sit there and don't move

i forget what asian religion encourages stillness
so as to not kill any living thing including centipedes and ants.
that kind of seems impossible
unless you had someone to be at your service night and day.
because everyone has to go to the grocery store and hunt for some food.

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the brewers almost did nothing this off season.
they had one pressing need-fix the bullpen.
so they added starter/reliever gorzelanny,
reliever badenhopp,
and reliever mike gonzalez.

the trio replaces loe, rodriguez, and parra.
i have been forced to trust murphy's law
and believe that my current slip into a dull brain will pass
and one day i will be sizzling with ideas once again.

maybe the brewers pathetic relief experience last year was last year
and 2013 would have reverted to the norm.
mike gonzalez worries me.
badenhopp doesn't impress me.
gorzelanny is good enough.

all in all, change is good
and all three changes are very low risk in terms of money and length of contract.
the brewers have been criticized more than once for bad player development,
especially when it comes to pitchers.
other than ben sheets and yovani gallardo,
no brewers draft picks have matured into above average big league starters.
this year may be different.
mark rogers and willy peralta and mike fiers will all be given a chance.
fiers has already proven he is marcum worthy.
tyler thornburg may be given a chance as well.

i don't know if this is strictly a money decision
or the reality of the free agent crop not being that good,
or a new emphasis on home grown pitchers,
or a mixture of all three reasons.

whatever the reason,
it smells better than 3 year contracts of 14 million
to pitchers who know very little about the brewers.

i'm assuming there is a continuity in being on a particular team
with pitching drills and exercises and techniques and philosophies
the same from rookie ball to AAA to miller park
or maybe i'm living in a karate world
where there is a slow progression to higher levels,
but the essence of the master is present from a-z.

if i were a pitcher and was 22 and still hadn't established myself,
i wouldn't want to be shipped all over the place
with new pitching coaches and new expectations and new rules.
i'd want some kind of anchor and commitment
so i could develop at the normal pace and
not be all screwed up every year with new arm angles, new release points.

2013 looks to be safe for the brewers.
if the pitching flops, it'll be the typical pot holes for a young staff,
but i it works, the brewer's farm system won't be so easily mocked.

get your own baseball data

rogers sportsnet is in the midst of reliving the 1992 world series,
one game at a time.
in game 3 candy maldonado launched an opposite field,
half fly-half liner
into a drawn in atlanta braves defense.
oh yeh the bases were loaded and it was the bottom of the ninth in toronto
and the score was tied 2-2.

roberto alomar scored and the blue jays won 3-2.
the blue jays now lead the series 2-1
and that was 20 years ago
and i bet the vegas odds on a blue jays world series for 2013
are high right about now.
i like the way rogers arranges its tv programs in canada.

1992 was the first world series played on canadian soil.
dave winfield got the first hit in toronto's sky dome.
it was fittingly a turfy chop that sent pendleton racing back
and by the time the ball came down from flight,
even winfield at 41 years young was safe on first.
winfield mighta been 41, but pat gillick signed him as a free agent
and the guy drove in 108 runs.
that musta pissed off george steinbrenner.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i like tim mccarver.
he knows what the fart he's talking about.
it's not just what he said prior to luis gonzalez jamming
that mariano rivera pitch over a drawn in infield to win the 2001 series,
but it's his advice on radar guns that i heard for the first time today
while listening to the 1992 world series.

"study the relationship between the pitcher and hitter," he suggested
"see how messed up the batter is on a fastball and
you'll know how fast it's going...real fast."

i see john axford's high fastball after one of his curves
and see the batter being noticeably late
and don't need to know how fast he's throwing.

in 1992 there were no speed read outs on every pitch,
no pitch trackers to know if it was really a ball or strike...
there wasn't nothing but the game
and i think it's under those conditions
where the next statistical breakthrough will emerge,
where someone tracks their own data.

museum mind

extreme weather is great
minus the flying objects that whack people in the head
and minus windshield factors that freeze people to death,
but if those two unfortunate realites can be avoided,
a good downpour can wash away all the used condoms and trash
or a legit snow storm covers it all up
and my mind forgets james shields being part of the royals new pitching staff
and remembers some older things that disappeared only for a while like
ellis valentine's throwing arm,
von joshua's name,
cecil cooper's crouch,
marc clear's jacked up stirrups,
chris bosio's temper,
or ryan raun's pinch hit homer from june of 2011
against florida.

