The Annual Baseball Rant

This year, rather than my usual mid-season-All-Star-Break rant, I decided to wait until the Brewers season was over to compose the rant.

Oh, I suppose mathematically there’s some way they could sneak in….as a wild card….if they sweep the rest of their games with the Pirates and the Cubs….and the Pirates collapse….but, it’s not gonna happen. And this year’s rant will have more of a tone of resignation and disgust, rather than the usual anger and brimstone.

 

First of all, the guy on the right should have fired the guy on the left in July. Or early August at the latest. Just like he did to Ned Yost, in the middle of September 2008 – when the Brewers actually were in contention.  Nedly told the media back then he never saw it coming.

I would have fired Roenicke weeks ago. Back in the early part of August you could sense the slide coming, and RR did NOTHING – at least nothing which I can glean from the popular prints and blogs and chatrooms – to get his players to motivate themselves to play like it meant something.

I’m of the school which believes you can’t motivate people, they have to do it for themselves – but you can try to create the circumstances and climate under which they will have an attitude (motivation) adjustment.  And sometimes, as any baseball fan knows, firing the manager causes the players to motivate themselves.

Kinda like ranting at an ump and getting tossed out of the game does, once in a while.

This guy should have been fired on the spot Thursday night for the unforgivable error in the 8^th inning against the Cards when he “forgot” how many outs there were. For those not close followers of the team, his name is Mark Reynolds.  His mistake cost them the game. In a contest their playoff lives depended on, Reynolds head was clearly not in the game.

At the conclusion of that debacle, before the pitcher stepped on the rubber and started the next play, RR should have called time out, removed Reynolds from the game, put someone else on first, sent a team functionary to retrieve Reynolds’ street clothes and wallet from the locker room, told Reynolds to catch a cab to the airport and make his own way home, and that any other personal affects would be boxed up and shipped to him at whatever his seasonal address is, and inform him that his services would no longer be needed by the Milwaukee franchise of Major League Baseball.

But such things never happen. I can only dream them. It’s like my late father taught me so many times: there are mistakes you can recover from, and mistakes you can’t recover from.  This is one of those mistakes that’s so egregious that it should have been a career-ender.

This guy should be given a fat salary bump and a nice non-negotiated bonus. Not because Jonathon Lucroy hits a ton of doubles, but because he consistently plays with spirit and enthusiasm, performing at the highest level of his profession. It’s a shame that the other teammates don’t follow the lead of Luc, who “plays like he means it”.

Carlos Gomez is not a leadoff man. I think everyone in baseball knows that, except RR and Gomez. The job of the leadoff man is to get on base. Yet, if you’ve watched the Brewers in the past month, every time Gomez takes to the plate – and, not just the first at-bat of the Brewers’ half of the first inning, when the role of the leadoff man is so clearly defined –he tries to hit a homer. And usually falls down at least once in EVERY at-bat because his swing is so undisciplined and goofy.

It’s become a joke at the Morrissey Compound. My wife and I will be sure we’re tuned in to the game at the very beginning, so we can see Gomez try to kill the ball in his first at-bat and fall down. For the uninformed, my bride is a true fan and student of the game, and has been since her wasted youth as a teenage pain-in-the-butt malingering daily, all summer, at the old Comiskey Park and at Wrigley Field. She claimed she was a fan of both teams, a claim no other Chicagoan has ever made.

Doesn’t anyone ever sit these guys like Gomez down and say “now, Carlos, we’re going to put you in the leadoff spot – all we want you to do is get on base. Whether you just meet the ball and put it in play, or take a base on balls, all we need you to do is get on base”.

This is the second year (last year was the first) that my bride and I attended NO major league baseball games. I’m not sure why.  We had plenty of opportunity; even though I insist in my advanced age (65.25) on sitting in very expensive seats right behind home plate, we’re fortunate that the cost isn’t really a consideration; I’m not sure why both of us just don’t seem to want to pull the trigger, buy some great seats on StubHub, and go to a game.

