5 Things: Miller Park Edition

I've been spending a lot of time at Miller Park over the last few months. It's a great place to watch a baseball game. It really is. I've only been to three baseball stadiums in my life (the other two being Milwaukee County Stadium, which has obviously been torn down, and Wrigley Field, which obviously should be torn down). But there are a few additions/changes I would like to see at Miller Park. Here are 5 of them:

1. Bring back Bernie Brewer's giant beer mug and lederhosen.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but the attempts to make Bernie Brewer less beer-oriented are really really stupid. After all, his name is Bernie Brewer, he's the mascot of a team called the Brewers, who play at Miller Park. This team has everything to do with beer. And beer rules.

The Bernie Brewer's legend began in 1970. The Crew was still a new, bad team and they were having trouble drawing crowds. In June of that year, a brilliant nutcase named Milt Mason climbed on top of the scoreboard and pledged to stay there until the Brewers drew 40,000 for a game. He was there for about 40 days, like Jesus. Mason became the original Bernie Brewer. In 1973 a chalet was built for him in center field, and each time a Brewer hit a homer, he would slide down a slide into a big mug of beer, and balloons would fly up into the air for seagulls to choke on. This version of Bernie remained until the Mid-1980's when the chalet was removed to make room for a sound tower. Bernie was brought back by popular demand in 1993, complete with large foam head and mustache. He still wore lederhosen, and his routine was about the same. But when the Crew moved to Miller park, they decided to ruin Bernie. They took away his chalet and replaced it with a "dugout." A "dugout" that sits 15 stories above the ground in right field. They replaced the giant mug of beer with "home plate." And worst of all, they replaced Bernie's lederhosen with a Brewers uniform. I can't fathom why anyone would support these changes. Here is what Bernie's chalet looked like at County Stadium:

And below is his "dugout" at Miller Park. Can't you just see a giant glass of beer sitting at the end of that slide?



When you think about it, getting covered in beer is what cheering for the Crew is all about. And as the team's biggest cheerleader, there's no reason Bernie shouldn't end up in beer every time Prince Fielder goes yard.

2. Bring back the two-fisted slobber promo.

The two-fisted slobber was a character that appeared on the county stadium scoreboard. His purpose was to discourage bad stadium etiquette. He looked like typical trailer trash; thin, but with a big gut, wearing a wife-beater t-shirt, carrying two beers, and totally drunk. The ad was designed to make a mockery out of such behavior. But we Milwaukeeans embraced the two-fisted slobber. After all, he was funny. I've scoured the interweb for a video of the ad, or even a picture, but I can't find one for the life of me. There are a few websites selling t-shirts that say "two-fisted slobber," but the man depicted on those shirts is an imposter; a horrible monster.

3. Less Filling/Tastes Great cheer.

I have a great idea for a cheer that would be perfect for Brewer games. Normally I hate organized cheering at baseball games. Baseball crowds just can't pull off the wave like college football crowds can. One of the most endearing cheers you'll hear in the student section at Camp Randall stadium is the Eat Shit/Fuck You cheer. This cheer usually starts when several fans from, say, Section N stand up and point to, say, Section O and start yelling "Eat Shit! Eat Shit! Eat Shit!" Within moments, the rest of Section N will be on their feet joining along, and Section O will be on their feet countering each "Eat Shit!" with a "Fuck You!" Simple as that. Although this is perfectly appropriate for a college football game, it's probably not appropriate for Brewers baseball. Fortunately, the good people at Miller Brewing Company designed a reasonable substitute for us back in the 1980s with their "Less Filling/Tastes Great" Miller Lite advertising campaign. So if you are ever at a Brewer game and a bunch of guys in the section next to yours stand up and start pointing at your section and yelling "Less Filling! Less Filling! Less Filling!" please rally your section and start responding to each "Less Filling!" with a "Tastes Great!" That would be totally awesome.

