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?

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 8:29 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.