hawing

I just wanted to echo this GIF. I busted out a Brewers T-shirt under my cardigan at the library today.

2016 is the 10th anniversary of the Johnny Estrada-as-Brewer era, though. Go with Carne.

I was a winner this past week. And the prize pack was a decent haul compared to the "effort" of tweeting a photo with a particular hashtag: two caps (one winter, one summer), a sweatshirt, a set of earbuds and a Scooter Gennett signed ball.

We could make that option "During the 2016 season."

Maybe the "8th place" design will be on the 2017 ballot, the way the busy (but I still like it) Milwaukee design got a second chance this year. I voted for the Cream City design and I'd vote for it again. If the (to me) ugly designs wind up being handed out on the Fridays we have tickets, I'll have some trading to do...maybe here on Brewerfan's Trading Post.

In the hawing household we have a saying for people who leave their obviously-Christmas greenery, like wreaths and roping, up too long: When the wreath turns brown, it must come down! I think even Christmas stuff that's still green should be down, or at least off, by February. Don't try to sell me on "the red bow makes it okay for Valentine's Day!" NO. Wintery swag like snowflakes or snowmen, that's more acceptable. Santa should be stored by now.

Well, local ties is probably one of the better ways to improve the chance of anyone staying more than a few seasons.

Oh, that's tough, RD45. (Not that you need to be told) You have my sympathy. One of our cats has a growth on his liver that experts at the UW Vet School couldn't conclusively identify last August, but they expect it to do him in. So we are aiming to be happy with every day we get with him. He's steadily losing weight but still is cuddly and perfectly able to wake us up when he's hungry. But my point is I understand what you've been through, since we'll have that kind of loss sometime again ourselves.

Would Greg Vaughn have worn that style jersey? Since he's getting some bobble love this year, maybe that would help the merchandise come about.

That makes a ton of sense...but I imagine that's what the Brewers had in mind for both the Provus and Block hires. Here are my handful of not-very-organized thoughts: 1. I think this puts me in the minority here (like I'm not used to that ), but I've been solidly on the Joe Block bandwagon since his arrival, and I was really bummed to see the Haudricourt blog post yesterday. I'd been looking forward to the possibility of his taking over for Uecker (figuring the chances of keeping him were better than they were for Provus). I've appreciated his relative openness on Twitter, and he's done a good job of making me believe that he's a Brewers backer, without being overly homer. I do think he's stronger as a broadcaster when he's side by side with someone (whether as the #2 or the default #1 in Ueck's absence), but I like his voice and overall on-air demeanor. Since a lot of fans think he's boring, maybe that means I'm boring, but that's nothing I haven't heard before. 2. I wonder how successful the Brewers can be to retain any radio talent for long nowadays. Do the announcers all have trouble remaining patient for a chance to succeed Ueck in the booth? Or could it be more that younger people nowadays are increasingly less likely to stick with any one job for very long? I say this realizing that there are personal-life issues that made Atlanta extremely attractive to Jim Powell, and appear to make Pittsburgh have similar appeal to Joe Block. (I'm not aware of a particular bond between Cory Provus and the Twins/Minnesota; I could see him trying to succeed Pat Hughes with the Cubs, just because he's personally a Cubs fan.) We've been extremely spoiled by having Bob for most of the tenure of this franchise, and I'm not saying I expect his eventual successor to want to stay here 40+ years. I do wonder how soon it will be rare for the same broadcaster to be in place for even 10-20 years. I think that's the direction the working world is taking. I hope it does not mean turnover in the Brewers' radio booth every 3 seasons.

I think I've mentioned this on the board before, but during the (whether to build) Miller Park debate in 1995, I was enough of a doubter that I started a mental list of teams I could stand to adopt in lieu of a relocated Brewers franchise. The list was all small/smallish-market. In no particular order, Pirates, Twins, Indians, Mariners, Royals. If I had to make a 21st-century list, I'd consider adding the Astros and Nationals. Nothing that's super trendy. Since 1995, I've been to a home game for all these teams except Houston (and, so far, not Target Field), and enjoyed each of the experiences enough so I'd still consider switching if I had to. In general, I'd prefer a team whose home games are in the same time zone, so Seattle might ultimately be lower on the list. I ruled out Chicago (either team) and St. Louis all but immediately. I think if the Brewers moved away, they would become the anti-franchise for me. I might have inherited that feeling; I didn't find this out until after my dad died, but he apparently wrote off baseball entirely after the Braves left Milwaukee.

Aw, man, I remember when Ben Sheets' kids were born.

I've been waiting for someone to say the Cardinals got a real steal in Leake. Maybe that's played out by now?

