Well, Mr. RandBall’s posting superstition - for details, see posts at 5:04 pm the last few days - didn’t exactly work out last night. This moves the Twins’ record to approximately 2-43 when leading the AL Central this year, all of which can mean only one thing: Go Cleveland!

On with the links:

*We start this week, as we so often do, with the Kansas City Star’s Joe Posnanski — who as usual is making the rest of us look like monkeys banging randomly on typewriters. This week, he’s written a firm rebuttal of the Tampa Bay baseball writers’ decision to name Jason Bartlett — Jason Bartlett! — the team MVP for the year; a long post about former Falcons running back Dave Hampton and his near-fruitless quest for 1,000 yards; and maybe the best-ever column about why being a fan and a sportswriter is nearly impossible. In a related story: Joe Posnanski is my hero.

*Paul Lukas at the Uni Watch Blog started a post the other day with a rather nice (and profane, so watch out) rant about Yankee Stadium and what it represents.

*Every year, it seems like somebody does a story about how bad hockey ratings are on a national scale. Curiously, we haven’t heard much about baseball ratings this year, where FOX has generally failed to draw even a 2.0 unless the Yankees and Red Sox are playing. Sports Media Watch says ratings are down 15% from last year — but the Twins, among other teams, are drawing record ratings locally. My point: baseball’s no less popular than it ever was, but people would rather watch their own team instead of a random Saturday-afternoon game. And so let’s remember this when the NHL on Versus is drawing 0.6s but the Wild are getting eight times the ratings that the Timberwolves are.

*Awful Announcing has video from ESPN, which is doing a neat retrospective this week about the Fog Bowl between the Eagles and Bears in 1989.

That’s enough for one week. We know what the kids like: …

Oh, wait - I think that post has been done.

[Proprietor note: this post went up exactly 2 hours and 6 minutes before today’s scheduled game time. Interpret that as you will].

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.