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Thanks for bringing that up, hawing. Although I am certainly guilty of this as well, I am also concerned about the general negativity about the Brewers. Although it is certainly fine to criticize players and coaches, I've noticed that we as fans have set extremely high and often unattainable expectations for some of our players. A baseball team consists of 25 players and all of them have their strengths and weaknesses that they contribute to the team. Furthermore, all players go through their ups and downs over the course of a season. In the course of an individual game, we all go through our ups and downs, but I would like it if we could try and avoid saying things specifically like "here we go again" or "looks like the typical [brewers player] is showing up here" or "there's another mistake by [brewers player]". I'm not saying that it's wrong to say/think those things, because I tell them to my roommate all the time. It just becomes annoying after awhile to have certain players consistently criticized and scapegoated. Maybe every team does need to have its Chad Moeller or "Jose Suckentin" as I used to call Jose Valentin as a 10-year-old, but it's not fair to the bottom players on our team to be constantly criticized for every little mistake while an 0 for 5 by our top players can go generally unnoticed. I was reading some older game threads, and I was surprised to find that even when the Brewers were completely out of the pennant race in August, the attitude of the IGT was generally more positive than it has been recently. Thus, I'm just asking that we try and avoid one-line negative posts and try and make the IGTs feel more like a pennant race and less like an emotional rollercoaster. To keep this on topic, I will say that as a frequent insomniac, I am looking forward to staying up late the next few nights and having live baseball to watch. Go Crew!

This was the first night that I got to sit down and watch the Olympics for more than 5 minutes. I was also very impressed by the men's gymnastic team--it was great that they managed to get bronze despite the losses. China was on another planet, though.

Maybe Weeks can hit the grand slam...

I'm calling grand slam #1 here.

Counsell now slugging .304

I love the Nationals.

Ed Sedar should have pretended to be a runner on 1st to convince Counsell that the bases were loaded.

The Nationals aren't this bad. We are making them look this bad because we are playing really well--especially our pitching. True, they are 44-74, but they must have beaten someone to get those 44 wins. Give credit to the Brewers for taking care of business. For perspective, the 2002 Milwaukee Brewers were 44-85 before they won their 45th game. That was only 6 years ago.

Claudio Vargas would be proud.

With Braun out again today, you have to start wondering if he will go on the DL in order to bring up some help for the upcoming road trip. Any chance we could see Jay Gibbons? He's batting .300 with an .811 OPS in Nashville in 60 AB.

This team is expected to win. Did anyone honestly think we were going to lose the game today once it was in extra innings? The fans were just waiting around to see who would be the hero, they got what they wanted, and everyone went on their way. If they would have lost, then of course we would have to find the scapegoat that prevented the clearly superior Brewers from achieving easy victory. Some of our fans even created a website to specifically decide who is to blame for every Brewers loss this year. Whenever there isn't a single player to blame, the coaching staff takes the fire. Still, there always has to be a scapegoat--someone who is preventing the clearly superior Brewers from achiving their destiny.

One of the things that holds hockey back is that it's really hard to follow the puck on TV. The NHL does just fine with attendance numbers and has a relatively small but very dedicated fanbase. My girlfriend hates baseball and football, but I took her to an Admirals game and she was enthralled. It has just as much hitting as football, a higher scoring pace than soccer, and plenty of entertaining storylines. I suspect that Hockey on HDTV will help to improve its popularity, along with the eventual return to ESPN.

That's a tough loss, although he only had a 4.54 ERA, a 1.36 WHIP and a 2-1 K-BB ratio. I see it as a big break for the Twins, mostly. They've somehow managed to close the Sox's lead to 1/2 game and just got Liriano back. On the other hand, the Tigers remain a game under .500 and 7.5 back. If there was ever a team with the offense to pull a Rockies-like miracle and make the push, it's them. Their achilles heel is their pitching, which improved to 8th in the AL in ERA in July, but I would put them on the lower "tier" in terms of pitching. They sure know how to score runs, though. The reason that they are finished has nothing to do with that--it is that they have 2 superior teams ahead of them, so even if the Tigers pull off an extended winning streak, they won't be able to make up enough ground.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/AQUA/24-383~Brokeback-Mountain-Posters.jpg Yost: Benny, I wish I knew how to quit you! Sheets: Well, why don't you? Yost: Bottom line is, we're around each other an' this thing, it grabs hold of us again at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and we're dead. Sheets: That's more words than you've spoke in the past two weeks. Yost: Hell, that's the most I've spoke in a year.