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and as snow continues to dump on the northeast,
i still hear that sound of braun's "big fly."
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=15501147&topic_id=&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_15501147&v=3

the color of pine tar

those pitcher's mounds are something else.
hard to see them in the winter months with the ground covered in snow,
but even in the summer,
it's not really clear what's buried under there
and even if the stadium is gone
and dirt naturally not the same,
there is still a name or an event,
a carl mays,
his 29 shutouts,
abominable personality,
underhand delivery,
reputation for coming inside
and that one pitch that really got away
and sent ray chapman to his early death.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

carl mays became a scout for the milwaukee braves.
it was 1963,
he probably visited county stadium at some point during the season
or maybe not,
but either way,
mays was connected to the menominee river valley
where cooper waved his hands to guide the ball down down down back in 82
and deer sent easter egg sunday 1987
and one anonymous regular season game after another
including the end of days overlooking miller park's construction
and now jean segura will play shortstop.....
those degrees of separation are always so much fewer than we imagine
and all so terribly invisible.

harold baines and the walk off homerun

a christmas or new years get together
has a higher potential for a good time
with a little drinking or a lot and letting it all loose.

a get together also has a high risk of a nervous breakdown
or whatever you want to call it.
yeh, people freak out in crowded rooms.
these parties require a certain degree of calm or social skill
or whatever you want to call it.

it's a lot different than sitting around an apartment
in your underwear watching a regular season baseball game
on an old vhs recording from 2005,
especially when it's september 9, 2005 a friday night
and roger clemens lasts only 3 innings
and gives up 5 earned runs to the brewers
including jj hardy's 1st inning blast.
that kicks the crap out of  feeling lonely at a party among lots of people
because with baseball you're never really alone even if you are physically alone.
shit, this is getting existential.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i don't know when the debate over "clutch" was born
and don't really care.
the argument goes something like...
give any major league player enough at bats in tight situations
and he will perform as he does under normal conditions.
a murphy's law sort of logic
not dale murphy, but some old science principle murphy.

i like jim thome because he looks like an efficient plumber
rather than some chiseled atlas who sniffs energy drinks.
last june, thome hit the 13th walk off homerun of his career
and that put him all alone as the all time leader in game ending blasts.

the list is a fairly normal one.
jim thome-13
jimmy foxx-12
mickey mantle-11
and then a bunch of people with 10
-stan musial, frank robinson, babe ruth, tony perez, dick allen,
harold baines, reggie jackson, mike schmidt, sammy sosa, barry bonds.

i'm partial to harold baines because he is my all time favorite player
and because i remember one of those walk offs.
it was in the 25th inning of the longest mlb game in history
at old comiskey park in 1984.
he hit it off of the brewer's chuck porter.

there's something about that list that is more than random
and more than murphy's law.
i'm not gonna call it clutch,
but you bet your sober statistical brain,
that the chances of these guys losing their cool
at a holiday party are next to none.

baseball's one night stand

i was handed the keys to a penske truck and instructed
to drive it out west,
to san francisco.
it was filled with expired skin creams.

that was a long time ago, but
i remember colorado and
and meeting some navajo indians outside coors field
one of em sipping a hair spray cocktail
and the others having a conversation about something.
two of us went to the game
and then to boulder
and then i took a detour to the four corners
followed by a long highway darkness that made las vegas
truly the city of lights.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

it gets me thinking of cc sabathia
and the brewers trading one of their hyped prospects,
matt laporta back in 2008.
and how lights out sabbathia was for the rest of the season.
11-2 with a bunch of complete games and flirts with no hitters.
the brewers won the wild card and
a couple of first round draft picks
when sabbathia signed with new york in the off season.

where is laporta these days?
how often does the window open for starving teams?
kansas city and toronto don't care about "depletion of a farm system"
and they shouldn't.

i don't buy meat because it has potential.
i buy it because i know it's good.
let someone else test taste and die with prospects.

double speak baseball

the spice girls song "the lady is a vamp"
could easily be sung by the sex pistols.
it's the same with any song.
take any lyrics and
turn them into rage or sap.

words are empty.
it's us humans who give them so much meaning.
for crying out loud,
ooooogah boooogah worked for how many cave man years?
we're not that civilised.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i grew up or grew down listening to bob uecker.
i grew all around and stopped believing so much in science
or numbers or fancy explanations
and settled in for a good story.
it didn't and still doesn't matter if it's true.
i'll take imagination over facts any day.

