Beatdowns, Hidden Messages and Fake Waterparks

WISCONSIN 78, INDIANA 46

Jesus. I need to start out with that embarrassment of the artist formerly known as IU in Bloomington last night. Indiana is really, really awful. I am SHOCKED that they have won any Big Ten games. They seem far worse to me than Penn St or Iowa. Not only are they not very talented, but they can't shoot, and consistently dribble off of their feet. I will give them credit for not quitting, they are at least a little scrappy, even when down by like 100.

Back in the not so distant past, a win at Indiana did not seem possible. There was a time where Bucky had lost like 40 in a row there or something. Bucky is pretty good this year, but still. That game was almost unfair. I heard on SportsCenter (who is always right) that it was the worst loss at home in NINETY SIX YEARS!!! When you do something to someone worse than it has been done to them in 96 years, you really kicked the shit out of them.

Two other things about last night: 1) The camera followed Tom Crean a little extra long after he got ejected last night, and you could see him shoulder check the locker room door into a wall. And screaming obscenities to himself in the tunnel. He was PISSED. Had it stayed about 10 more seconds, you may have seen him destroy the locker room through the crack in the door. It was pretty great. I still dislike Tom Crean. 2) I think Bo Ryan does too. I feel like he put a little extra hot sauce on this beat down. Is it a carry over from the days of shady backroom recruiting deals made by Crean to steal players from UW while he was at Marquette? Hard to say, but when you leave your starters in until 1:28 left in a 31 point game, I think it is pretty safe to say that Bo was trying to prove a point. That point? Don't fuck with a dude that literally looks like a Badger.

FAKE WATERPARKS

I'm being forced to go to a fake water park with my nieces and nephew (3 and 2 years old I think), and my in-laws. I say it is a fake waterpark because it is in Wisconsin, and it is the middle of winter. I'm envisioning one waterslide in a hotel. It is in a hotel, so I'm halfway there. I really like my in-laws as a general rule, but I dislike hanging out in disease infested hotel waterparks. Especially after working my ass off (surfing the Internets) all week. At least I can stuff my face with snack food and get drunk. Anyone know any good bars in Waupaca? Maybe I will get blacked out and drown some stranger's kid. That would be a tragedy.

BREWERS-CUBS

I got in on a "second chance" to buy Brewers-Cubs tickets yesterday. I got an email at like 8 a.m. that I could log on at 10. I didn't exclude anyone, but I was only allowed to buy 4 tickets, and I couldn't get more than two together. My brother and I are going in September, when the Brewers will be 10 games out of a playoff spot (assuming Soup makes the rotation because of his contract over about six other pitchers that are clearly better than him). I'm calling it the second annual Brother Trip to Miller Park Where One Brother Purchases Nosebleed Tickets In a Section With 98% FIBS and Sips Beer While Watching the Other Brother Try Not To Get Into a Fight for Three Plus Hours. Last year there were approximately 35 ejections in our section. We also saw a chick fight on the way out, and the lights went out at Miller Park.

It is a 6:10 first pitch, which gives FIBS plenty of time to get up at their usual 2 p.m., put in hair gel, pop their collars over the top of their $80 Cubs T-shirts, put on their $400 Yves St Laurent aviators, hop into the BMW SUV's that their parents bought them for high school graduation,
get to the stadium by 5, have two cosmos, and be belligerent fighting guy by 6.

Young FIBs are the Same as Old Ones

Check out this kid. He is already a terrible human being, and in about 12 years, he will be going to games at Miller Park, getting black out drunk, and fighting with other FIBs about who is the bigger douche.

In Other News

In a failed attempt to bring relevance to the WNBA, Diana Taurasi was arrested for a DUI yesterday. I can only imagine her thought process as she pounded her 4th hard lemonade, threw the bottle across the parking lot and jumped into her car. Probably something along the lines of, this'll show that boys club that female athletes can be just as retarded. Of course I have no idea what WNBA salaries are, she just may not have been able to afford the cab ride, then all is forgiven.

So I've moved again, still in the same city, the biggest exciting new change? Satellite bitches! I now get FSWisconsin, which means Brewers games, in my home, on my TV. The first game I got to see from the comfort of my couch? The Derrek Lee beatdown last night. The Ginger was just serving up meaty fastballs over the plate and when Chris Smith was pitching to Lee, you could tell Lee wasn't going to swing at anything that wasn't a home run. Smith had two pitches that inning, ball or fastball down the middle. Good job guys

Semi-Daily Brew Crew Hangover #16

So my brother and I went to the game last night. I would just like to point out that it was the most insane/embarrassing/frustrating/fantastic game I think I've been to at Miller Park. And I was mostly sober. Here is a short-ish rundown:



Pre-game: We arrive, drink a few beers, and some dude comes up and talked us into buying a t-shirt that he was carrying in a bag. It is well worth it. But I'm not going to give away what it says, because I'm going to unveil it at Shit in my eye this weekend. I'm hoping I don't need to wear a collared shirt at the golf course.



