Packers, Brewers, and what about Ralph Malph?

It's been a while since I updated this rag, and for that I apologize. I've been busy lazy. I have a few things to tell you jerks about though, so here's a random list of stuff.

Pilgrimage. On Sunday I attended the football match between the Chargers from San Diego and the Packers from Green Bay. My brother got the tickets sort of last minute so we didn't get a chance to go all out tailgate-wise. We rolled into "the bay area" around 10:15 and headed up to Curly's Pub. Curly's is a great alternative to tailgating. It's a cool bar right inside Lambeau Field, and remarkably, it's usually not that crowded. The bro and I each got a few beers and a pulled pork sammich and headed into the decidedly unfrozen tundra. The 85 degree weather was a rare treat since I usually end up at mostly December games (I have both the Raiders on 12/9 game and the Lions on 12/30 on my calendar this year). Another rare treat (at least rare in recent years) was the dominant performance of the Pack against a tough Charger team. I love the pass-happy west coast offense and I LOVE Brett Favre. I really do. Nothing beats watching that ol' gunslinger complete a sweet pass and then jump around like a kid on Christmas. Except maybe watching him run the ball for a first down. As great as the Jennings TD was, my favorite play of the game was when they lined up with two backs, shifted them both two receivers while the Charger's D geeked out, and then had their 50-year-old QB run the ball. Awesome stuff.

Brewers. On Monday I went to the Brewer game. The Brewers basically need to win out if the Cubs play .500 ball for the rest of the season. It's a daunting task, but the way we've looked the last few nights, it just might be possible. Last night, Prince clouted dingers #49 and #50 making him the youngest player ever to hit 50 in a season. Nice.

The Fonz. VisitMilwaukee, a group that promotes tourism here in Milwaukee, is hoping to erect a bronze statue of Fonzie on the corner of Wisconsin Ave. and Water St., right by my office. I like this. Because what's Fonzie like? Come on Yolanda what's Fonzie like? [Cool?] What? [He's cool.] Correctamundo. And that's what we're gonna be.

Lots or people that are not from Wisconsin automatically think of Happy Days when they hear mention of our state. And hey, that's better than Dahmer, right? There's a bronze Mary Tyler Moore statue on Nicolet Mall in Minneapolis, and the Fonz defines us to the same degree MTM defines the Twin Cities. Additionally, Milwaukee is a tourist destination for few people. But if there's one group we can count on, it's bad-ass Harley riders. The Fonz statue will be a nice additional stopping point for these motleys when they come for the Harley museum and stuff like that. Also, given the proximity to Water St., it will be a prime target for drunk people hoping to put garbage cans on the heads of statues. And who doesn't like that? So all in all, I like the idea. I just wish it was Ralph Malph instead.

The Cubs are not the underdogs; they're the Yankees, but without the pennants.

There was a pretty solid article by Mike Hunt in today's JS about the Cubs' underdog image.

While it's true that no culture loves an underdog quite like Americans, how then to explain the general sentiments attached to the exhilarating National League Central race?

...

Strip away the mythology, and they are Goliath. Massive market. Big payroll. Big-name stars and free agents. A marquee manager who earns more than the entire Brewers' 100-plus-homer infield combined.

Yet, as Hunt notes, the national media appears to be rooting for the Cubs in the National League Central race. Well, to be fair, the national media is openly mocking the ineptitude of the NL Central as a whole first, and rooting for the Cubs second. The Cubs have done quite the job of defining themselves as cursed underdogs and lovable losers. But the truth is, this pennant race has the makings of a true underdog story, but the Brewers are the underdogs. The Brewers are David to the Cubs' Goliath; App. State to the Cubs' U of M; Rocky to the Cubs' Clubber Lang (I'm not sure they have a trainer either); 300 Spartans (and some Thespians) to the Cubs' million river-drinking-Persians; Honey Roy Palmer to the Cubs' Buck Holland, Slim Busby, Billy Hargrove (played by a young James Caviezel), Sam Lester, Hambone Busby, Sunny Hawkins, Robby Gillon, Frank Mangrum, Tank Miller and Hammerhead Haggan. Make no mistake, if you want to root for the underdog, you gotta root for the Brew Crew in the NL Central. Here's why:

PAYROLL:

The Cubs' have a payroll of $100,000,000.00.
The Brewers have a payroll of $70,000,000.00.