I'm curious, how much press do the Diamondbacks get this year? I see they are averaging 30,000+ fans per game, which isn't bad at all, but are the fans/media excited about the division race, are they expecting them to fall to the Dodgers, or are they generally apathetic?

Hall must have been looking for a breaking ball. Oh well, Rivera can win it in the 10th.

In Cameron's defense, he hits lots of solo home runs.

There goes the no-no...and I was just about to post how the last no-hitter in Expos/Nationals history was by Dennis Martinez in 1991 at Dodger Stadium.

Rivera is an expert at sitting and waiting.

In Rickie's defense, JJ Hardy threw away a DP ball on Friday night. Where has all the offense gone?

In Milwaukee, where I was born Lived a fan who played the game, And he told us of his life In the stadium named Miller Park, So we drove on I-94 'Till we found the sea of grills And we cheered beneath the roof In our stadium, Miller Park We all cheer in our stadium: Miller Park our stadium Miller Park, our stadium Miller Park We all cheer in our stadium: Miller Park our stadium: Miller Park, our stadium: Miller Park

I'm not saying that we will be going back to < 2,000,000 fans per season. I'm just saying that 3,000,000 is too high for the Brewers market size and I highly doubt that they will be able to accomplish that for more than 5 years. There are only 1.5 million people in the Milwaukee metro area and 5.5 million in Wisconsin. It's the smallest market in baseball and that isn't going to change. Gas prices aren't going to get any cheaper either, so those who frequently go to games from outside the Milwaukee metro area will be less inclined to go when gas is [likely going to be] $6/gallon in a few years. While it is true that this probably will have only a small impact on attendance, the point is that it isn't going to get any better than right now. Don't get me wrong, Milwaukee is an amazing baseball city. Even in the bad years, the tailgaiting tradition and the retractable roof are going to keep attendance high. This run by the Brewers is also going to help to raise a new generation of kids that follow the Brewers as well as the Packers. However, winning baseball does not necessarily attract fans. Cleveland is a great example. They were World Series contenders last year, just like they were in the 90's. However, they only drew 2.27 million fans last year and are on pace to do less than that this year, despite being 1 win away from the World Series last year. Arizona is another example. During their first World Series run in 2001, they were amazingly popular, drawing 2.7 million in 2001. Furthermore, they followed it with the typical post-World Series surge, drawing 3.1 million in 2002. However, during their latest playoff run, the NLCS games against the Rockies were played in front of thousands of empty seats. Of course that would never happen in Milwaukee, but it definitely proves that winning baseball does not necessarily equal big crowds, even when a trip to the World Series is on the line. I think that after the novelty of winning the World Series wore off in Toronto and Arizona, the majority of fair weather fans had seen what they wanted to see and lost interest. During their current run, the Brewers are doing a great job energizing the fan base and especially attracting new fans. Still, I highly doubt that 2 successful seasons has created a new breed of die hard fans. Sure traffic on this site and other Brewers sites has increased, but it takes time to cultivate new fans who live and die Brewers. Maybe they will stay on as fans when times get rough again--Packers fans have a reputation of that--but some of them will certainly go back to other things. The best piece of evidence that I have is Friday night's game. I was shocked to see about 10,000 people get up and leave during the late innings--especially at the end of the 8th inning. The rows were full of people getting out of their seats and heading for the parking lot at the same time that the rest of us were giving CC Sabathia a standing ovation. I don't care if the game was over or if they were beating the traffic or even if they didn't really care about the game and were just there for fun, I have my doubts whether those fans are going to be there in the long run, or if the Brewers are just a novelty to them that will wear off. I'm not saying that the Brewers have or will ever have a bad fan base, I just think that we should celebrate 3,000,000 fans because it is an extremely special accomplishment that might not happen again for a very long time.

Baseballs in the sky over a diamond?

This attendance surge can't possibly last more than a few years (see Toronto and Cleveland). However, it's great while it lasts and a playoff appearance would make the state go crazy. BTW, Monday August 18th is also down to single seats/obstructed view.

How much are we actually going to use these guys? If we call up 6-8 players, I would expect the call-ups only to get in during blowouts and occasional pinch running. Having them just being there to experience a pennant race would be worth it, though.