4. Fans that are more versed in when it is appropriate to boo.

On the subject of cheering, a lot of Brewer fans have been real tools lately when it comes to booing. You will never ever hear me boo my own team. I love my Brewers like I'd love my children, not because they are good, but because they are mine. If Turnbow is throwing wild pitches, the last thing I want him to do is throw more wild pitches. He's obviously not trying to play poorly. So I'm not going to boo, I'm going to say "c'mon T-Bow, throw some strikes buddy!" Now there are obvious exceptions to this rule--if Gary Sheffield were on my team I would boo him. But generally speaking, booing your players is bad for your team. If you want to strengthen their home field advantage, get behind them as much as possible when they're at home.

It's okay to boo the other team sometimes. If their pitcher throws at one of our our guys, boo him. Last night when Asstros' manager [and former Brewer great] Cecil Cooper asked the umpire to inspect Cordero's hand for Eddie Harris-style substances, it was cool that we booed him. It's also okay to boo Carlos Lee because he left our team for more money. It was a good decision on his part, but it's cool for us to boo him. However, I was at one game early in the season when Brady Clark was playing for the Dodgers. When they announced his name, some people booed him. That was NOT okay. Brady didn't leave for more money. We traded him. When he was here, he was a mediocre talent that gave everything he had and performed well for us. We should applaud him if he ever returns to Miller Park. And if I ever hear a Brewer fan boo Jeff Cirillo when he returns to Miller Park with the D-Backs or anyone else, I will promptly punch that Brewer fan in the face. Booing is just so mean.

5) A new version of "Beer Barrel Polka."

At Miller Park, we sing "Roll Out the Barrel" after "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. They play this old organ version of the song. It's hard to hear and it's boring. I want to hear an oom-pah band with tubas and trumpets. I also want a little ball bouncing on the words on the score board as we're supposed to say them so the 45,000 of us can get the timing right. Is that so much to ask?

Five Things: Steroids Edition

There is a dangerous parasite that is on the verge of destroying several professional sports. That parasite is, of course, the rule that says players can't use performance enhancing drugs. The Tour de France is becoming a joke and the career home run record will have an asterisk next to it in many people's minds in the next few days. I, for one, wish that I could just watch a bike race, or a guy with an enormous head hit some homers, without having to worry about whether the drugs these athletes choose to do are banned in their sports. So here are my five reasons why performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports:

1) Performance Enhancing Drugs would level the playing field.


I know the idea that roids would level the playing field goes against conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom is often very very stupid. If the playing field in sports were truly level, sports would be boring: every game would end in a tie. The biggest factor in causing an uneven playing field is talent. Do you know who won the first Tour de France? The guy with the most talent [Maurice Garin]. It wasn't the hardest worker or the grittiest competitor or the "smartest racer" or even the guy with the biggest balls. [Recent Tours have proven that one can dominate the race without a huge set of balls.] At the highest levels of athletics, the most important thing is Thor-given talent. At the highest level, everyone trains hard, plays tough and knows the game. Obviously hard work and sticktoitiveness are important, but talent will trump them all. So here's my question? What's so great about talent? If Athlete A (lets call him Lance) is really really talented, and Athlete B (lets call him Floyd) is slightly less talented, and both are willing to work extremely hard at their sport, is the playing field really level? Does the guy with more talent deserve to win more? You can't change how much talent you have. Unlike Athlete A, Athlete B could not win the Tour on talent alone. His parents screwed him in the talent department. If he wants to compete, he has to take the next step. I say we let him take that step.


2) Performance Enhancing Drugs enhance performance.


Nobody watched the XFL. One reason nobody watched it was that the XFL was totally gay. But another, more significant reason is that the best football players play in the NFL, not the XFL. And we'd rather watch the best players play. This is the same reason that Major League Baseball has more viewers than minor league baseball, and the NBA has more viewers than the WNBA. People want to watch the best.


[Before any of youse get all bent out of shape because I acknowledged that the NBA has better basketball players in it than the WNBA, I will readily admit that the birds that play in the WNBA have good fundamentals and are talented and they could all dominate me. But I'm not a professional basketball player, and ain't a one of them could play in the NBA. If one of them could, we'd watch her because she was the best, not because she was the best chick.]