Part of the reason is advancing age; part of it is the glot of stupid, drunken, self-indulgent yay-hoos who always seem to have seats near the ones we buy (Section 117 or 118 at Miller Park, to be exact); and part of it is our media room is equipped with a 66-inch HDTV and a 500-watt outboard sound system and some VERY comfortable chairs.

Usually the annual rant takes a shot or two at baseball in general, but, with all the crap going on in the NFL right now, I just didn’t feel the desire to say crappy things about baseball. I still love the sport. But I’m just so disappointed in my home team this year.  A collapse comparable to the swoon the ’69 Cubs took.

I'll watch the playoffs and the world series as I always do, but from this point on, my attention will be focused on the Green and Gold, until Spring Training.

Ryan Braun: We'll Never Know

Nothing is secret any more.  People who are supposed to keep their mouth shut don’t.  Confidential, even secret stuff, is leaked all the time now.

ESPN did what it does: report sports news.

Associated Press (which holds the copyright to the photo above) did what all too many once-trusted news organizations are doing today: made a horrid mistake in first reporting Braun was suspended, and then blaming their mistake on a “typo”.

Braun did what all ballplayers who test positive do:  deny, deny, deny.

And while the word “herpes” is not to be found in any FACTUAL reporting of the Braun story, a lot of people think some medication Braun was taking for herpes is what caused the unusual spike in his PED test.

Far too many of my acquaintances used the word “innocent” in Tweeting or Status Updating about the Braun story yesterday, and too many of those acquaintances should know damn well that “not guilty” does NOT mean “innocent”.

Braun got off on a technicality, and that happens.  It happens in courts of law, it happens in life.

We’ll never know.

That said, Go Brewers.

I Hope It's Not Over

It’s been such a fun Brewers season that I hope it doesn’t end Friday at Miller Park.  I hope the Brewers can win tonight, in Arizona, and then move on to the NL Championship series.

But it’s their inconsistent play that troubles me the most.  Anybody remember the last few weeks of September?

Last night was a stumble – from which I hope they pick themselves up and put tonight’s game away, early.  But more often than not, when they’ve stumbled this season, they’ve fallen flat on their faces for a week or more.

In September they beat the snot out of the Cards in a critical series, and then went to Chicago a few days later and let the Cubs look more like world-beaters than the 3^rd-rate team they are.

And there was the curse of SI, which led to that long slump.

Like all good things, I don’t want it to come to an end.  I want them hosting Game One of the World Series on the 19^th, and going on to win it.

Then it can end.

The Curse of S.I.

Let’s see if I have this right: you DO want your picture on the cover of Rolling Stone, but you do NOT want your picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated, because of the “Curse of S.I.”, which is, if your picture is on the cover of S.I. some bad thing will happen to you.

This old curse was talked about a great deal more a couple decades ago than now.  But there’s a resurgence of discussion about it, because the Brewers have been red-hot, and there this undercurrent of fear that having the pictures of three Brewers stars on the cover of S.I. will cause the team to go on a losing streak or that some injury will befall one of the three.

There was the case of Braves (back when the Braves played in Milwaukee) star third baseman Eddie Mathews , who was the first person to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated back in August of 1954. The Braves snapped a nine-game winning streak, and a broken hand later caused Mathews to miss seven games.  That’s when the curse started…with the very first issue of S.I.

In August of ’78, Pete Rose was on the cover of S.I., and his 44-game hitting streak ended that week. In January 2010, Vikings quarterback Brett Favre was on the cover with the headline "Favre on Fire" before the NFC Championship Game and lost, so I guess the curse can be good for Packers fans.  On January 19, 2011, Jay Cutler appeared on the cover, and then injured his knee as the Bears lost to the Packers in the NFC championship game.

There are scores of places on the internets where you can look up the list of athletes who have supposedly suffered from the Curse of S.I.

As I write this, on Wednesday morning, the Brewers are the hottest team in baseball, with a franchise-record 10-game lead on the Cardinals in the National League Central Division.

Fingers crossed.