The Twins took breaks from the arduous rituals of spring training — see ball, hit ball, cover bases, throw strikes, run laps, lift weights, remember sunglasses, get sun, repeat until March 31 — to read a bunch of the haiku that you all sent in last week.

Click HERE to see ‘em.

Tom Kelly must have become smitten with the camera when he played a role in that Twins commercial released last month. And that Joe Mauer fellow. He better stick to baseball.

Please post your reviews of their work.

other people are here too.

startribune.com video ace J. Pinkley has been spending time in Ft. Myers, sending back reports and getting material that will be on the web during the regular season. She’s also sifted through the recent haiku that you all sent along and has been gently cajoling players and Gardy into reading some of ‘em.

More of your fine work, read by members of the Minnesota Twins, will be posted in the next week or so.

For now, however, click HERE to see Boof Bonser’s interpretation of “Big Trousers,” a haiku by Twins Goddess.

other people are here too.

Every now and again, people ask what blogs I read to keep up with Twins stuff and other MLB news. The flippant answer is to tell them I get everything I need from me, JoeC and LaVelle. But I do check out other sites and I like a lot of ‘em. With the exhibition season getting under way and no shortage of news and opinion out there, I figured this was a good time to share a few thoughts about things to check out. I’m a bit of a blogroll packrat and err on the side of including links down the side of this page. I check every now and then to see if folks are still writing … and I’ve deleted a handful that have gone dormant.

But here’s some of the stuff I really like:

I assume most of you who come through Section 220 also check out the Big Three of local bloggers — Aaron, Seth and SBG. If you don’t, you should. All three have created strong followings without the muscle of a major news outlet to back ‘em up. Aaron Gleeman has used his blog as a springboard to other sites without neglecting his original; Seth Speaks does singular q-and-a’s with Twins prospects and offers up wisdom on American Idol at no extra charge; Stick and Ball Guy has a worthy posse of regulars, including my favorite numbers guy ubelmann.

To see the latest work of Twins bloggers, I check the “Twins blogosphere guide” at the Twins Geek-powered MN GameDay. For national stuff, I’ve been using the recently created Dugout Daily, which offers up a sample of what’s being written elsewhere.

I kill more time than I should wandering through baseball-reference.com, where Section 220 is the proud sponsor of Delmon Young’s page. The site has recently added minor-league stats, which lessen my need to wander through The Baseball Cube, another site where I can get happily lost.

I read Nick and Nick’s Twins Blog. I started out reading it mostly because I used to share an office with the grandfather of one of the Nicks and have kept reading because of insightful posts like the recent “Trend or Mirage.”

I’ve taken a liking to umpbump.com, which bills itself as “in-your-face baseball commentary” and refers to its team previews as: “…a series of posts in which we eviscerate each team for their unintenionally hilarious offseason screw-ups and dole out grudging praise for their not-horrible winter finagling. Heaven help Bill Smith on that one. There’s also a recent post that helps pop the myth of Derek Jeter’s alleged defensive prowess.

Babes Love Baseball is a fun combination of Haiku, snark and rabid Yankee hating. (Author Sooze is from a small Minnesota city where the local paper featured the blog on the front page last year). It’s THOSE Girls gets me to ponder stuff I wouldn’t normally think about and Yeah, Buddy has already decreed the 2008 Twins as “Short on Hotness.” Women baseball bloggers can be just as venomous as the guys, but tend to go a bit easier on Nick Punto.

When I need to remember how bad some of us looked in the ’70s and ’80s, I go to TwinsCards.com. There’s some unfortunate hair and eyewear on there.

But there’s nothing in the current Twins’ blogworld as scary as this.

Of course I read Pat Neshek’s blog. I suspect he’d have a baseball blog even if he didn’t play and I think he’d be amused by my closet of cards. The black type-on-red background is a bit hard on the eyes, though. From reading a questionnaire he filled out for the Rockies a few years back, I know that we’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of Pat’s wisdom-teeth extraction.

And, finally, today marks the makeover and expansion of Twins Territory. Among other things, fans can start their own blogs on the site, which offers this guideline: “Please use good grammar.” I’m all 4 that … and for a good year of Twins blogging in 2008.

other people are here too.

Available: RHP throws hard. Well traveled (MN, CIN, PHI) w/ gd health and sub-.500 record. Has not taken bat 2 mgr’s door 4 yrs or dissed tmmate. Gd fit 4 team w/ pitching woes. P in ‘07 postseason. (Did u, Johan?) Contact Kyle L. thru agent Scott B.

Last month’s Dream-On Player of the Month was ex-Twin Kyle Lohse, who said in an XM Radio interview that the stalled (at the time) trades involving Johan and Erik Bedard seemed to be having an impact on his ability to strike a deal: “We’re closing in, but nothing is real imminent right now. We’re getting close, but it’s a long process because of the way the market has been this year, I think it’s been drawn out a little more with all the Santana trade talk, and Bedard, and all these guys, it’s slowed down the process a little bit.”

In other word, there was still leftover Kool-Aid in agent Scott Boras’ punch bowl from last Septemeber, when Boras said: “I think Kyle is going to be very good, because he’s one of the few guys that are in that batch of 27- to 28-year-old arms. There’s not that many guys that fall into that class. The other thing about Kyle is he’s been durable and he’s pitched in the playoffs. He has a resume a lot of teams will look at because he’s been successful.”

Unfortunate for Kyle, the class of guys Lohse currently belongs to is those still seeking employment while their peers have gone to training camp. Lohse and Boras apparently alienated the Phillies by turning down a three-year, $21 million offer and now they’re watching guys like Livan Hernandez and Josh Fogg and Bartolo Colon strike lesser deals.

At mlb.com, Kyle ended his interview for the Section 220 personals by trying not to sound desperate: “At some point, I’ll be OK. It’s not like I’m at the end of my rope trying to hang on. I’m trying to find a match that is right for me.”

other people are here too.

Given that anything I write on a zero-degree day in Minnesota can’t possibly be as interesting as what JoeC and LaVelle are writing from Florida, I figured it was best to share this Carlos Gomez video.

Happy viewing!