RockCoCougars

This is starting to get ridiculous. I've got to think that the decision has been made, and regardless of what that decision is, there is some MAJOR preparation for damage/spin control taking place going on as we speak.

Considering that they are booked for the 4th (wasn't Summerfest closed last year on the holiday?), I think this bill will draw pretty well relatively speaking. It won't fill the Marcus, but it will draw pretty well with the beer drinking set. Either alone is probably side stage material, but both are legends. To me, this bill is more appealing than anything they had in the Marcus last year, but I won't be going because it's the 4th. On another note, one of the posts above mentioned Priest. That begs the question, who is better, Maiden or Priest? I've got to go with JP.

Matt Morris II. Why do people help the Yankees out by taking their garbage? Think about it, if the Yankees would rather have a few million of his salary to sign Ibanez and Chavez than have him as a #5 doesn't that say something?

Ersanity.

I'm sure Greinke is waiting to first get an agent and second to see whether the Brewers implode. Unfortunately, this delay is going to push things back to the point where he's almost certain to test the market. Not many guys sign extensions mid season before they hit free agency. I just hope that Marcum isn't the consolation prize.

Frankly, I don't see anyone in this draft that is going to make an immediate star-type impact in the NBA. I've seen Andre Drummond projected as a possible number one pick. From what I've seen, he's not even a force in the Big East, he impacts things defensively, but doesn't seem to have any offensive game at all. Even if he does develop, it will take years. Every other player I've seen ranked highly is either a fr./so. and/or a tweener. There is not one player that I've seen that makes me say, "Wow, I hope the Bucks win the lottery to get this guy". As for the Bucks, I have been extremely frustrated with how Jennings has played since his 'snub'. Lazy, selfish basketball. I cannot believe that anyone could be that crushed by not getting selected to an all star game. In most sports, guys don't even want to play in these things. The way the Bucks have been going this year, they will probably reel off another streak of wins again now that it looks like they are on the brink of implosion. I cannot figure this team out. Their inconsistency, even within a game, is astounding.

I have a family member who is thrilled with his Escape and the gas mileage that it gets (relative to SUV). I've heard good things about Pontiac Vibes as well (obviously these would be on the used market).

You are mixing up a couple of different seasons. You are absolutely correct. My bad, for some reason I thought the assist record was 17, forgot that he played enough to get it his rookie year. Sports Illustrated put him on the cover. Dan Patrick and other non-ESPN, nationally-syndicated talkshow types are talking about him. It's far from just an ESPN thing. Correct. This is why I avoid pretty much all of those outlets for the same reason that I avoid the local news...I can't stand fluff pieces. I'm so tired of hearing about Tebow and Peyton Manning, now this. Kind of like the Whitney Houston thing. An easy story- custom made for the lazy press- that has been beaten to death 10 ways to Sunday already... why can't they let the poor woman rest in piece? This is a godsend to all the talking heads during perhaps the biggest sports down period of the year between Super Bowl and NCAA. Can't avoid Linsanity on the net though. I will say that he seems like a good guy, hopefully he cashes in on the hype.

Well, Jeff Suppan intends to return for his 16th major league season as well..... Edgar looks to be a poor-man's Yuni at this point. That said, I wouldn't see harm in throwing him a minor league deal and a NRI in case of injury.

I looked this up last night, and Sessions had a stretch where he scored roughly 22 points a game (with a 40+ point game) with a tad more than 8 assists (including the record assist game), so he was slightly worse than Lin. The differences are that the Knicks won 7 games in a row. This is a clear advantage to Lin, but I'm going to wait before I crown him as the next Steve Nash. When you are handling the ball on almost every play against substandard competition on a team decimated by injury/etc., you can put together a nice run. Lin isn't going to continue shooting 50 percent from the field on mostly layups, he's not regarded as a good shooter, and he's not going to get the scoring opportunities now that Amare and the black hole Carmelo are back. Nice story, though I'm getting really tired of hearing about it constantly (why does the media have to run everything into the ground?), but it smacks more of flavor of the month to me than a long term thing. Props to the kid for taking the bull by the horns as a point guard in his first extensive duty, but my guess is that with more scouting and taking the guy seriously, teams are going to adjust how they guard his pick and roll to keep him from driving the basket with the same success.

