I went through all of my Weekend Links columns from 2010, and came up with my Top 10 of ’10 list. Here they are, my favorite ten links of 2010 – plus a couple of general honorable mentions.

Fourth Test: England won by an innings and 171 runs (Australia 98 & 258, England 513). England retain the Ashes.

When I was a kid, playing out my sporting dreams in the backyard, the wins I invented for my teams fell almost entirely into two categories: either the improbable comeback or the utter, crushing dominant victory. Usually in the former, I’d miss out on the first half of the game through some contrived circumstances – a bullheaded coach or a crippling but not incapacitating injury, say, which would make my second-half return even more impressive to the imaginary crowd. In the latter, I’d take over the game from the beginning, as virtually everything went right; I’d hit two grand slams in the first inning, or pour in thirty-four points in the first half, going ten-for-ten from behind the arc and turning two steals into thundering breakaway dunks.

In real life, of course, such dominance seldom happens. That said, England’s performance in the fourth Ashes test, the traditional Boxing Day test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground that was referred to by some as the “jewel of the Australian sporting calendar” – well, for the English, that had to come close.

It’s the first time ever that Australia have lost two Tests in the same series by an innings. It’s Australia’s biggest Ashes loss since 1956. 98 was their lowest-ever score in a Test innings at Melbourne, and innings-plus-171 their worst defeat at Melbourne since 1912. By the time that Chris Tremlett bowled Ben Hilfenhaus to complete Australia’s first innings – just before bedtime on Christmas Day in America, just after teatime on Boxing Day in Australia – it already had to go down as one of the worst days for the Aussies ever.

By the time the first day ended, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook had already gone past Australia’s total, putting on 157 without losing a wicket. On day two, Jonathan Trott put together the beginnings of what would become his match-best 168, batting until the end of England’s innings early on day three. By the time Australia got back in to bat for their second innings, they trailed by 415 runs and had no chance of winning the match and virtually no chance of drawing, either. In the end, only Shane Watson and Brad Haddin made it past 50 in either Australian innings, something Strauss, Cook, Trott, Kevin Pietersen, and Matt Prior all accomplished for England.

So that’s the Ashes retained for England – a feat they hadn’t accomplished Down Under since 1986. Since that series, England had been going south for the summer every four years and regularly getting comprehensively annihilated, so this marks a serious accomplishment for the “Poms,” as the Australian media calls the English. They’ll now head to the fifth test in Sydney, looking to win the series with a win or a draw there.

I’m no analyst, but here’s what I know: if England and Australia got together and chose up sides, based entirely on performances this series, almost all of the first-string players would be English. Let’s say you’re picking the teams as follows: two opening batsmen, four middle-order batsmen, a wicketkeeper, three fast bowlers, and a spin bowler.

Your opening batsmen would probably be Cook, and either Watson or Strauss. The former averaged more runs than Strauss and made two more half-centuries, but also factored in a couple of silly run-outs suffered by the Aussies. Plus if the team needs a captain, Strauss is your choice by far.

Your middle-order batsmen would be Trott, Australian Michael Hussey (probably the lone bright spot for Australia so far), then Pietersen and Ian Bell, who batted at number 6 for England, occasionally too late to have much impact.

You could make an argument for either wicketkeeper, and I won’t try to distinguish between them. The Australian announcers could not stop raving about Matt Prior’s keeping for England, and he did seem to get to absolutely everything; when he screwed up on the final day of the Melbourne test, dropping an easy opportunity, it seemed unbelievable. On the other hand, Brad Haddin was Australia’s second-best batsman, and scored far more runs than Prior.

Your spin bowler would be Graeme Swann from England, and there’s no argument at all for even a minute, mostly because Australia’s Xavier Doherty was so bad in the first two Tests that Australia gave up on spin bowling entirely in the next two and just picked four fast bowlers.

And your fast bowlers would be James Anderson from England, and then probably one of Chris Tremlett or Tim Bresnan or Steven Finn from England, and then you can argue about whether you want one of the other two or Australia’s Peter Siddle.

So that’s what, four Aussies out of eleven, if we’re very generous? And a serious argument that the only way England could have improved the team would be by trading Paul Collingwood for Hussey?

When I type it out this way, the only surprising thing is really that Australia won a Test at all. Of course, they’ll probably win by 350 runs at Sydney, draw the series but lose the Ashes, and make all of this look silly.

I’m on vacation and it was Christmas weekend. That’s my excuse for why my Twinkie Town column this week was, of all things, a Larry King column parody, which makes no sense on any level. It did, however, allow me to type things like, “Either these suspenders are on too tight, or this shirt’s on inside out…”, so I guess that’s something.

This week’s edition of the weekend links was, for whatever reason, heavy on sports media commentary and light on actual content. I also proved that I can spell Tsuyoshi Nishioka at the drop of a hat, which when you think about it, is actually harder than spelling “Doug Mientkiewicz” because with him, you basically got the Doug spotted to you, and you just had to remember where the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ went in his last name.

