It’s been 25 years since the Twins won the World Series in 1987, and so with that in mind, I decided to pull out the DVD and look back at Game 5 of the Series, which was 25 years ago today.

The pants are ridiculous. The turf is ridiculous. But the baseball remains more or less the same.

NOTE: As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for RandBall.

After a brief flurry of hope, it turned out that the NHL owners weren’t so much interested in negotiating as in running focus groups, so the NHL lockout is still firmly in place and will be for the foreseeable future. Players want to play hockey (albeit without their paychecks being slashed). Fans want to watch hockey. Near-arena businesses are desperate for hockey. But the owners have the game held hostage, so without hockey we remain.

The players really have no leverage here; they can’t threaten to not play, obviously. About all they could do is go play somewhere else, so it makes me wonder: what would a breakaway, rebel league look like?

This new WHA wouldn’t want for coverage. ESPN would probably pick up the TV contract – they’ve started televising KHL games, so they clearly are desperate for content of any kind. The media would go nuts to cover it, especially at the beginning, as the scads of NHL talent would be re-allocated like a real-life fantasy hockey draft. Cities like Quebec City and Seattle would have a shot at having a pro hockey team in town. It’d be immensely entertaining and always teetering on the edge of disaster, just like a good hockey game itself.

It’ll never happen, of course. All but five NHL teams own or operate their own arenas, so it’d be a major struggle to find places for the WHA teams to play. Nobody but eccentric Candian billionaires, and possibly someone desperate in Seattle, would dare own a team that’s likely to fold any minute. The NHL itself would threaten to blackball anyone – player, referee, coach, or otherwise – who worked with the league. Every player currently in the minor leagues would have to choose between the WHA and the NHL, a recipe for trouble both in the original WHA and now. The entire sport would be in an uproar for years, and the whole thing would damage hockey, perhaps irreparably.

Still, it’d give us hockey back. And a rebel league is the only leverage the players might have. So, if there are any eccentric Candian billionaires out there reading, please call up these guys and see if you can’t make an offer. It’s the first step towards getting hockey back.

*On with the links:

*The World Series hasn’t even started yet, but the Twins silly season is in full swing. Twins writer Jim Crikket constructs a plausible scenario in which Joe Mauer is traded to Boston, while Nick Nelson thinks that even at an absurd price, the time might be right for Zack Greinke in Minnesota. (And if both these moves happened at the same time, I’m guessing St. Paul would burn and the internet would explode.)

*Dan Jenkins is, in a way, the patron saint of sportswriting, so I can’t tell you how happy I was when Grantland printed a “director’s cut” of Jenkins’s first long-form piece in Sports Illustrated, from way back in 1963. It’s funny and descriptive and in many ways perfect, and the real shame of the whole thing is that a thing like Dan Jenkins can only come along once.

*Sports on Earth profiles the great Verne Lundquist, and one of his best qualities – his ability to let a moment speak for itself.

*Joe Posnanski looks at Chiefs fans cheering when Matt Cassel gets hurt, and talks to someone who’s stopped going to games, and wonders: are we reaching a tipping point, on the other side of which nobody is going to attend NFL games?

*The Vikings are playing in London in 2013, and reportedly may play there once per year while the new stadium is under construction. The Vikes Geek is, well, not at all happy about this.

*And finally: in ten years, when some kicker makes a 79-yard field goal, this is going to look pretty quaint.

The Stars scored twice in the second half against Tampa Bay, giving the team a 2-0 win and a two-goal advantage in the NASL championship series. Here’s the link to my SB Nation Minnesota recap.

It was quite the night in Blaine, it really was. The Stars drew a big crowd – 4,642 was the announced number, two or three times what they often draw. The stands opposite the team benches, where the Dark Clouds supporters group takes roost, usually have around 100 or 150 people in them. Tonight, that was more like 1,000.

I was on the sidelines when the second goal was scored in stoppage time, and I’m here to tell you that the place just went nuts. The fans opposite rushed towards the fence to celebrate with the barriers, knocking down part of the fence in the process. I think flares were lit. I think some of the fans in the pitchside seats rushed the field. At one point there may have been a car chase and a sword fight going on at midfield during the celebrations. It was wild. I thought Matt Van Oekel was going to start hugging reporters, he was that happy after the game.

It’s plausible that the Stars, who are owned by the league and who need to be authorized for another season of league ownership at a governors’ meeting this Saturday, just played their last game at home. If so, what a way to go out – a big, enthusiastic crowd, a two-goal home win, and the best performance of the year by a Stars team that’s once again peaking at the right time.