Pre-game in Miller Park: We arrive to our seats. Which are the last two seats, at the end of the row, in the last row, right on the 1st base line, above the foul pole. Perfect. Seats. As long as you enjoy being 7,000 feet above the field. Which I do. To quote my brother, "You aren't allowed to buy tickets anymore." At Game 3 of the NLDS last year, we sat in the top row behind home plate.

We sat, talked shit, drank some beers, and then started to get a queasy feeling. We both realized that we had seen about 100 or so people come up into our section, and less than 5% of people were wearing Brewer gear. What. The. Fuck? I'm not exaggerating at all to say that if there were 200 people in our section, there were 10 Brewer fans. We talked to a FIB next to us who said they were on a bus trip with 150 people. They were all fucked up beyond repair. And they were FIBs which means they had like 2 beers and a wine cooler.


2nd inning: We look to our left to see a huge ball of people rolling down the stairs and swinging fists. There were between 5 and 7 people in this pile. Probably one Brewer fan. And everyone was hitting eachother. There was definitely FIB on FIB crime. About 100 police officers start coming from nowhere and are yanking people out. In all, I'm going to estimate there were 15 ejections at that point. Oh, and our section was cut off from alcohol.

3rd inning: We see a cop with a mohawk semi-carrying this chick out of the stadium. Cub fan. And her FIB boyfriend didn't like it. He soon found out that putting your hand on a City of Milwaukee police officer is a bad idea. Within 2 seconds of that guy putting his hands on Officer Mohawk. There were like officers belaying down from the fucking ceiling and shit. I have no idea where they came from, but that guy was lucky if he didn't end up in the hospital. The guy deserved every bit of police brutality that may or may not have been going on about 100 feet from us. It was awesome. At least 3 or 4 others were also ejected along with this asshat and his drunken FIB whore.

Things generally calmed down after that due to the large police presence in our section afterwards. And the security guard that looked exactly like Ken Macha.

Numerous FIBs were passing out. Acting like they won the World Series when they cut the lead to 3-2. I guess in Illinois being down a run is just as good as leading.

7th inning: Counsell opens a can of ass kick on a Ryan Dempster pitch for his only home run in the next season and a half. Braun follows it up with a fucking bomb. Suddenly the stadium is 1/4 empty (although to be fair, about 4 FIBs from our section left every inning from the first on because they were so shitfaced on their Jack Daniel's paradise punches.) 4 runs later, the stadium is half empty.

On our way out, we saw two chicks soaked in booze in hand cuffs. C-c-c-c-cat fight!

This was just a totally awkward experience. Walking around at a home game, and being relieved and excited to see a Brewer fan. It felt like the game was a road game, and you are happy to run into a fellow fan. It was louder in the stadium when the Cubs did something good. I'm a little pissed about it and I don't really understand it. We sell out games all the time. Why is it that Cubs fans get their grubby little meat beaters on at least half the tickets to every game at Miller Park? Are Brewers fans selling them all on the secondary market? Are FIBs faster on the internets? Are Brewer fans just too casual about when they buy tickets, and Cubs fans are waiting for the clock to strike 12 on the date tickets go on sale? I just don't get it. And as interesting as it made things, it was also pretty unfortunate.

Moral of the story: FIBs are assholes and should die.

Baseball and Stuff

-I purchased my first Milwaukee Brewers tickets yesterday. I "won" the "privilege" of buying tickets for the Cubs games (the non-home opener variety) before most people could buy them. I'm not sure how many people they let through, but the buying started at like 9 a.m., and I didn't think of it until about noon. When I logged on, I was able to get two tickets together for the May 9th game (which is a Saturday night) in the top row behind the foul pole in right field, at a jacked up "marquee rate". Whatever, it should be fun. Every year I have this love/hate relationship with Brewer/Cub games because those asshats from Illinois fill up about half the stadium with tickets purchased on the secondary market, and they are fucking obnoxious. But it is fun because the crowds are always more drunk and more raucous than normal. I would sell them for $100 each, if scalping was legal.

