Weekend links with Jon Marthaler
Posted on June 20th, 2009 – 8:29 AMBy Michael Rand
Jon Marthaler enthralls you every Saturday with links for some leisurely weekend reading. Other times, you can find him here and here.
Jon?
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Links first this week:
*Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals drew hockey’s best rating in nearly four decades. Suck on that, haters.
*The Crain Wreck has finally been derailed. Fans rejoiced (and so, probably, did corner infielders, who had to defend themselves from screaming line drives at every turn.) It wasn’t too long ago that he was effective, though — and so Parker Hageman at Over The Baggy investigates what he’s been doing differently.
*Not really sports-related — but it turns out that people click on links on Twitter far more often than from anywhere else. I guess I shouldn’t be writing long, involved paragraphs to try to get you to click on links. (Or Rand should shorten them, thus obscuring where they point and forcing you to click to find out what I’m talking about.)
*You know by now that I love this stuff: one of my favorite web writers, Chris Brown of Smart Football, ruminates on online journalists — okay, bloggers — vs. “mainstream” writers. And as usual, Brown might be the most thoughtful, considered writer on the entire internet.
That’ll do it for links this week. Assuming this is posted on Saturday — tomorrow is Father’s Day. Some of you are fathers, some of you have fathers, and since you’re reading a sports blog, I’m going to assume that you’re well aware of the effect that fathers have on our lives as sports fans. I have no doubt that there are fanatics out there who love sports because of Mom, but for most of us — it’s Dad that got us interested in sports. It’s Dad who let us stay up late to watch Rick Aguilera or Jeff Reardon or Ron Davis or Ron Perranoski try to close out a Twins win. It’s Dad who taped Sid Hartman’s radio show on WCCO Sunday mornings so that he — and we — could listen to it after church. It’s Dad who taught us why Wade Wilson or Rich Gannon or Joe Kapp was a bum, Dad who fell asleep listening to Al Shaver call North Stars games in the wintertime, Dad who taught us that listening to Ray Christensen was as close as we might get to to hearing the voice of God.
So, from all of us: Thanks, Dad. Thanks for teaching us how much fun — painful, sometimes; frustrating, almost always; but definitely, definitely fun — this whole sports thing can be. Happy Father’s Day.
Now how about we turn on the game?
7 Responses to "Weekend links with Jon Marthaler"
Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals drew hockey’s best rating in nearly four decades. Suck on that, haters.
Dude, I’m standing right here.
Dads schmads.
As featured in the Slapshot credits, Today’s Unimpeachably Great Song: “Right Back Where We Started From,” Maxine Nightingale.
I love you dad.
I would sneak up in the middle of the night to watch Benny Hill, my dad caught me once and instead of getting mad at me (like I thought he would) he sat and watched it with me.
As far as sports from my dad, he told me great stories of seeing Willie Mays, Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski play for the Minneapolis Millers and Roy Campanella playing for the hated St Paul Saints. He would also tell me the Millers and Saints would play a doubleheader on the Fourth of July, one game in Minneapolis and one in St Paul.
When Jesse Crain rose to prominence in the Twins bullpen in 2005, the 23-year-old right-hander had vultured 12 wins while maintaining a 2.71 ERA despite walking more than he struck out (29/25 BB/K) in 79.2 innings of work also finishing eighth on the AL Rookie of the Year ballot.
Exactly! He vultured 12 wins because he let any inherited runners he came in with score, and he got some offense in the next half-inning.
Jesse Crain has been a big ball of suck all along. Maybe I was the only one who noticed.
They really should have traded him after 2006 when some teams were deluded enough to think that he could ever be a closer.
@crainwreck I used to refer to him as The Pirate because of his uncanny ability to let in every inherited runner, not give up any earned runs of his own, and “pirate” the win when we scored thereafter. Never really cared for the guy.
