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

Happy Saturday! While Rand is out gallivanting about the country, watching baseball, I'm tending to the home fires here in Minnesota, watching for tornadoes. If your place is like mine, you got about eighteen inches of rain in two hours on Friday night; here's hoping your basements stayed dry and your storm drains stayed unclogged. On the flip side, there's nothing like an epic rainstorm to take your mind off of the Twins, so that's something, at least.

A few links to get you through your weekend:

*Of course, the USA plays Ghana at 1:30 pm today, and all of America is ready to see a win. For some of us, this is yet another chapter in what's been a long, long journey. I can remember being dismayed in 1990 that the USA games weren't on TV -- even in the second grade, I guess I was a soccer fan. Spencer Hall at SB Nation has a similar story, except that it was 1998, he was 21, and he was in Taiwan. Other than that, our stories are exactly the same. Watch the game today, even if you haven't been watching so far. See if you don't start your own story.

*Well, it's settled: Stu is a comic genius. Click over for appearances by the Pavstache, Jimmers, and a host of other Twins memes.

*Speaking of the Pavstache: Parker Hageman goes inside the numbers to examine how Pavano's been so successful this year. ("The Power of the 'Stache" is not examined, but must be considered. Rand will be along later to invent a statistic to cover this possibility.)

*And finally: Ethan Sherwood Strauss tells his story of shepherding Ricky Rubio around the 2009 NBA Draft at freedarko.com; it's a great read. Strauss portrays Rubio as completely confused about David Kahn, which means that Rubio is exactly like many Timberwolves fans. Welcome to the fold, Ricky!

That'll do it for me - assuming that Rand's not too Quad Citied-out to post this, which is a distinct possibility. If you haven't seen this video yet, watch it, and then go get ready for the match today. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!