Steroids make athletes better. Period. Remember that Mark McGuire/Sammy Sosa race to break the single season home run record back in 1998? How awesome was that? How awesome would this year be if we stopped giving a shit about roids, and Barry Bonds wasn't such a douchebottle? Watching great players do great things is what sports are all about.

3) Drawing a distinction between Performance Enhancing Drugs and other new technology is totally capricious.

Lance Armstrong's first book is called It's Not About the Bike. But the fact of the matter is, to some degree, it is about the bike Lance. Lance's team had the best equipment, and it showed. The gap is narrowing, but for a while, Trek and the US Postal team did far more testing and engineering and custom tailoring their bikes for their riders. But so what? Technology improves, and in a sport like cycling, that makes for faster racing. And don't even get me started on the clap skate.


Also, remember Kirk Gibson's famous game-winning homer in the 1988 world series? Could he have even stepped to the plate without a cortisone shot? My guess is no. Athletes use all sorts of "performance enhancing drugs" to play when they're injured.


The truth is that Babe Ruth didn't have access to cortisone shots, and Philippe Thys only had like three gears when he won the Tour de France. All sorts of technology has made comparing today's athletes to their predecessors rather difficult. None of today's athletes "play clean" by 1920s standards. But I say that Kirk's homer is one of the best plays in baseball history. And Lance's dominance in the tour made it exciting to a whole country. The technology that allowed them to accomplish their feats made their sports better.


4) A viable, legal market for Performance Enhancing Drugs would lead to the development of better and safer drugs.


Do you know who wins the modern Tour de France? It's still not the guy that works the hardest. It's not the guy with the most talent either. It's not even the guy with the best drugs really. It's the guy with the least detectable drugs. The guys that develop these drugs have to work largely underground. A major goal is to make said drugs undetectable. But if PEDs were legal, the big drug companies would jump headfirst into that game and try to make better drugs. Along the way, they'd make them safer. Sooner or later, we could all benefit from this stuff. If our children can all bench press 400 lbs, would it not be a better world?

5) We could enjoy the games we love without having to scrutinize the athletes that play them.

This should be a very exciting time in sports. These guys are out there getting paid big bucks to entertain us. They found a way to make their craft more entertaining. The only people it could possibly hurt are the athletes themselves, and they're the ones choosing to take that risk. Shouldn't they be free to do so? [This isn't Russia, is this Russia?] Shouldn't we be able to cheer them on without wondering what they're on? With respect to the Tour de France, legalizing PEDs are its only hope. Baseball isn't too far from that. Who knows what sport is next. Do we really want of romanticized visions of the past to ruin the sports we love?

Hoo-ray for Roids!

5 Things: Massive head edition

I find vegetarians fascinating. I'm friends with a fair amount of vegetarians and even dated a vegetarian for a few years back in college. She was a cute little red-haired near-hippy [I say near-hippy because she wasn't the full-fledged, disgusting variety of hippy. She smelled pretty good and wore shoes when appropriate]. We were quite the odd couple [I wear a shirt with a collar every day], but it worked well for a while. Anyway, I had a million questions for her and my other leaf-eating friends about the philosophy behind vegetarianism. Of course, my main question was always, "what the hell are you thinking? Don't you know that meat is awesome?" And it is awesome. It tastes delicious, is a great source of protein, and a whole genre of summer partying revolves around it. But the awesomest thing about meat is that it is the reason that we human beings are so got-damned brilliant.

You see, three million or so years ago, there were a handfull of different human-like creatures (or "hominids" as we wannabe scientists call them). The two most notable are Homo Habilus (or "handy man") and Australiopithecus (or "Keyshawn Johnson"). Homo Habilus was a little smaller and weaker than Australiopithecus and was an omnivore. Australiopithecus was bigger and stronger but only ate grass. Because Habilus ate meat, he had to catch meat. Hunting, however, is hard. Especially when you are a small, mostly hairless ape. So Habilus had to coordinate. He had to plan. Also, regardless of your plan, hunting is hard when you're carrying around little baby Homo Habiluses. This forced Habilus to cooperate. Some of them would hunt (we'll call this group "men") and others would take care of children and vacuum ("women"). Then they would all share the food. Once this process began, it kept reinforcing itself. Hunting parties developed better plans, and even started making tools, while work-sharing became more structured. Society flourished and Homo Habilus got smarter. After a million years of this, Habilus doubled the size of his brain! And eventually, he became us. Nice work Homo Habilus, nice work. Because Australiopithicus didn't eat meat, he never needed to cooperate and therefore never developed any kind of society. And obviously, his brain stayed the same size. It didn't take long for Homo Habilus to completely wipe Australiopithecus of the globe. So essentially, we're smart because we eat meat.

