*This is the fourth straight Saturday I’ve written, in one way or another, about the communality of sports. I need a new topic. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for unexpected adulthood. *

I write a lot about the community aspect of being a sports fan, in part because of my first experience with live sports: Ortonville High School sporting events. Ortonville played in about 98% of the sporting events I attended before I left for college, and virtually all of the football games, and by now, time and selective memory have crystallized these Friday night clashes into the perfect sporting experience.

In my memory, the whole town showed up for the games; you could have walked down the center of Main Street, firing off pistols like Yosemite Sam, and nobody would have cared or indeed noticed. Back in those days, before the new track was installed, you could park your car at the edge of the football field and watch from there – an inexpressible luxury for a young boy, because it meant you could warm up, listen to the radio broadcast, AND honk the horn after touchdowns. At halftime, kids of a certain age were allowed on the field to participate in what was less of an actual football game and more of a rolling maul of children; every so often, hats or gloves or the occasional third-grader would be thrown wildly from the pile, but it was otherwise a happy riot of kids beating each other up on the 30-yard-line.

Of course, this probably isn’t what it was like at all. Half the town probably had better things to do, and it’s telling that I can’t remember the final score of a single game. But I keep searching for this experience, from all sports. I’m trying to find the one that best approximates the feeling of being out on a Friday night, surrounded by all of your friends and most of the rest of the town. We’re watching our guys take on the heathens from the next town over, and if we’re lucky, later we’ll get some popcorn from the concessions stand.

I’ve yet to find it. But I keep trying. And if any local sports team, professional, college, or prep, is willing to let me pull up a car to the edge of their field and watch the game from there, I am willing to pay handsomely for the privilege.

*On with the links:

*For those of us who are hoping that the Twins will put a minor-league affiliate in St. Paul, here’s a great explanation from Jim Crikket of the Knuckleballs blog of why that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

*Bloge Salming and Down Goes Brown have collaborated to get you the outtakes from the NHLPA’s message to fans. That’s the hardest I’ve laughed about the NHL lockout since I saw the owners’ first proposal.

*Matthew Callan at The Classical remembers the 1999 baseball umpires’ strike, which ended up going almost opposite the way the NFL ref lockout did.

*Will Leitch at Sports on Earth writes about how Steve Spurrier is going to kill sports journalism. No, seriously.

*Over at Canis Hoopus, writer Oceanary looks at the new faces on the Timberwolves this year.

*And finally: Here’s Eli Manning, staring at a lawnmower for no reason.

Tonight, the Minnesota Stars take on the San Antonio Scorpions in the first leg of the NASL semifinals. The game’s in Minnesota, where the temperature at the moment is barely above freezing – and it’s not likely to warm up a whole lot before game time.

That’s just one of the things I talked about with Stars coach Manny Lagos and team captain Kyle Altman for my SBN Minnesota game preview, which is hopefully the best preview you’ll find anywhere.

2012 has been a year of struggles for the Twins, but if we get philosophical about it, maybe we can still learn something from the Twins. “How to pretend you care long after everyone else has given up” should be on the list.

ALSO: the last series preview of 2012.

References to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? SOMEbody was feeling highbrow. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall.

The need to belong and be loved is one of our basic needs as humans. Abraham Maslow, in creating his hierarchy of needs, stuck it right above the basics of physical existence (i.e. eating) and safety. It’s instructive to note that the medium that I’m using to communicate to you right now, the internet, was originally invented to make it easier for researchers to talk to each other; all of the things that the internet lets us do – chiefly, exchange pictures of cats in mildly entertaining situations – are the outgrowth of letting us connect more easily with each other.

I mention this because I really think you should get a Twitter account. Of all the ways that the internet brings us together, Twitter is the best, and to me there’s really no comparison. Other social sites are mostly great for pictures – Pinterest, of things that interest you; Facebook, of you and your kids; Reddit, of your pets; Instagram, of things you’re eating. But ultimately these strike me as just ways of showing off, like walking around and broadcasting vacation slides on a constant loop.

Twitter, on the other hand, allows you to connect with people; alone among the social networks, that’s its defining function. The great thing about Twitter is that it allows you to become part of any community you choose. No matter how small the community or esoteric the interest, there are people tweeting about it, and that goes double for sports – you can become a fan in the crowd of anything, no matter where you are or who the team.

One of the great things about sports is that it allows us to be part of something bigger than ourselves – to belong, to be loved and accepted. Twitter enables that. Twitter makes us belong. So get on Twitter, and start talking about the Vikings, or the Twins, or about a rugby club in Perth, Australia. You can make that happen. I think that Maslow would approve.

On with the links, which this week have a theme, which I’m calling “Talking Us Through”:

*Twins closer Glen Perkins talks Joe Ponsnaski through his Tuesday night save against the Yankees.

*Referee Ed “Pipes” Hochuli talks Steve Rushin through a typical play from the referee’s point of view. (NOTE: link not applicable to replacement referees, who were never sure what they were looking at.)

*Chris Brown at Grantland talks us through the evolution of the football’s zone blitz, and how this replacement for man-to-man coverage has started itself incorporating man-to-man coverage within the zone.

