The Wisconsin Sports Rant

I have nothing insightful, intelligent, reasonable, educated, or enlightened to say. The Brewers have taken their opportunity and treated it as a crack whore would treat the $500 she got from blowing that guy on the street corner. Instead of using it for good and to try to get back on their feet, they piddled it away on an 8-Ball of losing. The last four games have exposed the Brewers as a fraud; a terrible crime committed against the fans who have shown them undeserved loyalty this season.

The following can also be applied to the Packers last night:

This team is rotten. Pure and simple. Crapola. Disgusting.

Back to the Brewers:

Ned Yost will probably be allowed to remain at least one more year. And honestly, that is all he should get. They went 81-81 last year. They will most likely finish worse than that in 2006. Again, we were supposed to IMPROVE this year. You know? Get better? This time it was supposed to be more than just talk. Alas, that is exactly what it was and is…all talk.

So I include the least bit of optimism in a post about the Brewers and they promptly begin a losing streak. Against the MARLINS! “Pathetic” is simply becoming too tame a term to describe this joke of a team. They have no business being in the playoffs if they can’t take a series from a team like the Marlins when they have been gifted a place in the Wild Card race. BOOOO!!!

Marcus, Marcus, first the trouble with the law, and now a catastrophic season-ending knee injury. I feel for you man. I hope you can make a recovery and play again next season.

The Brewers continue to hang around, even at 3 under .500. It is amazing that they are now only 4 games back of the Wild Card after sweeping the Rockies. In fact, they are only 5 games back for the NL Central Division lead! In the American League, the Brewers would have been eliminated weeks ago. However, that decision to move to the NL eight years ago may pay its dividends soon enough. I can’t believe they are actually back on the board on Baseball Tonight and such. On Thursday night, Jon Kruk said he wasn’t buying that the Brewers were truly back in the race. I may still not believe that they will make the playoffs, but I can’t honestly say they aren’t in the race! They are only 4 games back! Heck, the Boston Red Sox lost 5 games in the standings in four days! (Sorry Mitch) We have 36 games left, so that’s plenty of time. As the Mighty Gosling has said, the road schedule isn’t tough (although I would argue that any road game for the Brewers is tough), and they have been taking care of (most) business at home, so anything can happen. Those blown saves by Turnbow are starting to look pretty important…

Did anyone else see the Little League World Series Semifinal between Oregon and Illinois last night? Oregon was up 4-2 and pitching in the bottom of the 6th (for those of you who were campers or too uncoordinated to play Little League, games are 6 innings in length). The Oregon pitcher came on to close the game. He had an eerie resemblance to a once Brewers closer, as evidenced by the picture to the right.  Anyway, he proceeded to load the bases while surrendering no hits (actually the Illinois team was completely no hit all night despite scoring several times). A wild pitch brought Illinois within 1. Yet unlike said former Brewers closer, young Devon DeJardin did seal the deal, sending Oregon to the US finals. Meanwhile, Turnbow couldn’t even get an out Wednesday, and why he was allowed near the rosin bag escapes me.

Since I have had a few people ask whether they can post new topics on The Rant instead of simply leaving comments, I would like to know
if there is interest in setting up a Wisconsin Sports Rant Forum.  Please leave your thoughts as comments on this post.

I am not disrespecting John Stocco, or any of his predecessors who played QB for UW in the last 15 years, but the Alvarez era was not exactly known for high level QB play. It was a ground game, and an excellent one at that. That time period produced the NCAA all-time leading rusher, and several other outstanding college backs. QB was always a management and leaderhip positioin for Alvarez, not a focal point of the offense. Sure, Lee Evans, Chris Chambers, Brandon Williams, among others had great seasons, and some have advanced to the NFL, but that was due mostly to their individual talents. Now, it seems we will have a true QB stud next year, Allan Evridge. I must admit up front, I do not know a whole lot about this kid. I know what I have read in the JSOnline and from what I have heard from Homer and Mitch. The timing seems to work out perfectly, as Stocco will play his senior year and then hand the torch to the freshly elligible Evridge in 2007. I always thought that a better QB was the one piece some of those Alvarez teams needed to really compete for a national championship. Can you imagine if we had had Dayne, that O-Line and a superb QB all at the same time? This year will be interesting enough, and due to a schedule resembling the softness of Charmin’, we should play in a decent bowl. Then the following year, we can see if all this attention on Evridge is deserved.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have done in 10 days what the Brewers have not been able to do in 24 years…go from worst to first.  Tonight’s game exemplifies what I hate about MLB - the guaranteed contract.  Turncoat signs his big deal and completely falls apart.  He couldn’t get a major league contract right now if he tried.  Absolutely terrible.  I wish we could cut him and take a small loss like in the NFL or NBA instead of having to pay him his full contract.  The way I see it, he is not holding up his end of the deal, so why should we have to pay him?   I also question Yost’s decision to use him.  He has now lost at least 7 games for us by himself, with no help from anyone else.  He has cost us a shot at the wild card, and he has nothing left to contribute.  There is simply no reason to put him in the game in any situation that he could potentially give up a go ahead run.   I guess it really doesn’t matter though, since the Brewers are pretty much finished for this year anyway.

How excited were we all when Capuano got a late bid to the All-Star game, and we realized that we actually had three, count ‘em, three representatives at the 2006 All-Star game?  Well, it’s a month later and total calamity has befallen the Brewers with regards to those players.  Carlos Lee was traded and along with him went our offense.  Derek Turnbow had what might mildly be called a free-fall from grace.  Chris Capuano has been 0-4 in five starts since that day in July when he didn’t even enter the game.  Pretty pathetic.  At least we still have Ben Higuera, or Teddy Sheets, or whatever the heck you want to call that walking injury.

Bob Wolfey, today, talked about how it will be interesting to see whether ESPN’s analysts will comment on two of the more negative blemishes of Reggie White’s off-the-field public life: A) the Knoxville, TN church that he was supposed to rebuild with public donations his foundation collected, and B) the homophobic statements he issued in 1998 on public record in front of the Wisconsin State Assembly. I know most of us loved Reggie as a player, and loved his congeniality with the fans. Less of us probably liked his religious rhetoric. I, for one, can’t help but find this part of his life hypocritical. If he was the true “man of God” that he continually proclaimed he was, what happened to the church? Why did he not make those donations go where they needed to go? I would really like to see ESPN have some balls and at least mention those things when they discuss his life in retrospect. Now don’t get me wrong, overall, Reggie was a great person, and contributed a lot to Wisconsin and Green Bay specifically. I will always be thankful he chose to come to the Packers and, along with Favre, almost single-handedly rejuvenate the franchise. I just think if you discuss a person’s public life (not just his career), it does no justice to anyone if you edit parts out.