i  knew one person other than my grandpa
who used double talk to confuse prom queens
and that was bob uecker spinning  milwaukee brewer yarns,
but then i met whip willis.

the suicide scrooge

the abyss is a bad place to look.
there's nothing down there, but more and more nothing.
you can be surrounded by a PS3, a decent sofa,
one or two good friends, an interest in stamps,
and a few movies to watch,
but for whatever the reason or non reason,
the highway can suddenly stop,
some sort of faulty construction blue print
and all that remains
are those wires and coils angling towards the sky.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i will say this about ryan freel.
he had guts as a player, pete rose guts

and without glorifying suicide,
it does take guts coupled with volumes of suffering
to actually do the deed and not just talk about it.

but some suicides are just plain awful conclusions
to lives filled with all kinds of suffering.
i think of former milwaukee brewer dan thomas
who admitted that he could never handle success
and took to drinking and pills as a player.
he didn't last too long in the majors....2 seasons
and then he got accused of raping a 12 year old girl.
who knows if he was guilty,

but he went to jail which is where he hung himself.

there's been plenty of suicides in the baseball family.
here is a partial list from the dead ball era website.

which probably hasn't been updated
because hideki irabu is not listed as a 2011 hanging.

the loss of freel a big bummer to everyone
and a reminder that who really knows what's going on inside someone.
i like the idea of inviting a down and out stranger for a beer or three.

de-liriano-eees

i'm happy for the pirates.
because i too slammed my head against many walls,
more of a soft core equivalent to james brown,
no pimping for me,
but i made my share of false identity detours.

i dig honus wagner
and the world series pirate crowns
before the yankees even existed,
but that's all scratchy news reel stuff to me.

but i do remember barry bonds hanging his head
in color tv memory
after sid bream scored
and then barry leaving pittsburgh
and then the pirates becoming steve blass syndrome.

is liriano really worth it?
when is enough enough?
how many more one last chances?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

where will shawn marcum pitch next year?
are the brewers still bitter because he conked out at the end of the 2011 season?
who cares!
sign the marcum for half as much as liriano signed with the pirates
marcum's career numbers blow liriano away.

gorzelanny

panning through salvation army piles is an ode.
i see kids around the flag pole,
playing east west war.

one kid braves the mobile assault and
dares his tongue against the metal.
none of them care about the polyester symbol waving free up above and neither do i.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the brewers signed tom gorzelanny yesterday to a two-year contract.
The news didn't make it to mlb.com's top 7 stories
which is rare because news in the winter is usually sparse,
but apparently aj pyrzinski signing with texas is bigger news,
but anyway who cares!

it is the biggest signing for the Brewer's this off season in terms of money and filling a need.
The Brewer's bullpen was bad last season and the starting rotation
after gallardo and probably fiers and estrada is still very much up for grabs.
 gorzellany is a rare 30 year old lefty not because he's 30 or lefty
but because he can start and relieve and be pretty good at both.

melvin didn't buy into the hype and panic and pay double digit millions for old pitchers.
he refused to sign them to 3 year contracts. been there, done that with suppan and wolfe.
so there are no christmas candies for hungry brewer's fans this year.
the team is going with what it's got and i like it.

milestone

we didn't run on the field in 1982
but we jumped butt naked into lake michigan
on easter sunday 1987
and we didn't know it at the time,
but we kinda baptized ourselves
as brewer fans for the rest of our lives.

i still smell the alewives.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

loyalty in baseball is far from dead.
yeh sure, some players move on to the highest bidder
or closer to home
or wanting to win a championship,
but some players sign long contracts with one team,
really long.

i don't know who started it.
maybe ryan braun or maybe it was troy tulowitzki.
i guess they like dropping anchor and avoiding  all that shop around contract hassle.
if they got families, they can buy a house and sign up the kiddies for school.
either way, players make a really good chunk of change,
but there must be something else going on like some sort of old loyalty.
braun must really want to win in milwaukee. i guess that's kind of obvious.

braun will be the brewers all time home run hitter soon.
he's 49 away from robin yount's 251.

under the mound

don sutton crowned 1982's second half
as the best baseball time of his life
and he pitched with some good ones...
koufax, drysdale, tommy john, charlie hough
and then with nolan ryan as an astro in 1981.

but it was the trade the following year to milwaukee

that sticks with the hall of famer.