And although a difference of $30 million is significant, it's actually more drastic than that. If you look at the key players on the Brewers, most of whom are younger than me, they make close to the league minimum. For example, a typical Brewers starting infield would look like this:

Braun @ $395,000
Fielder @ $415,000
Hardy @ $400,000
Weeks @ $400,000

The Cubs' key players -- Lee, Soriano, Ramirez, Zambrano -- each make around $10 million.

This is clearly a big money team vs. a small money team.

MARKET:

The Cubs play in a market of 9,157,540 people (shared with the Whitesox I suppose).
The Brewers play in a market of 1,689,572 people, the smallest in Baseball.

This is clearly a big market team vs. a small market team.

ORGANIZATION:

The Brewers have 17is players on their roster that they drafted and developed within the franchise.
The Cubs are made up mostly of high priced free agents.

The Brewers are the little guy in this fight, and there's nothing any goat or any Bartman can do about it. All that said, I fully believe the Brewers will come out on top. As Mike Vick would say if he were more articulate and up to speed on cheesy cliches, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

Eating on $21 per week

In today's paper there was this article about a woman and her daughter who are trying to spend under $21 per week each on food (That's about $1 per meal if you can't do math and eat three meals per day). I guess the reason is that they are trying to get more funding for the federal food stamp program. $21 per week is apparently the average allocation. I think that this woman probably didn't understand that because this was the average, the people who are most dependant on food stamps (i.e. pay for most or all of their food via food stamps) probably get more than a buck per meal. But whatever. It still sounds like a fun game.

I spend waayyy too much money on food. I eat out for lunch almost every day. My primary lunch places are Jimmy Johns and The Waterfront Deli, due to their proximity to my office. I probably drop about $7 for lunch at Jimmy Johns, and close to $10 at Waterfront. That's like $40 or $50 a week just on lunch. If I wanted to get by on $21 per week, I'd probably have to start brown-bagging it, which I've been meaning to do anyway. I also go out to dinner on most Fridays and Saturdays. This often involves booze. But other than that, I think I'd be alright. So this Sunday, I am going to go shopping and spend just $21 and try to go all week (or at least until Friday night) eating only that food. What would you buy if you had just $21 to spend on food for a week? Here are some of my ideas:

1) Twenty-one 8oz bottles of Vitamin Water, pack of gum.

2) Seven Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, Seven Wendy's cup of chili, Seven Wendy's Frosty Dairy Deserts (those things are awesome). Do you think it's a coincidence that they have a dollar menu?

3) Bottle of Jack, Flinstone vitamins, nerves of steel.

4) 14 Power Bars, 7 Slim Fast shakes, 2 liter bottle of Diet Pepsi.

5) Dozen Eggs ($1.50), Gallon of Milk ($3.50), Loaf of Bread ($2.00), Jar of Peanut Butter ($2.00), Half-pound of Turkey deli meat ($2.50), 5 store-brand frozen pizzas ($7.00), OJ ($2.50).

That one doesn't sound too bad, does it?

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?

It's like "It's a Small World" only seven feet tall.

The Bucks just added a seven-foot tall Chinese man to their front court, which already included a seven-foot-tall Aussie with a terrible haircut, a seven-foot-tall Dutchman of Serbian descent and a seven-foot-tall black American with no eyebrows.

After Bucks owner Herb Kohl made a trip to Hong Kong to conduct personal negotiations with Yi's representatives, the young Chinese star signed a multiyear deal with the Bucks, ending a saga that began on draft night when he was selected with the sixth overall pick by Milwaukee.