Continuing a string of offseason silliness at Twinkie Town, today’s post was written from the theoretical point of view of Scott Ullger, talking about some of the things he’s learned as the third base coach.

Third Test: Australia won by 267 runs (Australia 268 & 309, England 187 & 123)

There is an anecdote in one of George Will’s baseball books about the 1988 World Series, which the first of the outstanding La Russa-Canseco-McGwire Oakland A’s teams lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, four games to one. In the first game of that series, the Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first, but the A’s answered back in the second inning with a Jose Canseco grand slam to go ahead 4-2. Oakland had absolutely ripped through the American League, that year – they finished 104-58 in the regular season, thirteen games ahead of the next best AL team, and had gone on to bomb Boston in the ALCS four games to none.

As the anecdote goes, Canseco’s grand slam was the worst thing that could have happened to Oakland, because the entire team relaxed – the nerves of the World Series were taken over by the supreme confidence that they’d get anything they needed, whenever they wanted. Later that night, Kirk Gibson hit his miraculous home run to steal Game One. Oakland wouldn’t score another run after Canseco’s homer until the third inning of Game Three. And the Dodgers would take the Series and the trophy.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of that story, early in this match. England was absolutely dominant in the second Test, but they’d lost fast bowler Stuart Broad to an abdominal injury. He’d been replaced by Chris Tremlett, who hadn’t played a Test in a good three years. The media coverage in the run-up to the match focused entirely on how badly Australia was playing, with only the uncertainty of Tremlett thrown in on the England side.

So in the second over, when Tremlett charged in and clean bowled Australian batsman Phillip Hughes, you could have forgiven England for thinking they’d get anything they needed, whenever they needed it.

It wasn’t just Hughes falling early, though – the rest of the Australian order spent the first morning capitulating. When Tremlett took Steve Smith’s wicket right after lunch, the Aussies were on 69 runs for 5 wickets – much, much worse than at Adelaide, when they were famously on two runs for three wickets, but didn’t lose their fourth wicket until 96.

I suppose Smith’s wicket was the apex for England in this test; for the rest of the first day, they couldn’t find that same fire. Michael Hussey, Brad Haddin, and Mitchell Johnson all made half-centuries to rescue the Aussies, who cobbled together nearly 200 runs for their last five wickets, getting to a reasonable first-innings total of 268. Given that England’s prior two innings had been 620/5 (at Adelaide) and 517/1 (at Brisbane), though, I suspect England still felt they’d get what they needed.

That didn’t happen, of course. Mitchell Johnson – who didn’t play in Adelaide after bowling like a blind man at Brisbane – tore through England in the first innings, taking six wickets, including three in the space of three overs early on the second day. In the second innings, it was Australia’s Ryan Harris taking six, including four in six overs near the end of the innings. For the match, Johnson took nine wickets and Harris took nine – combined, more wickets than Australia took as a team in the first two matches. Whether tremendously good bowling by Australia or tremendously bad batting from England, the result was just 310 runs for the match for the English, an ugly total no matter how you look at it.

So a series that England could have won at Perth now teeters precariously at 1-1. The teams head back across Australia, to Melbourne, where the fourth test begins on Christmas Day, here in the USA (apparently a Boxing Day Test is traditional, which would make it a Christmas evening event in America.) I spent the first three Tests gloating about how convenient the series was for me to watch, given that each day’s play began in the evening and ran until bedtime, but this one doesn’t exactly fit the schedule, not over the Christmas break. I suspect I won’t see any of it, except perhaps to sneak in highlights, here and there.

One final note, to praise Australia for their great talent in nicknaming cricket grounds. The first test was played at the Brisbane Cricket Ground, the third in Perth at the Western Australia Cricket Association Ground. Naturally, the Aussies call the Perth stadium “The WACA” and the Brisbane one, which is in the suburb of Woolloongabba, “The Gabba.” I think we can all agree that this is wonderful.

Sunday, the Metrodome roof collapsed – which hadn’t happened due to snow since 1983. With this in mind, I wrote about what Twinkie Town might do in the unlikely event of a disaster. (We have a Nick Punto Strategic Joke Reserve, so never fear.)

It’s the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the RandBall blog on startribune.com, as written by Star Tribune high school sports editor and Page 2 editor Michael Rand. I’ve written tributes to him for each of the past three RandBall birthdays, so this year, I decided to just interview him – and get out of the way.

I got stuck in the house last Saturday, like much of Minnesota. I briefly considered going outside and shoveling on Saturday morning – but instead I stayed inside and wrote the weekend links, with an expected amount of weather-related grousing. Besides the complaining, there’s links that are (at least tangentially) related to college hockey, the MLB Hot Stove League, and the NBA lockout – so please enjoy.

It’s one of the biggest weeks of the MLB offseason: baseball’s winter meetings in Florida. This is the week when general managers, agents, and assorted hangers-on gather in warmer climates, and start hashing out deals and shaping teams for 2011. Naturally, then, Twinkie Town is focused on actual news instead of silly jokes; I provided the first-day wrap-up last night. There’s news of Tsuyoshi Nishioka, plus a few other random tidbits.