who can blame him?
i don't think the party in 82 ended until 1984
and the brewers didn't even win the world series.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

there's a fan whose name i don't remember.
he was there in 82
and is still there today.
he wears dark rimmed glasses and looks a heck of a lot like cal tjader.
he told me about vuke,
sleeping off a drunk in the bullpen
and waking up to the sound of his name,
"and now today's starting pitchers."

vuke probably tucked his shirt in during the long walk out to the mound
and started up his smoke and mirror "hargrove rain delay" psych out.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i don't know what's become of axford's mustache,
but man oh man is he ever easy to like.
as a matter of fact,
i can't think of anything more amazing than a spring training invite to a canadian
and the wash up making the opening day roster
and then performing beyond any scout's or statistician's recommended expertise.
it's an absolute revolution to me.

the brewers have a scout stationed in quebec.
his name is JP Roy.
he shows up at the local tryout camps put on by major league baseball.
most major league teams probably have one scout for canada
and rarely one specifically for quebec.
no surprise with the brewers since melvin and ash are both born in ontario.

the brewers currently have 12 canadian born players in their system.
only the blue jays have more.

one of them is from montreal. 

--Philippe Valiquette, Montreal, Que. (0-1, 8.49) double-A Huntsville; 

-- (0-0, 4.00) Single-A Brevard County Manatees.

i like dreaming when it's snowing outside. 

this town of montreal is still made for baseball!
it's got vuke's grit.

cal mclish

names have all kinds of meanings to some people and
none at all to others.
greg luzinski could only be a left fielder
or any position at all,
even a pitcher
until everybody seen luzinski in the flesh playing defense.

then it becomes very clear.
luzinski plays no position at all.
he's getting traded to the american league
and becoming a designated hitter.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

how in the hell did ben oglivie and george foster
hit so many home runs?
they were both toothpick skinny
and so was luis gonzalez for that matter
when he hit those 57 home runs.

i don't like buff baseball players
and crazy brain wilson workout routines.
it's all too efficient and perfect
and so are sabermetrics.

but don't get me wrong.
i like WAR and OPS+ and BABIP.
and study it like a good school boy
so i can communicate with baseball's genius crowd,
a little bit anyway,
but give me some jean segura at 165 pounds.
he still hasn't hit his first mlb home run.
but jean...the mighty gene is gonna hit 10 in 2013,
at least 10.

the only thing  i can say for sure
is that calvin coolidge julius caesar tuskahoma mclish is the full name of former brewer's pithing coach cal mclish
and i love that name.
his father was three quarters choctaw indian.

there's gold in dem hills

i'm not against hot prospects
and don't hesitate to admire
a 10 walking with her curves in full swag mode.
she steps up to the bar rail and twirls her curls
and even the gay men in the back
take notice of her.

she gets fat,
maybe squeezes out a few kids,
but still takes the rail with the same moxy.
i'd buy another round to hear her sing karaoke.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i guess the brewers were willing to trade brett lawrie
because rickie weeks existed.
weeks was the number 2 overall pick back in 2003.
weeks still holds the highest career batting average in ncaa history.
.473 at southern university.

you can say what you want about "level of competition,"
but southern u. is division 1 and
even if it wasn't.
even if it was whiffel ball united,
.473 is a monster number
because there are always 8 fielders waiting for a batted ball.

weeks slumped for the first half of the 2012 season and then some,
but then he turned it on in the second half and then some.
i'll take my chances with weeks now and forever.

rob deer's strat-o-matic baseball card

we were the baseball boys and still are.
we are the enemy of all kinds of girls.
it doesn't matter if you are prom queen,
vala dicktorian or wendy o' willaims wannabee.

you will hate us baseball boys
because we rob you of james dean and brad pitt
and val kilmer and stiv bators and jack nickolson
and every kind of guy you need.
we take him over to our loser friend's house
and we order pizza and drink bad beer and stink up the place
with cigarette smell and play 6 straight games of
strat-o-matic baseball on a friday night.

there will be no boning for you ladies...
not on this night anyway.

rob deer was a dream.
those straight homers at 2-8, 2-9, 2-10
and split homer/double at 3-6,
all of it against lefties.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

it's partially irritating to hear that rob deer was hired by the cubs
to be their assistant hitting coach,
but then again
as much as he struck out
and as low as he batted with a not so amazing on base percentage,
the cubs can have him.

dale sveum remembers those late 1980's brewer's teams.
i think loyalty to friends helped create this new position,
this assistant hitting coach.
what the hell is that anyway?

