Hump Day

So as I sit here and watch the Brewers dismantle the Cubs, I find myself having a few things rumble around upstairs. I guess I shouldn't give up on the Cubs yet, they could score 13 runs in the 8th inning like the Yankees did last night, right? Right?




I'll never forget my dad's reaction to Terry Porter saying after the season, "I haven't given that any thought", when asked if he thought his job was in jeopardy. My dad's reaction was basically, "Why not?!? You went 30-52, why wouldn't you think you may not have a job next season?" I didn't pay much attention to that at the time, but after today's somewhat startling news that Porter was fired as the Bucks coach, I couldn't help but give my dad props. The reason it is somewhat startling is because Larry Harris had said after the season that Porter would be back. Oh well, I hope this means the Bucks bring in Flip Saunders. He could really do good things with this team and their number one draft pick, so good luck next year, Bucks, if you don't select Andrew Bogut, I'll be watching to see what the new coach will do.



When I got home from work on Monday night, I turned on the television as I do when I get home everynight, and noticed it was still tuned to ESPN from before I left for work. I decided to watch for a while, and was stunned at what I saw on the screen, HOCKEY HIGHLIGHTS. The highlights weren't from an actual game, but were from an NHL video game in which ESPN was broadcasting highlights of the Stanley Cup Finals, which would be happening right now. Seriously, is ESPN so desperate to get Berry Melrose's hair back on tv that they have to resort to this? By the way, the Avalanche beat the Maple Leafs 4 games to 1.



Annika Sorenstam is going for her third consecutive Major Championship victory of the LPGA season this weekend in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado at the US Women's Open. To say that she is the Tiger Woods of women's golf is more of a compliment to Tiger than to Annika. No one has ever played this well over a 2 year stretch as Annika Sorenstam. No one has ever had a season as good as hers has been so far. Since 2003, Annika has 19 victories. I'll repeat that, Annika has 19 victories on tour since May 2003, just over 2 years, and she doesn't even play every week. She has won 6 of 8 starts this season and her per round average is 2.05 strokes better than anyone else on tour (by the way, that's 8 strokes per tournament). There's really nothing else to say about how good she is right now, except that the people who thought they had never seen anything like what Tiger did from 99-2000, should really watch Sorenstam now, because this is even more impressive. She won't have the Tiger slam, she'll have the calendar slam at the end of this season.




Why do the NBA Finals games start at 8:20pm CDT? This confuses me very much. I don't ever remember the games starting this late when I was watching them every year as soon as 5 years ago. Do the people in Detroit really stay up until midnight to watch these games? Sure, they need to start a little later in the West so people who are working can get to the games, but wouldn't 5 o'clock work? Who is opposed to having the games start even an hour earlier? I can't believe it, but I can't stay up late enough to watch these games, not that I would anyway, but that's a story for another day. In addition to the late starts, the final game of the series is on a Thursday night? Why is this? If you're going to start the games so late that half the country can't watch the entire thing, why not have the fourth game seven of the past 25 years played on a Friday night? Why can't you wait another day, doesn't this make more sense? These are just some of the things which don't make sense to me and are why I don't watch the NBA anymore.



Finally, it's good to see the Brew City Beat back in action. I know how the getting settled into a new job will hurt your posting frequence, and will soon know how moving interferes with posting. That said, welcome back and I am going to apologize in advance for when I don't post for days starting Friday. I won't be able to post until I am back online when I get it installed at the new pad.

-Until next time...

Tuesday Thoughts

I am sitting in my office on my lunch hour this Tuesday and I am pondering a few things. Most importantly is the fact that it seems as though our good friends at The Brew City Beat have taken some time off. I understand that Garcia just moved, but really, that is where I go for my most thorough and up to date news and information on sports in Milwaukee and the last post was a preview of the MLB draft. I want to see an NBA draft preview, considering the Bucks have the number one picks (I think we all know my feelings on that).



The U.S. Open was fairly entertaining this weekend. Tiger made a charge on Sunday, but was untimately held back by champion Michael Campbell, who completely broke down into tears after realizing he had just one, quite a stunning scene. The one thing which I really did not like about this tournament was the fact that Mr. Woods wasn't chastized nearly enough for what he did on Friday. After missing a ten foot putt on (I believe) number nine, Tiger raked his putter along the green, scuffing it for some three feet. This is uncalled for and is definitely behavior the top player in the world should not be exhibiting. I can't believe there isn't a penalty for doing something like this. I can't ground my club in a sand trap or it is a stroke penalty, but I can wreck part of the most sensitive area on the course, causing problems for other golfers and nothing happens, way to go Tiger, real classy.



A solid victory for the Cubs last night. I feel like every time I talk about the team, they go into a funk. Well, I'm going to talk about them here, so Brewers fans should be excited. It was an excellent game all around, and save for a Brady Clark error, probably would have gone to extra innings. The Cubs got to Tomo Ohka early, which was very important as he settled down and pretty much shut down their offense after the 3rd inning. Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez continue to have hot bats and Todd Walker provided a few hits to take some pressure off. What was so encouraging to me, though, was in the 7th inning when Mike Remlinger came in, inherited runners on 1st and 2nd and struck out the two men he faced to end the inning. After Michael Wuertz walked two in the inning, Remlinger came in to face Lyle Overbay and struck him out. Dusty Baker decided to leave the man with the hot hand in the game to face Carlos "El Caballo" Lee. Remlinger struck him out as well to end the inning and showed the emotion coming off the field that has sorely been lacking from this Cubs team this year (with the exception of Carlos Zambrano). Mike was fired up and let out a scream as he was headed back to the dugout while the rest of the infield came running in and patted him on the back. Hopefully we will see more of this emotion and fire from the team, because being 9 1/2 games back, something needs to get them going.

-Until next time...