-The Crew started playing baseball games against other teams yesterday, and the fucking TIED. I don't know why that would even begin to bother me, but ties are stupid. Corey Hart will win MVP if he plays like the box score makes it look like he played yesterday. 2-2, HR, SB. Jeff Suppan got the start, pitched two innings, and was Jeff Suppan. If he is our opening day starter to "take pressure off of Yo", I'm going to be PISSED. I'll take Dave Bush as our ace over Suppan. This year is going to be another classic "Soup" year, with every stat line looking similar to this: 6 IP, 12H, 4ER, 1K, 2BB. He will go 11-12 with a 4.98 ERA, which is not good for your "number one" pitcher.

-At least Marquette can blame their loss to UConn on losing their third best player to injury, and not on the fact that they gave up 93 points at home. Whatever makes them sleep at night.

Well. That was fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 35 seconds that the Brewers were tied for first place in the central. After getting thier ASSES kicked on three straight nights, I think it is pretty safe to say the Cubs are a little better. Also clear is that Ned Yost is a terrible fucking manager. The worst part is that the games are impossible to enjoy because of all of the fucking FIBs.

Death Match: Brewer v. Packer

I've been wondering for a few weeks now what would happen today when Packer training camp opens and the Brewers open their biggest series of the year so far against the baby bears. Well, I can tell you from listening to local radio that it was a beating of epic proportions. If you had just landed from an alien planet, you would have no idea that a baseball team even plays in Wisconsin, much less is in the middle of a pennant race, with a legitimate shot at the playoffs for the first time in 26 years. The only time the Crew even got mentioned was when the hosts forced it in. If there had been completely free reign on phone calls, there would have been no mention of the series that starts tonight. And I'm not even talking about the Favre thing. Of course it was discussed because there is a federal law that mandates that if you have any idea what a football looks like, and you host a show, you must discuss Brett Favre for at least 25% of all on-air time. But most of the talk was about other things, Ryan Grant's holdout was a big one. It is incredible to me that overnight, the Brewers were vaporized by grown men discussing other grown men practicing a game in 90 degree heat.

I guess I just wanted to point out how far the Brewers have to go to garner even remotely close to the obsession that Wisconsin fans have for the Packers. Myself included probably. If the Packers played at the same time as the Brewers I wouldn't think twice about what I would be watching.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I learned from PTI today that it is Oage's birthday today. He is 61 years young. Here's to at least 50 more years and 13 or 14 more murder trials.

PS. CC yesterday?= Meh. He was alright. Not spectacular, but he has a way about him that makes his K's dynamic.

PPS. FUCK the Cubs. I hope Rich Harden gets his arm eaten off by a fucking billy goat.

Sports Illustrated's Stadium Rankings

Recently Sports Illustrated released a fan voting based ranking of all major league ballparks.





Now I'm not going to complain too much about the rankings because they put Miller Park at second, but I found that to be a little ridiculous. I could see Miller being in the top ten, but second seems to be a bit much.

The first category is affordability which was given to the Kansas City Royals. This seems plausible, the Royals have been terrible for quite some time and their stadium is over 30 years old, so they probably have to give those tickets away. Surprise surprise the Red Sox and Yankees were ranked last for affordability, I guess dropping 300 million a year on salaries requires you to generate higher revenue from your ticket sales.

The next category is food, the Brewers were ranked first because everyone loves brats! It seems a lot of comments about the food also revolved around the stadium's "secret special sauce". If a sauce has the words secret or special in it, I tend to be wary. For some reason the Yankees and Mets are in last place, which might be impossible seeing as how they are in New York.

Team quality places the Tigers as number one. I guess that's a tough vote to call, there's actually been a decent amount of parity in the MLB for the last few years.

Tradition's top four teams are the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Cubs and the Dodgers. That seems about right, all of those teams have been around for over a century.

Atmosphere can be a tough call. The rankings have the Mariners ranked first and the Marlins last. I think what it really boils down to with atmosphere is when the team's stadium was built. Case in point, they put the Twins down at 29th. I've been to a few games at the big inflatable toilet, it's really not that bad. I think the fans have made it out to be worse than it is because of the dome's age and the fact that they have a new stadium waiting for them in two years.

The Cardinals of St Louis have been voted the fans with the highest "IQ". I've seen people from Missoura, I'm not that impressed with their intelligence. How do you even quantify this? The fans here really seem to know what they're talking about when they are sitting in the stands? What if you're just really unlucky and always get stuck next to the same drunken asshole that can barely even form words, let alone coherent thoughts? If you've been to a weekend game you know there's a very realistic chance of this happening. The picture I used in the collage is of apparently "famous" fans of the Cardinals...

