Patrick425

Amen! It's not just you. I get so tired of this argument that the game needs more offense in order to make it interesting. The low strike zone has also trickled down to youth baseball. I coached my son's team when he played youth baseball (up until 3 years ago) and there were several umpires that would not call a strike on any pitches above the belt. I would hear other coaches say to the players, "Ok, be aware, this umpire has a low strike zone". I even had umpires tell me that they have a low strike zone. My opinion was No, the strike zone is the strike zone. It's defined in the rule book. You can't just make up your own strike zone. It's like saying "Ok, be aware, this umpire only allows 2 outs per inning."

Geez, Game05, sounds like a nightmare. These aren't your roommates by chance, are they? http://judgmentalobserver.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/306475_bridesmaids_rebel_600x400.jpg

So.....some questions: -When you say "they", do you mean him/her and his/her significant other? Or do you have multiple roommates and when "they" got home, "one" of those roommates got upset with you (you say "a roommate", then you say "they")? - What time was it? Where they mad because you were making dinner at an odd time at night or early morning? Your statement makes it sound like they didn't want you to make dinner in the kitchen, but I can't imagine where else they would expect you to make it.

Honestly, no one avoids the BC because it's downtown. They avoid the BC because the Bucks have been mostly terrible for 25 years. They didn't avoid it during the second half of 2009, and they are slowly starting to come back this season with actual hope and changing coming into play. The people who avoid the BC because it's downtown, avoid huge portions of Milwaukee because it's a medium sized city. I avoid going to Bucks games mainly because A) never been a huge NBA fan and B) the prices. I use to only go if I got free tickets, but occasionally, over the last 3 or 4 years, I have purchased tickets to games because my teenage son enjoys going. He got good grades this first semester so I decided to reward him with tickets to a few games. I went to purchase online on Stubhub and am just astounded at the prices. Even against a low demand team like the Pacers, if you want to sit in anything but the top half of the upper level, you are looking at $30 per ticket minimum for the first 6 -8 rows of the upper level.. If you want to go see a team like Golden State, you are looking at $50 minimum to sit in the upper deck.

For the umpteenth time (and won't be the last time I gripe about it)....people who text while they are driving. What is really getting annoying about it is that I don't see any near term solution to this epidemic. I think accidents caused by texting are significantly under-reported because its harder to prove. My guess is that police do not have the authority to ask a driver for their cell phone unless perhaps a fatality is involved and I think it's rare for a driver to be pulled over just for suspicion of texting and driving. WTMJ 620 tried to initiate a campaign against texting and driving several months ago, but I'm not sure they had much success. One reason is because I think so many people do it and either are completely unaware of how much it is affecting their driving or they just don't care. Not only is it very dangerous it's also very annoying to drive anywhere near a person who is texting. They are easy to spot. They don't maintain a constant speed and they have a hard time staying in their lane. Their driving behavior is very similar to a person driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

We have preferred parking and park in the Fingers parking lot 90% of the time. Instead of going towards the inside lanes of the parking lot when we are leaving the stadium we head towards the outer road that circles the parking lot (frederick miller way ) and then take that to the Mitchell blvd exit and onto 94 W. If it takes more than 3 minutes from the time we get in our car to the time we are on the freeway that is unusual. Our seat location helps a bit. We are in the last row of the family section in front of the press box. Our MO is with one or two outs in the 9th, we hop over the back of the seats and as soon as the last out is made we b-line towards the door. So, I think we usually beat the majority of the crowd to their cars. So many people just stand around at their seats after the game, I never get that. If we go to a game outside of our season tix and are sitting in the middle of a section we are generally at the mercy of the people on either side of us. Many times during those situations, we will watch the 9th inning from behind the section so that we don't have to wait for other people in our row. Where do you park during Bucks games and where do you live? I'm assuming that you don't park in the structure or if you have you have not stayed until the very end of the game. I don't go to a ton of Bucks games, but I usually park in the structure or the surface lot just north of the Bradley center when I do go. My experience of getting out of either of those lots is not nearly as easy as Brewer games and then you also don't instantly get on the freeway (you generally have to deal with backups at stoplights and freeway ramp entrances). Again, a packed baseball stadium holds almost 3 times as much as a typical crowd at a Bucks game.

I live in Waukesha and work downtown. I've also been a 20 game season ticket holder for the last 20+ years. However, if they had built the stadium downtown, I probably would not have continued to be a season ticket holder. My main issue is accessibility. Right now, even if there are 40,000+ at the stadium, I can usually get from my parking spot to the freeway within 3 or 4 minutes and be home in 20 minutes. It just seems like it would have been a nightmare downtown. I've been to Bucks games with less than 15,000 people and leaving parking structures or even surface lots after the game can take a long time. I can't imagine how that would be with 40,000 people trying to leave downtown. I could see it taking over an hour to get home after a game if the stadium was downtown. I know people want to argue that most fans would stick around downtown and go to a bar. I think the percentage of fans that would do that, especially on a weeknight, would be small. I don't know, seems like they have done pretty good at drawing fans at the current location. Not sure how one can 2nd guess that decision at this point.

Actually, it bugs me that he can get away with saying "I'm just here so I don't get fined". Yes, I know that the majority of questions are stupid, but really? How much money does he make and he can't just play nice for a little while and answer some questions? What a prima donna.