I think Wilson has some anxiety/mental issues and that might've had something to do with his quick exit. I believe that Wilson spent a good chunk of the 70's in his bedroom. Some wacko therapist took over on him after that. Was conducting therapy sessions in a huge sandbox, etc. Personally, I have my doubts whether Wilson will complete the tour..... primarily if the ticket sales don't meet expectations. However, he has done at least one solo tour in the past few years. I'm pretty sure that he played Milwaukee, because I was considering going.

I didn't think that it could get any worse than last year (yes, I am old). There wasn't one act on the main stage or side stages that were worth the hassle to me. Over the past several years, there were usually a half dozen. I thought that the main stages skewed too young.... ironically, this year, it seems to be skewing too old with the Beach Boys and Neil Diamond. I enjoyed both Maiden and Alice Cooper back in the day, but would agree that they are side stage material. Was hoping for Van Halen, but their ticket prices probably wouldn't allow them to play Summerfest (don't they have a price cap?)

Sessions didn't. Lin has done things that have historically not been done before or it's been decades since it has been done. ESPN nor did any other thing 'create' what he's done. It was very close. I remember a stretch where he had some high scoring games and set the Bucks franchise assist record. I'll have to check the details later, but it was pretty much the same scenario. The team was decimated with injuries so the unheralded point guard puts up big numbers for a stretch. The major differences were that Milwaukee is not New York, and that the Bucks most likely weren't beating up on doormats during the run.

Lin is an ESPN creation. Something to tide the masses over now that Tebowmania has subsided (Unless a game is on, I do not watch that network by choice). Big deal, he's strung a few games together. I'd have to check the stats, but I'm pretty sure that Ramon Sessions did something close to this in his last season with the Bucks.

A lot of players in that draft refused to visit Milwaukee and I may not be recalling that correctly but something is sticking in my mind about that. That's my recollection as well. I know that Noah did for sure. I remember the Bucks drafting Yi and wondering who they would be trading him to. I am not sure the Bucks have figured out the idea of using the BPA strategy. I think they are evaluating and going with guys with the highest upside but with very low floors and reaching with their 1st round picks. While with their 2nd round picks they are drafting guys at least recently who have high floors and rather low ceilings. Exactly. Perhaps the prior regime learned their lesson by drafting Haislip, but the current regime duplicated that mistake by taking Alexander. I don't want a guy who can 'jump out of the gym'. Sanders falls into that raw but athletic mode as well. I want a guy who can play basketball. .rant. I can express how much I hate the stupid ping pong gamble that the NBA has for its draft. This has to be one of the dumbest ideas to ever have been thought up for a draft. I mean come on a team that is only 16 games under .500 gets the first pick in the draft when a team that is 50+ games under .500 now gets the 2nd pick in the draft or worse they could get a 5th pick? It makes absolutely no sense at all. .rantover The reason for this is that everyone was tanking to get Ralph Sampson. The Rockets tanked the next year as well and got Akeem. It was actually pretty ridiculous. Funny how the next year, Stern rigged the first lotto so the Knicks would get Ewing.

Yi could not wait to play ball in Milwaukee. It's a draft. Whether he wanted to play here or not, it's not really up to him. Yeah, but Yi was better than Yao. Yao said so himself.

The Bucks had interest in Noah, but he refused to visit Milwaukee if I recall correctly.

The Bucks are experts at drafting second round guys, that's for sure. Look at some of their second rounders over the past 20 years: Luc Richard, Leuer, Redd, Ersan, Sessions, Bogans, Flip Murray, Dan Gadzuric, Meeks, Skip Alston, Moochie Norris, Eric Snow, Vashon Lenard, Bobby Phills. That's a lot of pretty decent players. I'd be willing to bet that no team has had better results in the second round. First round, not so much. Many of these second rounders ended up outplaying their counterpart in the first round. Perhaps the Bucks should just stockpile second round picks...

As we speak, it seems that ESPN is too busy creating the next Tebow than to give more than a few soundbites on the Braun situation. I base this on their website, and the fact that last evening I was in an establishment where ESPN news was on (I don't watch by choice).

There's a ton of stuff to do around the Power and Light District. Checked this out to see how I missed it and found that it had been started after I was there (which was more than a decade ago). This gives me an excuse to go back.

The Bucks have drafted horrible for the most part since the early 80's. They had three nice hits in 93-96, but that's about it. As for being a 'top team' in the lottery, I will still argue that it's a crapshoot. With all the teenagers and international guys, drafts are not as strong as they once were in my opinion. Heck the Bulls had the 2/3 I believe one year not too long ago (2002?) and took Chandler and Curry.

The stadium complex is on the outskirts of town a la Miller Park. Huge parking lot and Kansas City fans are very cool, possibly the friendliest opposing fans I've encountered. Great food too, but I found downtown K.C. to be pretty dead.

Rock Co., I keep finding myself writing contrary posts to you the past few days -- please know it's not personal. You just make your points clearly and with good detail, which gives those of us who might respectfully disagree with you a lot to chew on Thanks for the post. Absolutely not personal. I argue with the folks on here the same way as I do my friends at the bar. I will fully admit that I'm a tad overbearing, 'old school', set in my ways and stubborn (see my lengthy debates about the value of 'taking a walk'). Though I may come off in text as a 'know it all', I try not to. I am by no means a baseball expert, as attested by my record in fantasy baseball (though if Rich Harden and Jake Peavy ever bounce back in the same season, look out...) I try to admit when I was wrong, (Randy Wolf) but don't do so nearly as much as I do when I was right (probably 10 percent of my posts have been dealing with Suppan/Riske). At any rate, I will fully admit that I have a preference for the 'baseball card stats' that I grew up with. I also dig the long ball, probably undervalue defense and overvalue any player who came up through the Brewers system... however I have no faith in prospects until they produce. I blame these things mostly on the fact that I was scarred by the Gorman Thomas trade and the fiasco that followed the next few years. Back to the Beane thing. I will admit I've never read the book, I was aware that it was written by someone else- wasn't sure if it was a ghost writer or not. Even though he didn't write it, I don't think that you can deny that the book has enhanced Beane's reputation. Personally, I just feel that Beane was in the right place at the right time. He inherited a ton of good (though perhaps 'enhanced') guys like Giambi, Tejada, Chavez, Hudson, etc. in a weak division. He did score huge with Zito and Mulder, I'll give him that, but he was very lucky that those guys were so good, so fast. It would have been fairly unprecedented for one guy to make the jump so fast from college, let along two. The stat theories are interesting, but would Beane have had the same success had he taken over the Brewers at the same time he took over the A's? I doubt it. I feel the same way about Theo Epstein. What has he done that Brian Cashman has not (played with an expensive toy)? Bottom line, championships are won on the field, not in Baseball America, Fangraphs, etc. The A's W/L pct. under Beane the past 5 years is roughly the same the Brewers had under the last 5 years of Bando's regime. Beane keeps making interesting moves, but the results aren't there, and almost inevitably we get the same 'payroll limitation' excuse that Bando used.

My question though is that is Kurkjian just making that statement because he assumes he will be correct and that nobody wins these appeals. I don't know how he could have a source, as really this all rides on one man at this point and I highly doubt MLB and/or Braun has the verdict and is sitting on it.. Exactly. Unless he has a mole at the arbitrator's practice, he's probably just blowing hot air. As far as the ridiculous duration of this process goes, I disagree with those who say 'the longer the better'. I think that the longer this goes on, the worse the odds are. If Braun truly had a slam dunk case ('it's B.S.') would it really take this long to sort through all the details? Maybe the thing already has bounced back to MLB and the player's union though, and they are working on damage control. In that case, maybe Kurkjian is on to something.

I used to get it, but don't anymore. I'll see if my parents still do though, I'm thinking they may have cut down to Sundays only. At any rate, if you don't get any bites, I can certainly run to the store and pick one up for you later this evening. Just let me know. My condolences.