SeriesFinale

You might even say...they battle. Where was Coco? Thanks Dusty!

Ned's an inspiration to our nation's procrastinating students.

Wow, I just got home to this unpleasant surprise Nothing like melodramatic gut-punching irnoy

Big thumbs-up to Soup tonight. And man, I am loving this new Gameday "video alert" feature...I used to have to wait hours to see these Crew highlights

Jiminy cricket, I got to the bathroom and miss it

A walkoff jack on Coco would be a thing of beauty

Shame, I would've liked for Soup to get the win Hopefully he still can

I really think it's a little ridiculous that Haudricourt is going to try to get Melvin to tell "his side." Who cares about the "he said, he said" at this point? I can't imagine Doug will touch this with a ten-foot pole at any rate.

Cleaning the shower...it takes some elbow grease and some god-awful chemicals in an enclosed space to really get it clean.

Rome's digging on the Cubs right now, it's pretty good.

A bit of a mess but... Ned says : it's important to get out quick and they expected it more this year, they're playing more confident baseball this year. Last year's September games really are helping the team this year. Made some great additions in Kendall, Cameron, Kapler. Players understand that they're a better team and they "know in their hearts" they can win the division now. Rome asks about the defense problems. Yost felt like the SPs were trying to get 4 or 5 outs last year and it wore down the bullpen last year. Uses "battle" to describe the team coming back in September but ignores the defense issue. Says he's never seen any player as young as Prince with as much presence. Says Prince isn't satisfied with HRs...wants RBIs and a Gold Glove as well. Says that Prince is the leader of the clubhouse and that he leaves nothing on the field, that he thinks it's a blessing to be a big-leaguer. Thinks he made a pact with himeself (Prince) to give everything he had. Rome asks about contractual status and the effect it has on the team--Prince was mad for "ten minutes," Ned says they have time to work on the contract "Doug thinks he's as special as I do." Rome asks about Sheets being healhty--Ned says it's big, they struggle without him because the rest of the pitchers have a comfort zome with ben there. Yo's coming back and they'll have three young guys there--they need guys they can look up to like Bush, Suppan and Sheets. Of all the moves so far, Kendall has been tremendous, settles down the pitching staff. He's a Qb on the field for the team. Focus is on the pitcher, not his own offense. Kendall gives his advice on opposing players in coaching meetings. Rome asks about Gagne and Ned'as confidence in him--Ned says he has his confidence, he's keeping the ball down and his speed is still 94, 95. Ned thinks his role in Boston hurt Gagne. "When I get out of my routine, I get uncomfortable." Blames Gagne's Chicago meltdown on the weather.

Coming up after these commercials

"Bottom of Hour #3"

Yeah, the pitcher in the 8 hole experiment has just been a disaster thus far.

Hopefully they'll play "Take the Money and Run" if he comes in.

As an outsider, I've been very impressed with Milwaukee's development along the river, from just south of downtown all the way up to Lakefront Brewery. You stay at a hotel right downtown and it doesn't feel nearly as dead as it did there 10-15 years ago.

Watching the game from home, he definitely had control problems in, I believe, the 3rd...just like that, when he came back for the next-inning, he was spot on again. (The Giants announcers even felt that SF missed an opportunity since, "You know those control problems Sheets was having?....Gone.") He looked best in the 1st and the last two innings I thought.

The ONLY time I've seen my step-Dad cry in the 28 years I've known him was when he was watching The Champ with Ricky Schroeder and Joel Grey on some UHF channel in the 80s. Personally, I get misty-eyed pretty often, and like Hawing, every time I see It's A Wonderful Life it gets me. Actual tears are harder to come by. I practically had a crying jag at the end of Big Fish...of course, I've always had a choppy relationship with my Dad but what that came down to is that I was pretty drunk on whiskey at the time, too ("It's about fathers and sons, maaaaaan!")! The last one to get me was a surprise--Bridge to Terabithia. Yes, I was sober for that one. My wife wanted to rent it since she'd read the book as a child...because of Disney's misleading advertising, I thought it was a Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe knockoff and wasn't really expecting the really touching story I got. Very moving; I cried the second and third time I watched it as well (not the fourth, though, I'm proud to say!).

Yeah, the homeless are a real problem here, probably THE problem, really--between the weather here, the overly-lassiez-faire attitude that the city had in the past, and the fact that a lot of them are drug casualties that first came out here in the late 60s, you've got not just an off-the-charts amount of them, but a huge percentage seem to be either extremely mentally-damaged from substance abuse or well on their way. Combine that with the fact that there are a lot of tourists here, you tend to find a more aggressive-breed of panhandler, bum, and crackpot. I personally have never been stopped or aggressively-panhandled here, but I imagine it happens. I often find Market Street an embarrassment because of these guys, but the city's doing better, rousting congregations, making arrests, etc. Anyway, if I had caught you before you went, I could've told you to avoid the Wharf like the plague! Any Bay cruise or Alcatraz trip you're gonna go on will start there, but there's no reason to make the Wharf a destination in and of itself--it's just a tourist trap. As far as Chicago goes, we'll just have to agree to disagree--I will say that the only people who I tended to find out sniffed at Wisconsin or Milwaukee generally lived in awful suburbs like Schaumburg or whatever! And I did always hold that Illinoisians were indeed much worse drivers than they themselves believed--speeding, weaving, tailgating, etc. Really unsafe stuff. I think they're just attuned to a more aggressive driving-style in the city and don't properly adjust once they get out of town and into Wisconsin. Ech.

Yeah, this sums it up succinctly. As a resident of SF and a long-time Chicagoan before that I disagree with your taste in cities however!

On one hand I'd love to see the Brew Crew rock Coco Cordero in the 9th at some point this series (and despite my anti-booing stance, I have to say I wouldn't mind seeing him get the business from the fans, either); on the other hand I hope we don't see one pitch from the guy. He might not pitch tomorrow just because I wouldn't be shocked to see the Reds up by 5 runs, uff da

I think it comes down to personal preference, depending on what line of work you're in. You're not gonna be able to live in, say, Ontario, WI and get a job in advertising or IT. Nor can you be a farmer and live on Division and Damen in Chicago (maybe a horticulturist though!). For most careers though you have a choice: you have to weigh what you want to spend your money on, how much time you want to spend in commute, and whether the multitude of opportunities and options outweigh your desire for true peace and quiet (although again, that's something that's easier to find in the city than you'd expect).

Well, as a long-time city resident, I can tell you traffic isn't as big of a deal to actual residents since most of the time I don't drive--we don't have to. I don't want to turn this too nasty since I love going out to the boonies to visit relatives but I'll take some congestion and graffiti over a barren nightlife, sparse cultural and sporting opportunities, and lower-paying jobs any day.

I took these at a fan event they had at AT&T Park in January 07, two days after they had a motocross there. They're always having concerts, football games, monster truck-type stuff, etc there, and they have natural grass that's in pretty good shape (mind you, these aren't really during the season itself). It appears they just stick some flooring over the field itself. I'd definitely prefer it if they kept the real stuff and just did something like that instead. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/SeriesFinale75/DSC06922.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/SeriesFinale75/DSC06928.jpg

BevMo is having one of the 5-cent wine sales they have each year so my wife and I went out and bought a couple cases and have been going to work on these bottles of the tasty local stuff the last two weekends. Man, life is hard.