*Chuck Klosterman, also at Grantland, talks us through how fantasy football has destroyed our perceptions of NFL players as human beings.

*And finally: Down Goes Brown talks us through how they think NHL teams are probably saving money during the lockout. (The Wild get a joke! We’ve really made it big time!)

To inaugurate Twinkie Town’s new look Tuesday, I wrote a look at how the Twins might regain their AL Central crown in 2013. Stu had the task of taking the opposite view. I suspect his task was easier.

In more immediate news, here’s some notes on the Twins’ three-game weekend series against the Tigers.

I previewed the Minnesota Stars playoff quarterfinal against Puerto Rico for SB Nation Minnesota.

I should have taken some pictures at team training; I stopped by at lunchtime to do the interviews for the preview, and it could not have been a more perfect day outside.

Last night I happened to wonder about the World Baseball Classic. I started poking around the internet for information, before realizing that – six months before the tournament – there is none.

Fans don’t take the tournament seriously because baseball doesn’t take the tournament seriously, and such will it ever be, unless the latter changes.

For actual news, there’s also my Twins-Yankees series preview.

I spent most of Saturday watching the Minnesota Cricket championship match, and wrote about it for CricketSota.

Short version: it was cold and a lot of runs were scored.

*Since I know you’re wondering how I live my life: I spent seven hours at a cricket match today, then drove straight to the University to watch the Gophers beat Syracuse. That’s the kind of odd, curious, frankly inappropriate dedication you get from us small-time internet bloggers. Anyway, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for being big-time. *

I think we can all agree that the situation with the scab referees in the NFL has gotten out of hand. They’re clearly terrible, to the point of ruining games, and so we need to send a signal to the NFL that it’s unacceptable that this labor unrest drags on. By this I of course mean that YOU need to send a signal, because I can’t possibly stop watching the Vikings. I’m not even sure I like watching the Purple, particularly, because every week I look at the schedule and say to myself with a sigh, “Well, I guess I’d better not plan to do anything Sunday afternoon, since we’re the noon game this week.” It feels like a sentence, especially when the Vikings are awful, but it hardly occurs to me to stop – or that others have avoided this particular feeling.

Intellectually, I realize that there are probably millions of people in the immediate metro area who do not watch the Vikings, who could not care less about their exploits, and who are free to spend their Sundays burning ants with a magnifying glass or whatever it is non-Vikings fans do with their time. Even so, in my mind I always imagine that every family in Minnesota is huddled around the television when the team is on the field. Austin Murphy, in his book “The Sweet Season,” describes trick-or-treating with his kids during a Vikings game, where he discovered that following the exploits of Jeff George and company was perfectly possible while on the sidewalks, since every house they stopped at was watching the game and had inhabitants that were perfectly happy to provide game updates. I know it’s not true for everybody, everywhere, but I can’t help but imagine that’s what the entire state is like. I went to the grocery store during the second quarter last week, and was shocked to find that not only was the store not broadcasting the game over the P.A. system, the store was genuinely crowded with people who were shopping and did not have a radio crammed into their ear like I did.

I suppose that’s why I’m so unwilling to miss Vikings game; in my head, I imagine that all Minnesota is Vikings fandom, and so if I should miss a game, then I won’t be able to discuss the pathetic state of the Viking secondary in detail, something that could cause me to be branded as a dangerous eccentric and possibly as a freedom-hating, anti-American potential terrorist – or worse, as a Cheesehead. This sort of thing has never happened yet, but I fear that it’s coming.

So if you wouldn’t mind, please figure out a way to let the league know you’re not going to watch football until the owners stop allowing the replacement refs to make it actively awful. I can’t do it. I need to have specific insults for Harrison Smith ready to go for Monday. No, I’m not sure why. I’m just sure that I will.

*On with the links:

*If you haven’t seen it, Tim Keown profiled Joe Mauer for ESPN the Magazine, and it’s nothing short of fascinating. Mauer comes across as incredibly even-keeled – so much so that I’m starting to worry that his lack of celebration is a result of an epic level of unhappiness.

*Ben Polk at A Wolf Among Wolves writes about the supposed ‘whiteness’ of the Timberwolves, and how it’s really not the truth. I have been arguing this for awhile, but Polk sums it up with the phrase that makes the whole article worthwhile: “the Stockton-Hornacek-Ostertag matrix.” Beautiful.

*I found this history of the great cricketers of Philadelphia at the turn of the last century, by David Mutton, to be remarkably fascinating. Maybe you don’t like cricket, but if you like well-written and spotlessly-researched sports history, you’ll like this.

*And finally: I’m just glad that I finally found the greatest article in NFL, and possibly internet, history.

Today at SB Nation Minnesota, we imagine just how Don Fehr and Gary Bettman are spending their time, since they’re certainly not using it to end the NHL lockout.

I can’t help writing fictional screenplays. It’s just easiest, somehow.

ELSEWHERE: the Twins and Tigers got rained out tonight, so my series preview at Twinkie Town is still prescient and timely.