Once again the Cards get the nod for hospitality. What I found fishy about this ranking is that the Royals were number two. I don't know what goes on down in Missoura during baseball games, but apparently its the greatest experience for a visiting fan in the history of the known world.

The Brewers are first for promotions. I credit this 1000% to the sausage races. After Randall Simon gave the sausage runners national media stardom, they haven't had time to look back. Everyone loves it, and the fact that they are sausages just speaks volumes about what we rank as important in the state of Wisconsin. The Red Sox rank dead last in promotions, I'm assuming the used Manny Ramirez batting helmet give away night didn't go over as well as the execs had planned.

Traffic? The White Sox got some love for this, but I really have no opinion about traffic for these games. I'm assuming the shittier your team is, the less fans go there and the better the traffic is around your stadium. While the White Sox aren't that shitty, they are definitely the Eli Manning to the Cubs Peyton in Chicago.

Finally we have the category of neighborhood, which surprisingly enough the Padres won! Gee, I wonder who would complain about an area that's always 75 degrees and has beautiful beaches all along the city. I'm sure the Marlins are dead last because either A)Their fans just checked poor for all the answers in the survey because they hate the way the Marlins are run or B) Hurricanes are not conducive to happy tailgating.

The accuracy of this fan poll is probably directly related to the demographic base of the people who actually bothered to fill it out, so I would take it with a grain of salt. However for the next year, Brewers fans can say that Miller Park is the second best stadium in all of baseball!

Kerry Wood: Arsonist

The Brewers, Cubs and 40,000 fans were all equally lucky to get out of Wrigley alive yesterday afternoon as an inferno raged. The arsonist Kerry Woods struck again, burning Wrigley down. I personally and thoroughly enjoyed the wailing and gnashing of teeth of Cubs fans burning alive, from my perch 300 miles to the north.

Seriously, does anyone REALLY thing Gagne is that much worse than Wood? Admittedly, Gagne has made a few games a little more exciting than he needed to, and blew a couple, but I think overall he's been pretty effective.

Wood is a mere apprentice. He could only hope to be half as good at what he does when compared to Mr. Gas Can himself Derrick Turnbow. Actually, Turnbow is beyond combustible. He causes cancer. It's true!

Proof that Cubs fans are terrible people...

*Author's note: This is a semi-old story, however it wasn't very well publicized so I'm putting it in anyways*

Kosuke Fukudome is a tremendous athlete. He sees the ball very well, he eats pitch counts, he has power, he's not a liability on defense and he's even shown a little speed from time to time. He could very well be the difference maker between the Cubs only winning the division last year, to them winning a NL pennant and advancing to the World Series. Surely the Cubs fans must be grateful to have this athlete, whom they acquired as a free agent signing, i.e. they had to give up no one to put him on their team.

The photograph I've included is a picture of a T-shirt sold by a vendor outside of Wrigley Field. The Sun-Times ran an article about it on April 18th and were immediately flooded by angry e-mails from readers. The next day Cubs officials asked the vendor to stop selling the t-shirt, using the argument that it contained a copyrighted logo. However before he was asked to stop selling the shirt, the vendor, Mark Kolbusz, claimed it was his top selling item so far this season.

Just goes to show you the level of appreciation Cubs fans have for their players...

Brewers v. Cubs Series Preview

I don't normally like to do this, but Brewers/Cubs holds special significance in that I want to punch random people on the streets in the face when I see they are wearing Cubs gear. It frustrates me to no end that there are so many bandwagon fucking Cubs fans in Wisconsin, and nobody can give me a good reason for it.

Wrigley is also a pile of shit. There. I said it.

GAME 1: Sheets v. Marquis: The return of Sheets from the DL and Cameron from the SL (steroids list). Sheets has been ridiculous this year (0.97 ERA) and I don't see any reason the Crew shouldn't win when he pitches.

GAME 2: Soup v. Dempster: No way the Brewers sweep (in fact I would be thrilled with 2 of 3), so Cubs win this one.

GAME 3: Yo v. Hill: Gallardo has been more ridiculous than Sheets in his two starts (0.64 ERA). He is probably nearly as good as Sheets when both are on their game.

There it is, Crew takes 2 of 3. Place your bets now. (Note: This only applies if my plot to kidnap Yost and replace him with a blowup doll succeeds.)

Great Moments In Cubs History

You know it's a high quality rant when Chicago Public Radio commemorates it's 25th anniversary.

Enjoy!!!