The other lesson that we should learn from this bit of history is that big heads are sweet. So maybe we shouldn't be so hard on Barry Bonds. Bonds is inevitably going to Break Hank Aaron's career homerun record, and for some reason, a lot of people are upset about this. I believe this is because Barry Bonds has a fricken huge mellon. But we should not hate those with unusually large noggins. Many huge-headed people have accomplished greatness, and we should honor their accomplishments regardless of the ridiculous size of their heads. So this Thursday's 5 Things list is 5 people with massive heads that have improved the world:

1: Barry Bonds

Barry is inevitably going to break Aaron's record. Rooting against him is like rooting against glaciers. Whether you like him or not, Barry is one of the greatest baseball players of all time. And even though he didn't always have an enormous head, he was always a great player. Barry, go hit those last five dingers.

2: Dave Navarro

Dave Navarro was the lead guitar player for Jane's Addiction for a while and I think, after that, he joined the shittiest band in the world for one album called "One Hot Minute" which I'm sure is full of songs about California. However, he is probably most famous for having a huge head, being really ugly, and dating Carmen Electra.

3: Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was our 16th President, the founder of the Republican Party, an avid theater-goer and a dude with a huge head. He is known for preserving the union and ending slavery. Abe, we commend you and your big head.

4: Christina Ricci

Christina Ricci has been praised for her acting since she was cast as a child with a big head in the The Addams Family in 1991. Since then she has been nominated for many awards and, in films like Sleepy Hollow, has made me think she might be a little hot, despite (or maybe because of?) her big head. Yeah, I kinda do...

5: Tony Snow

Tony Snow is, of course, President Bush's press secretary. His massive head distracts us from the lies coming out of his mouth, which helps us to be at peace in our ignorance of what's really going on in the world. I especially like this picture of Tony. The American flag and dipshit grin really help to bring out the size of his massive head. Thanks for keeping us safe with your big head Tony.

Just remember kids, big-heads are people too. If it weren't for big heads, we'd all be eating grass and twigs and picking the bugs off of eachother like hippies or Australiopithecus.

5 Things: Brewpub edition

So I've noticed that a lot of webloggers do a recurring feature of some sort. Like, maybe they answer [fake] reader mail on Fridays or maybe they make a list of Six Songs that they're currently digging. One weblog I've been reading a lot lately ranks their commentors each week. I was thinking that I need something like this. I really like lists. Now, I like all of the ideas of my fellow webloggers that I mentioned above, but they would be impossible for me. I can't do reader mail, because I don't have any readers. Not even fake ones. I think my six songs would be pretty much the same every week. And I don't get enough comments to rank my commentors (although the post below is doing all right. I rule!). So since I can't copy these guys, I'm going to copy David Letterman. Well not exactly. Each Thursday I'm going to make a list of 5 things. Lists rule. And I do too.


The following is my list of 5 dominant brew pubs. This is largely (but not entirely) a regional list since I haven't visited too many brewpubs outside of Wisconsin. But there are a shitload of brewpubs in Wisconsin and I've patronized most of them. I think that I can safely say that this list probably represents the best brewpubs in the United States... possibly.. the world. It's also topical because there is a bill before the Wisconsin Senate that is pissing of some brewpubs owners. Basically, the bill makes it difficult for brewpubs that sell food to also sell their beer to other bars or liquor stores. In protest, the owner of the Milwaukee Ale House, um, dumped a bunch of beer in the Milwaukee river. I think he was trying to mimic the Boston Tea Party or something, but it was still a really stupid thing to do. They have some good beer for Chrisake. It seems like a waste to just dump it into the river. They could have at leasr given it to homeless people. Anyway, I don't really "understand" the bill or the protest, but I know that it has something to do with beer. And I like beer. And here are 5 dominant brewpubs:


1. The Great Dane. The Dane is located on King St., just off the Capital Square in Madison, WI. There are actually three locations, but the other two feel more like Applebees than Brewpubs. They all have the same dominant beer, but the downtown location is the best. They have six nice pool tables and good food. They also have really good beer. My favorite is the Devil's Lake Red. It's awesome. It has a creamy head, almost like a Boddington's, but it's red. The Peck's Pils is also good, but I think it has cocaine in it or something. Every time I drink the Pils I end up waking up on my back in the Capital's lawn.

2. The Lakefront Brewery. The Lakefront Brewery is located on Commerce Ave. in Milwaukee, WI. I suppose that technically it's a microbrewery as opposed to a brewpub, but that distinction is largely illusory because you can definitely go to the Lakefront Brewery and get shit-faced. You can also get a Friday fish fry. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it a pub. The LFB, which is not on the lakefront, was opened when two brothers that were both home-brewers bought an old bakery and turned it into a brewery. They eventually upgraded to a bigger building on the Milwaukee River. It was basically the only building for like a mile. But lately, condos have been sprouting up all around the joint. So basically, these guys have themselves a goldmine. The best thing about the Lakefront Brewery is the tour. It costs $5 and includes a pint glass and five beers. I used to live a few hundred yards away so I've taken the tour about twenty times. Unlike the Miller tour, which is led by some rando college chick majoring in marketing or something, the LFB tour is often led by the owners, or at least the guys that make the beer. Also, you get your free beer before and during the tour instead of at the end. The LFB also owns Bernie Brewer's old chalet and slide from County Stadium. On some tours they let you go down the slide. But lately I think they've shied away from that because of the liability issues that surround a big slide coupled with lots of beer. Their best beer is the East Side Dark, but they also have some atypical varieties like the coffee-flavored Fuel Cafe, and the pumpkin pie flavored Pumpkin Lager. That last one actually isn't as bad as it sounds. And I'm definitely a guy that prefers his beer to be beer-flavored.

3. The Milwaukee Ale House. The Ale House is located on Water Street in Milwaukee's third ward. It's right on the river, which makes for a lovely outdoor dining experience. They usually have solid bands playing on weekends too. Their best brew is definitely Louie's Demise. Louie's Demise is named after somebody's (I'm not sure who's) great great uncle Louie, who was killed with a beer glass in a barroom scuffle. Or something like that. Stupid story, but a good beer.

They also have a good one called Sheepshead Stout, which, obvious to Milwaukeeans, is named after the popular card game.

4. The Wasatch Pub & Brewery. I first encountered Wasatch beer at the Salt Lake City airport on my way to Vegas. We had a layover so we stopped for a beer at the nearest bar in the terminal. We were a little worried that a beer would be hard to find in Utah, given the state's reputation for being fucking crazy. But we learned very quickly that at least one person in the state of Utah has a sense of humor. Wasatch's flagship brew is called Polygamy Porter. Awesome. And it's not just a clever name, it's pretty good. A little lighter and sweeter than your average porter, but very tasty. They also brew a First Amendment Lager and an Evolution Ale. I bet the locals love them.

5. Goose Island. Goose Island is a Chicago Brew Pub in Wrigleyville. I've been to Goose Island a bunch of times. Their beer is solid and their food is satisfying enough (although last time I was there, I think it may have done some damage. Until I can confirm that, it's staying in the top 5). I'm a big fan of their main beverage, Honkers Ale. It's also a brilliant business plan in my book. And those goose head taps are sharp marketing.

That's all I got for my first 5 Things. If I feel like it, I'll do another one next Thursday. Also, if you happen to be the proprietor of a brew pub that I did not mention and you think you deserve a spot on my list, please send me some of your beer and I will consider revising my list.