The driver who drove the wrong way on a one-way street, whose coping response to our attempts to keep her from slamming into us was to give us the finger. Because, obviously, it was our bad to drive the way the traffic signs indicated? More seriously, we were all super lucky it wasn't a major thoroughfare.

I imagine they wanted to capitalize on Star Wars mania since it's all over the place right now. Plus what else in this offseason is going to produce a "you snooze you lose" buzz? If the Brewers still had Corey Hart, they could have had a Corey-as-Wookiee bobblehead. Missed opportunity, unless he eventually counts as an old-school Brewer.

This is a tangent, but hear me out. Recently I went through some old Brewers things (we have a lot) and came across the stub I saved from our 1994 "strike refund" check. 1995 is the only season since 1992 for which we skipped season tickets; I vaguely remember getting an invoice from the Brewers for our 1995 package (then just 13 games and called the American League Sweep), with a form letter basically saying they were pretty sure there would be games played in 1995. The letter, or whatever it was (I may still have that at home too, but it wasn't stored with the strike refund check stub) was vague didn't even seem to consider that we as fans might be wary about putting up $$ for a season that might not happen. I'll bet that if Mark Attanasio had been in charge then, the communication from the Brewers would have been more straightforward, and might have persuaded us to put down a payment. At least he doesn't call everything "tremendous" (a habit of Wendy S-P's that made me want to pull my hair out).

The hawing household went to the sale at midday Friday and never encountered a line other than a short wait at checkout. I appreciated that they sorted everything by size this year, which allowed us to bypass whole sections of the clubhouse. I was surprised that they had as much larger-size women's clothing as they did. I know I must be the only person here for whom that is a useful niche, but I usually have to settle for men's clothing which fits all right except is extremely long on me. I know enough to bypass most MLB women's clothing because most of it is sized for waifs and low cut and/or sparkly, none of which works for me. But this year I had success. The only game-used thing that would have interested me was a navy Fiers jersey, and by the time we arrived the only jersey of his was gold/lager/bile colored. (I did land a Cerveceros jersey for kalle8, though!) The rest of the player-related merchandise was not inspiring - though I was surprised that they ever made Jeff Bianchi shirseys - but after my two most recent player shirsey purchases were lost in the same transaction (Gomez and Fiers), I'm a little gunshy about investing in individual player stuff. Like DocLuna, I enjoy just having a reason to be at the ballpark. It was a long two months.

A holiday season shopping "bug": The SO's family finally moved to a name drawing for Christmas gifts a few years back. For the last several of those years, I've offered to do the drawing, since we're rarely all in one place, people often want to start shopping before Thanksgiving, and it makes me feel a little more involved. I usually do this toward the end of October. This year, one of the family members sends out an email to the family email group in early-mid October, saying I'm ready to shop. When are we getting our names? At that point I was preparing for a mid-month surgery - not worrisome, but it required six weeks of recuperation, so I had a zillion loose ends to tie up at work. So it wasn't until the week after surgery (by which time I had oodles of free time) to send a message saying "I'll get to this, here's why I was delayed." So I got to the drawing soon after, sent the picks to everyone right away, and posted a list of gift ideas for myself and the SO. (This family insists on the name drawing being a surprise, so I can't just post the list.) This was like Halloween weekend - not terribly later than in past years, but several weeks after the semi-demanding email. The person who was so eager to shop in early October? I drew her name, AND she didn't supply any ideas until this morning. I really wanted to get going on this before the shopping season got super crazy, and before my return to work. So OF COURSE I only get some ideas now. Totally a first-world problem, but I reserve the right to still feel bugged by it. (As an aside that longtime bf.netters will find hilarious, this person is the same one who began the relish-tray legend that so many of you remember fondly.)

Meanwhile, the rain of the last few days resulted in record rainfalls for both Thanksgiving and for November 26 as a date in Madison and Milwaukee; and the snow from last weekend is gone (even in Lafayette County, which had about a foot of snow last weekend).

You won't know unless you go!

I think we can all agree that there's nothing funny about Russell's actions...but this post is gold, sveumrules, GOLD!

Look how far we got without a winter weather thread! November 20. Not bad. Bummer that it's apparently just HOURS until southern Wisconsin gets at least a moderate serving of snow. I'd expect our SW Wisconsin and any Iowa friends to already be contending with that kind of precipitation.

[sarcasm]Why is that in blue?[/sarcasm] Honestly, I was just about to edit my last post to declare that we have to call the Brewers' newest acquisition JAVI-B. So fistbump to Kalle. Great minds.

I also will be interested to see if the Brewers assign Javier uniform no. 3. That would allow them to finally move the rest of the Yuni shirseys.

I'm not going to lie. Part of me wants to edit the Javier out of the subject line and watch the sitewide freakout.