I am on the other side of the coin. I would rather listen to most sports than watch it. I like being able to move around and do things while listening to the game rather than be stuck to the sofa watching it. I agree however that Uecher sometimes gets carried away with stories and neglects telling us the fly ball was foul or fair and such. But the flip side is when the game is dull he isn't. In some of those bad years I liked it more when the game was out of hand because Bob would go night at the improv on the broadcast. Now that the team is competitive I would rather hear the game called better. But an 80 year old icon can do as he wishes and I will not complain. I too prefer listening on the radio. Probably because the majority of games were not televised when I was younger. Nothing like sitting outside on a warm summer night, listening to the Brewer game.

Placing this question here for lack of a better thread and not wanting to start an entirely new thread. Are there any places, besides Best Buy, that install car stereos any more? If anyone knows of a good place, please let me know (preferably near Waukesha)? My son is on the verge of a 4.0 GPA this semester and my wife and I thought it would be a nice reward to get him a stereo for his 2004 Grand Prix that has a basically non-functional stereo. I called Best Buy and it sounds like installation would run about $200 (not including the stereo itself)...that's a bit more than what we are looking to spend.

I'm so glad that it appears most people posting here agree that this is an awful idea. Seems like he just wants to appeal to the lowest common denominator that believe that offense is the only thing that makes sports appealing. What really bothers me is this quote I saw from him: Manfred made it clear that examining the pace of the game is first on his list of priorities, but not far behind will be finding ways to "inject additional offense into the game." This seems similar to some of the crazy golf ideas that have been thrown around (reduce courses to 13 holes and make the size of the cup bigger). Really? Is there where the collective attention span of American's is currently at?

fondybrewfan posted something in the "What's not bugging you" thread regarding the relatively mild winter compared to last year and I totally agree with it. However, I have this related rant that I thought was more appropriate for this thread. I was in an elevator earlier this month (Jan 12th or something like that?...towards the end of the cold snap we had earlier in the month) and the conversation between the two other people in the elevator was along the lines of how cold it was and how they were hoping after last winter that we would get a break this winter but "no such luck". I didn't chime in, but I thought really? We basically just had one week of really cold weather at that point (I went golfing the day after Christmas!) and you are going to compare this to last year? I hate it when people make general sweeping comments about the weather with very little facts. It will be sunny out and they will say something like.."I thought they were predicting rain. The forecasters are never right", when the forecast really just called for a chance of rain and perhaps that was going to start later in the day or maybe there was a good chance that most of the rain would miss to the north or south. Basically they saw a picture with a cloud and drop coming out of the cloud and made the assumption that it would be an all day rain without actually reading the full forecast or listening to anything the meteorologist had to say. Kind of reminds me of this conversation from "Groundhog Day", starting at about 1:55.

Thanks for the links EBaN! Those scorebooks on Eephus League are awesome. I have not scored a game in a long time. Up until a few years ago, my son (now 16) use to keep score when we went to Brewer games. I might have to order some of those, either for my sons HS games or store them away for when I retire some day and have more time to do things like that. As a side note, a little less than a year ago I was rummaging around in our basement and found some old score books from when I was a kid. After studying them for a while, I realized that one of the games that I kept score of was the 6th game of the 1977 World Series (Reggie Jackson - 3 HRs). I was 11 at the time. I was pretty thrilled with that find.

Uh..don't forget Fiers!

Do you mean best SP in the minors? I would be surprised if they moved an 18 yr old from rookie ball to the Majors in one year.

Baseball America shows Diplin's Birthday as 9/18/96. If that's correct that would make him 18 (not 16). Edit: Oh..sorry..didn't notice you guys were posting reports from 2013.

Wow. Diplan turned 18 in September.

MONDAY, 4:04pm: Gallardo has been informed that he’s been dealt to Texas, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo was first to tweet. The return includes infielder Luis Sardinas, righty Corey Knebel, and righty Marcos Diplan, per Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter).

Is this a guess? Or do you have some insider information? Seems like that would be a pretty decent trade.

I don't believe any of the Summerfest headliners have been announced yet...and I'm not sure this is the proper thread to discuss that.

Meh..in hindsight, if they don't settle for the first field goal and then don't convert, they probably don't get the 2nd field goal. Rushing 3 guys on 3rd and 19 was my biggest question mark in regards to coaching. Other than that, most of they blame imho lies with the player's lack of execution.

THIS. I actually should have qualified that by saying I'd be thrilled if it allowed us to get Zimmerman AND extend his contract beyond this year.

If this somehow allowed us to get Zimmerman, I would be thrilled. Not overly thrilled about Sardinas (if he is one of the players we are getting). He better be a heck defensive wiz because his offensive number do not impress me at all (not just last year, but his overall minor league stats). edit: ok, not sure the "at all" part of my statement regarding Sardinas is accurate. He did post a few years with decent OBP numbers, but overall...meh. Not a top 100 prospect.

The umpire dictates "time outs". If the umpire ends a time out by the batter (or doesn't grant one), the pitcher can throw whenever he wants. Although I guess the question remains as to when the umpire, with the clock running down, would tell the pitcher to go ahead and pitch. Seems like, to be fair to the pitcher, that if the umpire grants the batter a time out, then the pitcher's clock should stop also (which would defeat the purpose of the pitch clock rule). Also, this may have been stated before...while I agree that baseball games could do a lot to speed up play and I don't have a problem with most of the suggestions, this seems like another area where baseball gets "picked on" compared to other sports. Baseball games are generally quicker than football games and, in actuality, have more action. I think there was a study that showed most football games have 6 to 8 minutes of actual action. The commercial breaks after a score and then again right after the ensuing kick off is maddening (but I get that its all about the sponsor money).

Mine is the man responsible for the existence of Milwaukee Brewers and the reason this web site exists.