Weekend Links with Jon Marthaler: Twins and more!

Jon Marthaler bakes up a batch of delicious links just for you. Other times, you can find him here and here. Jon?

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Who's ready for some baseball? With spring training games in full swing, and Target Field less than a month from opening, I'm ready to watch nothing but hardball for a good long while. Yes, the Wild are currently making a quixotic playoff push, but apart from that there's not another local team worth your time or money, so we might as well start in on the baseball. The first game on local TV isn't until next Saturday, but I couldn't be more ready for it.

On with the links:

*We start with baseball, of course. Four of your most prominent Twins bloggers - John Bonnes, Parker Hageman, Seth Stohs, and Nick Nelson - have themselves a brand-new blog here at startribune.com, and you should be reading it. As an example:a very good post by Hageman about Delmon Young's pitch recognition.

*Bonus Twins link: at Twinkie Town, Jesse Lund has a nice look at the Joe Mauer contract timeline. Rumors are again a-flutter that Mauer will sign this weekend; I think all of us Twins fans, then, hope that this timeline has a new addendum today or tomorrow.

*The tragic story of Hank Gathers, twenty years later.

*And following the Winter Olympics, just a reminder about the ratings. You may have read the stories about how the TV ratings were up almost across the board over 2006. This may be true - but this was still the third-lowest-rated Winter Games in fifty years. For comparison: the ratings were less than half those of the 1994 Lillehammer Games.