Best Drink Special Ever

Friday night, I had plans to meet some friends at The Old German Beer Hall, a Haffbrauhaus bar on Milwaukee's Old World Third Street. I was the first of to arrive so I took a seat at the bar to wait for B & C and J & S (As I've mentioned before, I'm a tremendous third wheel, or 5th wheel... or Xth wheel where X = any odd number). I noticed that the specials board behind the bar said, "Friday Special: Free Beer." Free beer? There had to be a catch. I asked the bartender what the catch was. He said there was no catch. They tap a keg of Hoffbrau Original at 6:00pm every Friday and it's free until it's gone. Also, whoever gets the last glass from the free keg drinks free all night. So I ordered a beer. And, as luck would have it, it was the last one. What I had intended to be an easy night, turned into a pretty rowdy one. Although it could have been worse considering my history with German Beer. Maybe it's the polka. Or maybe it's the giant containers that German bars are in the habit of serving beer in.

Or maybe it's that I'm pretty "good" at the boot game. [In the boot game, you pass a three litre glass boot full of beer around a group of people. You can drink as much as you want, but if the person that drinks after you finished the boot, you have to buy the next one. I didn't buy too many boots in college.]

And that's basically free beer too.

I wonder if "Two Scoops" will be back?

NBC is bringing back American Gladiators. I think that this is totally awesome. American Gladiators was one of my favorite shows in my youth. It came into popularity just as Hulkamania was becoming sort of cliche. For those of you that don't remember American Gladiators, it was a syndicated game show in the early 1990s in which amateur athletes competed against spandex-clad behemoths and she-males, with names like Laser and Nitro, in strength and agility contests (some of which involved giant q-tips). I think that a new generation is ready for American Gladiators.


I've mentioned before that professional sports should make steroids legal. One of the criticisms is that pro athletes on steroids would be bad role models for kids. I don't think this has to be the case. I think we could learn something about role models from American Gladiators. American Gladiators placed the steroid-free everyman in head-to-head competition with gigantic steroid freaks in athletic contests, and fans rooted for the competitors! The steroid users were the bad guys. To your average 12-year-old or idiot, steroids make you look like Gemini, not like Lance Armstrong. [In reality, there's a PED for basically every kind of athlete. But who says we can't embrace stereotypes for the good of the children?] So when fans of the show watched, they could ask themselves, "do I want to be more like Gladiator or competitor?" Since the Gladiators were all bulk, it was only a matter of time before a competitor came along and utterly destroyed the juiced-up Gladiators. And that competitor was Wesley Berry. Yes, big muscles couldn't hold down Wesley "Two-Scoops" Berry. Not by a long shot.
I have said before on this here rag that no other athlete has dominated his sport more than Michael Phelps, with only Tiger Woods and Roger Federer coming close. Well, I forgot about Two Scoops. Two Scoops, named for the inclusion of Kellogs Raisin Bran in his diet, came into gladiator stadium and basically leveled it to the ground. It wasn't too often that a competitor bested one of the gladiators, especially in games like "Break Through and Concur" or "Joust." When they did it seemed almost lucky. But Two Scoops would march right up to those meat-heads and throw them out of the ring (or off the pedestal or whatever the case may be). He owned the Gladiators. He was faster, stronger, more agile, and he could jump over a car (seriously). He was like the Wilt Chamberlain of obstacle courses and Nerf guns. He broke just about every record on the show (although his eliminator record is marked with controversy because he was first down the zip-line but took the inside track). On top of all this, he preached staying in school, not doing drugs, and giving anywhere from 120% to 1000%. Two Scoops, I salute you. It's too bad you're in jail now.

Update! I just found some clips on youtube of Two Scoops kicking ass. Here his is winning The Gauntlet on International Gladiators:



Here he is jumping over a car: