What the hell was C.C. doing batting in the eighth (and then pitching a long ninth) with such a huge lead last night? I know we’re probably not going to be able to keep him, but we still gotta get him through hopefully a couple months’ worth of baseball yet. Don’t get me wrong, the guy has every right to keep himself in games and risk flushing millions of dollars down the drain in a contract year. But, rental player or not, we shouldn’t let him be so hasty with his future, because it’s our future too until after the season. Grrh.
Category: Brewers
Gainin’ On Ya! All Up Around Your Neck
The Cubs are in first place, in case you haven’t heard. The Brewers are in second, “but that’s a temporary condition too”:
To each his reach
And if I don’t cop, it ain’t mine to have
But I’ll be reachin’ for ya
‘Cause I love ya, CC.
Right on.
Ain’t it funky, Chicago?
(Or how about “J.J.? C.C.; C.C.? J.J.”)
All kidding aside, the Brewers now have arguably the best one-two starting pitching punch in baseball with, in no particular order, Ben Sheets and C.C. Sabathia. (Who am I forgetting? Surely a pair in the AL?) Sheets’ ERA and WHIP are a little better this season, but Sabathia pitches in the AL, leads baseball in strikeouts, and is the reigning Cy Young winner (he also got off to an unusually bad start).
It’s gonna be a fun second-half!
Big Ten Champs!
Thanks to my roommate’s awesome soon-to-be in-laws, I got to see the Badgers clinch a share of the Big Ten Championship tonight. It was a pretty serious blowout (not a word to all my Penn State alum coworkers, I promise), which was great fun on Senior Night. I’ve got no real insight here, I’m just psyched.
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Also Keith Law expects a big year from the Brewers’ Rickie Weeks. Join the club, Keith.
Pitchers & Catchers!
It’s a great weekend in Wisconsin sports. The Badger men’s basketball team overcame a sluggish start to beat Minnesota this afternoon (consider watching the next game at the west-side Rocky’s; the big screen room there is awesome), Marquette routed Pitt last night…and the Brewers’ pitchers and catchers reported for spring training!
Let me apologize now–you’re probably going to hear a lot about baseball on this blog. I love baseball. Before we moved to Wisconsin, I lived in Bradenton, Florida, which is where the Pittsburgh Pirates spring train. I used to listen to games on the radio when I went to bed, including (occasionally) the dreaded West Coast games, which are tough on a first-grader living in EST. I once dragged my dad to a Sarasota White Sox minor league (A) game the night that we’d arrived back from some trip from New York, after spending the entire day in the car. I went to seven straight opening days at Milwaukee County Stadium. Moneyball is one of my favorite books. I keep score at games. A League of Their Own is one of my favorite movies. I think I watched or listened to significant portions of at least 100 of the Brewers’ 162 games last year, possibly quite a few more. The dates of the three televised Brewers spring training games this season are already marked in my calendar. I still talk about the 2004 game where Matt, Greg, and I saw Ben Sheets pitch 18 strikeouts.
You might know that, at any given time, I’m working on a grab bag of informal theses about (usually inconsequential) subjects. For instance, I’ll probably share with you soon my Alison Krauss thesis, which I’ve been working on since I saw her at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival last summer (don’t worry, I brought my radio so I could monitor the status of the Brewers’ doubleheader at St. Louis that day). Well, I’ve got a lot of baseball theses. There’s the “why baseball is more exciting than other sports” thesis, the “why baseball strategy is less immediately obvious than in the other major sports” thesis…you get the idea. I’ll probably share a couple of them as time goes on. For now, I mostly wanted to just put up a celebratory post marking this glorious day.
But I also wanted to say thank you to. You see, I spent most of last July and August studying for qualifying exams, usually about 40 hours per week. The quals are pretty tough in my deparment, and you only get two chances to pass. And I was afraid I’d want to drop out if I didn’t pass the first time. So I studied nuclear engineering, fluid mechanics and heat transfer, and modern physics for two months. And I listened to Brewers games. Seriously, that’s pretty much it. Looking forward to a baseball game was what got me through some of those days. And even though we didn’t quite make the playoffs (I was at the game where the Padres eliminated us), I’m so grateful for the pennant race that saved my sanity during my qual summer.
If you’d like to get your baseball excitement juices flowing (or if you’d like some evidence that the one-on-one, pitcher-to-hitter nature of baseball creates storylines way more compelling than anything, say, football can muster), check out this article my baseball-loving friend Matt came across. Most intriguing at-bat, indeed.
Let’s play ball.