Bring Back the Stein

At the risk of sounding pedantic, the randomness of a baseball season, that which defies the models and analyses, are what make it so much fun in the first place. Adding to the fun are the characters and human drama. This Brewers team is chock full of potential, interesting storylines and maybe due some luck, the final ingredient that, hell, might just be on our side. Are the Brewers going to win 90 games again? Probably not with that rotation. But who knows?

I have a feeling that Ben Sheets is going to torment me from beyond the grave.

Also, I forgot to mention, I hope the clubhouse chlamydia that is Milton Bradley is prominently featured in the next round of commercials. "I know a lot about desiring trades..."

http://online.wsj.com/art...SB123267153226208331.html Also, I won't make fun of the disease rickets because my grandpa had it partially, but you all may go ahead.

Where art thou, Krazy King Konzol, Karpet King of Milwaukee?

The first memory is of my buszia weeping to the newsman's face after the Fall of Saigon. She had sent three sons to Vietnam so, later, that made sense. My second memory as a breathing human was yet more searing: Waking in the fat of my other grandmother's arms beneath the klieg lights of left field and amid the sounds of the murmuring sea of Milwaukee County Stadium's bleacher creatures and the grind of the organ. Eddie Romero was at bat. That supreme sense of safety will never be duplicated. But the whole of my childhood is populated by memories at County and worshiping the Brewers that come very close (I had virtually a permanent cleft on my right ear where I would fall asleep to Uecker's voice on top of the transistor radio). Both my grandfathers, and my dad, worked at Ladish and had big families and so money was tight. But they all loved baseball and the bleachers were cheap (and, somehow, we'd get free tickets from their union stewards). Milwaukee's manufacturing heart was getting ripped out in those days and the bleachers reflected much of the city's rough-and-tumble. For my grandfathers, who spoke different languages, save for baseball, it was a place for the families to come together over shared regional hatreds and Robin Yount's swing. To be a Brewers fan has always been to suffer gloriously in an attitude of defiance, something at which the peoples from our ethnic stew seem particularly adept. More purely and honestly than the ersatz posturing of Cubs fans. I've written here before about this, but I recall when, playing the wretched Yankees, I was seated in view of their leftfielder when dad gave me a handful of pennies and the drunken commandment, "Side-skip one into (expletive deleted) (Lou Piniella's) eye." I buried my dad a few weeks before the Brewers won the Pennant in 1982, and, without that team, I don't know how I would have endured those nightmare days.

RRRRGGGHHRRGGGR. I was doing relatively well with the C.C. thing until a bunch of taunting texts and e-mails from Yankee fan friends over the lunch hour. In my moment of darkness, I wished Sabathia two torn rotaries and a bowel obstruction. I think that puts me on the Fifth Level of Brewers' Hell: Wrath, Sullenness and Chris Bosio. Sorry, CC. I take it all back. Another moral of the story? Don't have friends who are Yankees fans.

May he pitch in good health and win just as many championships as he did in Cleveland and Milwaukee.

Wow. It strikes me how little we really know about the ownership group and how many of them were docked in industries and instruments docked to this crisis. It's scary until you see how many other baseball owners and ownership groups are also so heavily leveraged. Does that mean it's a level playing field, at least in how big a hit EVERY team is taking? By the way, it would shock me if Attanasio controlled more than 25 or 30 percent of the total ownership. This was the point when Selig wouldn't open the books. Since the public's on the hook in a sense, I think taxpayers, or at least someone representing them, should know. That said, Mark A. has been Santa Claus for me. But heck, wouldn't it be nice if some sort of publication, say, a newspaper, reported on how something like A HUGE MOTHERLOVING RECESSION was going to affect the hometown baseball team? Is that too much to ask? Yeah. Probably.

Does anybody have enough knowledge of the principal owner's and the other owners' portfolios to give a good sense of how the Sam Zell Recession is going to affect the Brewers and payroll in 2009? I've seen generic "bad economy" references in various posts, but I don't know how much liquidity our Papa Pesos has to gird for going after the Peavys of the world. For Alan Selig, the Brewers were basically his whole nut, so that's why he had to resort to the strange equity-retiring practices that were, for the most part, hidden from view. What gives with Attanasio and his biz?

I usually think, when the Brewers are winning, about how much Uecker has suffered over the years, but at least he saw some of the good times. Powell deserves to see a good stretch just as much, especially since he kept the fires burning during the lean times with reports from the farm in a way that I never heard while living in the Chicago, New York, Houston and Baltimore markets. What's the highest civilian honor awarded by the Brewers, the equivalent of the Order of Lenin? Maybe rename the press box cafeteria for Powell? Anyway, no need to compare Uecker unfavorably to Powell. Now, if you want to compare him to Santo, go right ahead.