The Minnesota Stars begin their defense of the NASL championship tonight, as they kick off their two-legged finals series with Tampa Bay at the National Sports Center in Blaine. Ahead of the game, here’s a few notes and quotes from the principals, including Simone Bracalello’s proclivity for shooting, Luke Mulholland reminiscing, and Kyle Altman talking about getting headbutted.

Even in the middle of the league championship series, there are still small scraps of Twins news that need to be collected for Twinkie Town.

(Hopefully next week I’ll have a better idea for a post.)

The Manny Lagos playoff magic  presents itself in different ways. Sunday, the Stars had to go to San Antonio and try to beat the best team in the league. They hardly could string three passes together for 25 minutes. Then San Antonio scored. The rout, it appeared, was on.

Then Pablo Campos, who led the league in goals, decided he’d headbutt somebody.

It all led to the Stars winning 2-1 and going back to the league finals for the second year in a row. (Check out that recap for the best picture of Campos that you’ll find.)

Rand is in Canada, to run the Toronto marathon with John Sharkman, but he still posted this. What a nice guy, allowing this to appear first at RandBall, your home for #sharktrekdeux.

I was at Mariucci Arena last night to watch the Gophers crush Michigan State 5-1 in the team’s regular-season opener. It’s Homecoming weekend at the ‘U’. It was a game against a Spartans team that, from next season, will be the Gophers’ third-biggest conference rival. And with the NHL still stubbornly in drydock, it was the most popular game going in what the Wild’s marketing staff would have us believe is the “State of Hockey.” Yet last night’s crowd was a sedate group that filled the arena maybe three-quarters full, and left with four minutes to go, to beat the traffic.

Maybe last night was an aberration. Maybe the 6 p.m. start on a Friday night in the early fall killed the attendance. Or maybe the truth is that, for all the Wild’s marketing efforts, Minnesota is not so much the State of Hockey as the State of Basketball.

It’s not such a dumb theory. When the Timberwolves are good (an admittedly rare event), they draw just as well as the Wild, and the days of Gopher hockey being a tougher ticket than Gophers hoops are over. As for the youth game, in a huge swath of the state – effectively everything south of I-94 and west of Mankato, plus the entire city of Minneapolis – youth hockey is virtually nonexistent. Sure, the climate here means we can have outdoor ice and outdoor rinks, but there are probably five basketball courts for every hockey rink in Minnesota. 155 high schools (and co-ops) play boys’ hockey in Minnesota; boys’ basketball, meanwhile, has 426 teams, and more teams play Class A boys’ basketball (171) than play in all of boys’ hockey.

I’m not suggesting that another state is collectively a bigger fan of hockey, because I don’t think that’s true; for all of the passion in Massachusetts and Michigan, neither one can touch Minnesota as a hockey state. But, after seeing the reaction to the biggest hockey game in the state last night, it does seem true that Minnesota’s still waiting for its favorite winter sport to get into full swing.

On with the links:

*It’s never too early to think about what the 2013 Twins are going to look like. Jesse at Twinkie Town looks at the Twins who are eligible for salary arbitration, some of whom probably aren’t coming back.

*The NHL league office is just determined to make everyone lose his job, aren’t they?

*Will Leitch writes about the phenomenon of the celebrity sportswriter, something that can probably be seen on some scale in just about every city in America.

*This story at Deadspin is about R.A. Dickey, and prep school, and selling out, and is in some ways the most fascinating look at the man who might be America’s most fascinating pitcher.

*FC Barcelona, the world’s most popular club soccer team, is in some ways an expression of Catalan calls for independence – but, as the Economist notes, Catalan independence would likely kill the club – something that may have a lesson for politicians in the region, as well.

*And finally: there must be something about catchers. Buster Posey can’t get any love in San Francisco, either.

The Minnesota Stars and San Antonio Scorpions tied 0-0 in the first leg of their semifinal matchup. That makes the second leg a winner-take-all proposition. Ahead of Sunday’s game, I talked with coaches from both sides, as well as a couple of Stars players, to preview the game.

The Wolves opened up the preseason in Fargo last night, whacking a short-handed Indiana team 84-70. We cannot learn that much from one preseason game, but even so, here’s five things you should know about the game.

The baseball postseason is just getting going, but for the Twins, the off-season is in full swing. Here’s the 300-word version of what will happen for the Twins between now and Spring Training 2013.