN sure doesn’t think much of Vancouver. Given that they continue to employ Alex Burrows, I have to say I agree.

That’s enough for this weekend; enjoy your Saturday. Rand will be back in on Monday, no doubt kicking off a week’s worth of breathless NHL Draft coverage here at RandBall.

This week at Twinkie Town, I’ve written up a handful of possible upcoming Twins headlines. As always, even when the Twins have won ten of twelve, it’s more fun to goof on the team’s future possibilities than it is to face up to the realities – that everybody’s hurt and the team needs to win fifteen in a row to get anywhere near contention.

Here’s your latest edition of the weekend links, which as always appeared first at RandBall, your home for recycled content about Dan Cloutier from years ago.

This week, Grantland launched, which Rand covered in some detail last night. This requires an official Weekend Links Policy Decision: I will not be linking to Grantland articles. Don’t get me wrong, the site is really, really good – so good that I’d do nothing but post links to Grantland, if I included them. The site goes into the same category as Joe Posnanski and Steve Rushin – required reading. Here’s their RSS feed, here’s their Twitter feed; follow them.

On with the links:

*I really enjoyed Robert Lipsyte’s memoir excerpt about his encounters with Bob Costas. I find Costas to be kind of a fascinating character – he’s obviously a wonderful and likeable character, only he has kind of Mike Lupica streak in him that sometimes seems to respond to any slight, no matter how small, with bomb-throwing.

*Parker Hageman often studies the Twins videos and is able to explain, with examples, of why a certain Twins player is struggling. This week, he’s examined Danny Valencia, and we’ve reached a first – Parker has no idea what’s going wrong. This is almost more exciting than usual!

*The other Twins links for this week: John Bonnes talks a little about Run Expectancy, which is always good; Hageman looks at Delmon Young, and this time, has some answers; and Alexi Casilla’s sudden hot streak is studied, to see if it can actually keep going.

That’ll do it for me; now please, enjoy your Saturday, despite there being no Stanley Cup or NBA Finals game tonight, for some stupid reason. Someone should schedule these things better.

You may be aware of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the nearly-three-decades-old annual awards for composing the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. For example, here’s last year’s winner:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil. 

Truly rancid, I think we can agree. And it’s in that spirit that I’ve composed some opening sentences for the story of the 2011 Twins. It’s over at Twinkie Town, and frankly, I’m surprised I haven’t previously come up with the simple expedient of intending to write bad, bad sentences.

It’s time once again for the weekend links, which as always appeared first at RandBall, your home for rampant positivity in the face of all facts.

This year’s Stanley Cup Finals are reminding me once again that maybe I need to back off the hate a little. I think it’s pretty common for passionate sports fans to develop a dislike of other teams; in rare cases, this can eventually lead to a hatred of the entire rest of the league. And that leads to internal arguments like, “Well, Boston’s fans are entitled whiny jerks, but Vancouver is the city that brought us Mattias Ohlund and Alex Burrows and Todd Bertuzzi and Brad May, making it possibly the worst city in the Western Hemisphere.” Frankly, this doesn’t make me want to sit down and watch the Finals, even though it’s the apex of the hockey season. It makes me want to halfheartedly pull for Boston to win while Vancouver drops off into the Pacific Ocean and eventually becomes a protectorate of Vladivostok. I think I’d enjoy things more if I didn’t hate either team.

On with the links:

*In keeping with the hockey theme, Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch wrote a nice profile of Doc Emrick, currently America’s top hockey announcer. I still miss Gary Thorne an awful lot, but Emrick’s darn good too, mostly because he seems like he’s the biggest fan of hockey in the world and just happens to have a microphone. I’ve noticed my favorites (Thorne, Emrick, Gus Johnson, Kevin Harlan) are the people who seem best able to carry a tone of genuine real live excitement into the broadcast – not manufactured, not yelling for the sake of yelling, but honestly able to translate the thrills of live sports through the microphone.

*In the wake of the media’s discovery that West Virginia head football coach-in-waiting Dana Holgorsen likes a drink, Spencer Hall writes about his own family’s experience in these matters. I have mentioned this before, but I really enjoy Spencer Hall’s writing. You should too.

*I suppose only The Economist could, or would, connect the current FIFA scandals with the Cuban secret police and, in a larger sense, Britain’s place in the world. On the other hand, this is a newspaper that once referred to football as “a sport that vaguely resembles rugby in wimpish armour-plating,” so perhaps they’re not the sages they claim to be.

*I suppose even the most optimistic Twins fans have given up on 2011, but Steve Adams at Twinkie Town knows that at least we can look forward to the draft. The problem with the baseball draft is that anyone the Twins pick will probably not crack the lineup before about 2015, but still, it’s fun to imagine.

*And finally: we’ve all tried our hands at sports-related literary parody. (Well, I have.) Seldom, however, is it as well done as this. Key quote: “While the offense nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping / As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the clubhouse door. / `’Tis Nick Punto’, I muttered, ‘missing juiceboxes galore – / Only this, and nothing more.’”

That’ll do it for me this week. Enjoy tonight’s Stanley Cup game… if you can.

Editor’s note: Here’s another edition of the weekend links – this one for Memorial Day weekend, meaning that it was written right before vacation and thus was a bit hurried. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for AMERICA!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! It’s always nice when we get to kick off summer with rain and temperatures in the 40s, isn’t it? [Editor’s note: Rand inserted a comment here about it being 70 and sunny. It was cold and rainy on Friday night, though, which is what I meant.]. I’ve got a few links for your holiday weekend pleasure, and in the interest of not keeping you long, let’s get right to them:

*Via Inside MN Soccer: Local company Brave New Media has partnered with the NSC Minnesota Stars to produce some behind-the-scenes videos. The first one for the year – covering the pre-season – is up. Admittedly, I’m even more of a soccer kisser-upper than Rand, but I still think it’s fascinating – especially the story of defender Kyle Altman, who’s deferred admission to med school twice so that he can keep playing.

*Over at Twinkie Town, Stu’s got the news of yet another thing Kevin Slowey’s responsible for. And if you’re tired of watching the Twins blow leads, here’s a list of other ways to spend your hard-earned money than going to the ballpark.

*The Gopher baseball team is attempting to work its way through the loser’s bracket at the Big Ten tournament; they’ve won three in a row there, and now just needs to win three more in a row to take the tourney title. Never fear, though – they’ve got Luke Rasmussen and his over-the-top Minnesota accent, so I think they’ll be okay. (If for nothing else, watch that video for what he calls the team’s starting shortstop.)

*And finally: Nerd-hero web comic XKCD took on sports last week. Speaking on behalf of all of us: ow.

That’s enough for a holiday weekend like this. Enjoy it and stay dry.