Yes, yes, and yes!!!! This is the most obvious solution if there needs to be a solution at all. It's the, "Oh, then turn off the stove if the bacon is burning," option that to me seems so obvious and takes away the need for these oddball solutions. Here you go, Bud, and I won't charge a dime: Twilight double-headers. Schedule the cold-weather teams without domes to open and close their seasons with the southern or western swings in their schedules. And, as a mere formality, ban the World Series from ever being played at Wrigley Field.

Let the kid play. Plenty of time to debate the WBC (I opposed it early but now loves it), but what's the harm at exposing him to a broader market? Also, I ask that this post be automatically deleted if there actually turns out to be harm.

"I think you've got to study these numbers. They help you within your decision-making. A lot of the time it comes down to the players executing." Okay. I'll buy it.

Given the naming rights agreement, I'd say a giant pipeline or conveyor belt is more likely. Would taxpayers have to finance a trans-Miller-Valley pipeline? I'm not necessarily against Miller products, so if we got some kind of subsidy on High Life, I could support it. And it would create jobs. But seriously, there was a brew pub in the original plans. If that meant a fake MillerSABCoorsInc-owned "craft brewer," with fake braumeisters imported from South Africa, I could still support it. If there was a just God, they'd give Randy Sprecher the keys, but I got my playoffs so I'll quit pushing my luck.

Call me when they put in the brewery. Also, a roller coaster down the spine of the closign roof would be neat. But yeah, I await the brewery.

I'm grateful for the perspective that this provided. Kind of made me feel bad for all the kvetching I did about the little things during the season. I'm glad our owner gets the big picture. And what a killer way to finish the letter. I'm hoping for "third-in-my-lifetime" next year. God bless Mark. A. (By the way, did Zell send an open letter to Cubs fans? "Hey, you bums: We're doubling beer costs since I can't unload this waste of a team, what with all the back-loaded contracts. I'm thinking of selling ad space on their foreheads. Enjoy the recession. I'm rich.")

1. Clearly, the fans who boo are the weakest link. 2. Mike Rivera. I mean, if he was any good, he'd be playing right?

The Twins had him, what?, at 3d base and as a hitting instructor and they thought enough of him to offer him a job. That would seem to burnish a decent baseball rep. Beyond what I've read, my only first-line contacts on Molitor specifically are a scout for an NL team and a 3A coach with an AL ballclub, both of whom had good things to say about what he brought to a club, namely organization and a good strategic mind when it came to at-the-plate approaches. The last time I spoke with them earnestly about it was before the start of this season. And yeah, I get it and sympathize with it, that Rod Carew et al have shown that being a good hitter doesn't translate into good coaching or managing.

Man, I have a whole stable of Molitor jokes and references that I can't use here, what with this being a family Web site and all. That said, Molitor has a good post-career baseball reputation. He'd definitely add something to the team, not merely distract us with nostalgia (though, c'mon, who'm I kidding, it is still pretty cool on that level, too).

Is there a Keep CC Web site? I'd be happy to sign a pledge to buy season tickets if they kept CC. (Oh, and I'll actually buy the tickets, too, as I have in the past. I didn't think I was able to swing it this year, but if they sign CC I'll get a seasonal job or something, Mr. A.)

I guess he'd be sacrificing a couple million a year in order to make US happy. Dude will be happy no matter where he goes. He looks to be built that way. But hey, the fact that we're even part of the conversation is a quantum leap from a few years back, when getting Jeff Suppan seemed like an earthquake shift.

Braun's a stud and seems to be a good clubhouse leader, but he still is a 24-year-old and maybe not a Great Seer when it comes to baseball personnel issues. It's nice of C.C. to say nice things: He's a class act, all around. But there is no Disney-script ending to this, unless it involves the Disney Corporation's money. I'd love to think otherwise, but not yet on this bluest of Mondays.

I won't speak to Cubs fans directly, for fear of them vomiting Old Style on my shoes, but if I did I would say this: Here is your rotted meat, you fools, now eat it and be poisoned. I humbly beg God to visit a second century of losing on your wretched franchise. You've cannibalized the corpse of your loser mythology for so long, tempting the baseball gods with a mediocre product, that it was outrageous for you to want for anything more than the shabby failure you now must endure. Whining, whining, whining, in that low and lupine moan of Ron Santo: That is the measure of your days. "Ohhhhhhh nooooooooo.....another popout for Fookoodoomee.....Nnnnooooooo." His cries are as the bells of heaven to my ears. You've come from your suburban tract homes to our fair city, toting your vast mountains of disposable income, and brayed your gassy challenges, pounded your larded chests and thumbed your red-veined noses at our team. To be sure, we will share the same fate as your team, losing in this divisional round, but we do not celebrate failure, we merely suffer through it and pray to be able to compete with the bloated payrolls that your management has squandered over history. You have been given much and have wasted it. What is left is a putrifying sense of entitlement, crammed down the rest of baseball's throat. It's Gonna Happen? It already has.

I don't Hart him so much as I used to. By the way, if I promise not to boo, will you maybe get a hit, or at least get three pitches off of the Ghost of Jamie Moyer per at bat?