baseball's hot foot

i learned like the buddha about old age, dying, disease,
but i learned it all at county stadium.
i was a kid holding my dad's hand
looking for autographs.
i had no idea about...
paper beer cups exploding,
people making out under the bleachers,
giant urinal troughs,
drunk boxing matches,
and everyone eventually having to exit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

chemistry on a baseball team
is like any other chemistry.
it's invisible and yet,
so many people take about chemistry
as one of the keys to success.

they might be right,
but why even talk about it?
it's like trying to describe a feeling between two people,
better left unsaid.

what gets me is people who preach that
chemistry has to be positive.
what about the yankees in the 70's?
and all the cat scratching between reggie and martin.
or what about the pirates in 1979?
that "we are family' hype was apparently an irony.
those guys were a mixture of ethnic upbringing variety,
inevitably loud and combative
or so phil garner remembers
in the book,
"The Pirates" by Lou Sahadi.

bert blyleven was on that 79 pirates team.
i met him a few years later as an indian.
i was hanging out beside the indians dugout at county stadium,
whining for autographs,
"mr. blyleven, mr. blyleven, will you sign this ball?"

next thing i knew mr. blyleven pointed to my shoe.
he had pranked me a hot foot.
i was initiated.
that's the only baseball chemistry i've ever known.

how to walk in snow

i take each step through the snow as if it's my last.

it's a himalaya monk walk,
a meditation.
i don't need a gym membership.
i'm a mohawk packing up furs into a canoe
voyaging montreal to green bay.

there must be a reason why the quebec town kahnawake
is so close in spelling and pronunciation
to milwaukee.

the great distances people traveled
probably didn't seem like great distances.
they were just doing what had to be done.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

when i think back on the longest game in major league baseball history,
i remember harold baines hitting a home run off chuck porter
in the 25th inning at old comiskey park in 1984.
the brewers only used 6 pitchers the entire game.

i like shared starts.
i like the idea of john axford pitching the first two innings of a game,
followed by marco estrada and mark rogers and tom gorzelanny
and whoever in the ninth to close it out.

gallardo is the only horse in the rotation.
he'll get his five days rest and
all the other relievers/starters can rotate,
pitch one game, sit out one game.
that would make for 80 appearances per pitcher
and if it worked effectively,
the billy beane paparazzies would be all over brew city.

i wanna bee bill james when i grow up

i'd venture to guess that most kids
have the same professional ambitions as pre-6 year olds.
they all wanna be firemen or policemen or baseball players,
at least in north america anyway,
but then somewhere very quickly along the way,
that becomes very uncool,
especially the police men pursuit.

i think it was the fire truck for me.
all that red and swirling siren and noise,
but i'm not gonna deny it.
i could very well have wanted to be a police man.
i'd have to ask my mom
because i'm not one of these people who claim to remember
everything from their childhood.

i don't believe those people anyway.
they strike me as big show offs and sort of pretentious
because many call themselves artists.
what inspires someone to wear an occupation tag on their shirt?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i didn't draft players in strat-o-matic based on walks or on base percentage.
i went with my favotrite players,
the ones who i watched on tv;
cecil cooper, rob deer, mark clear, ben sheets, yovani gallardo.

hey and sometimes i got lucky,
but anything remotely related to sabermetrics i knew nothing about.
there was kid among our group who knew.
he read the bill james books
and promoted darrel porter and toby harrah
as if they were jesus christ resurrected.
a sabermetrician is a classical guitar player, a chemist, and a poet
all wrapped into one seamhead snob,
but of course they are right most of the time
and i have to go now.
i have metrics to study.

the houston astros kangaroo jump

i like the old expressions used in baseball.
i can't think of too many off the top of my head,
but one that always stuck around was kangarooing
as in jumping from the national league to the american league
back when the leagues really hated each other
and the world series was war series.

i don't like inter league play.
i don't like any kind of watered down coffee.
i like friction
and remember the national league being a foreign country as a kid.
i remember it as a snobby place
like a christmas party i was forced to attend
at a stuffy neighbor's house
and i remember the american league as industrial giants,
as motor head city of detroit and the angling facade of right field bleachers
and bernie's beer chalet gorman thomas
and rock and roll cleveland along lake eeeeerie in that whale belly municipal stadium.
the american league always appealed to my loser preference.
it feels like it got a haircut and i don't like it.

no one hates each other anymore,
not enough anyway.
it's as if dh lost its devil like the rays did.
if you like peace and love then you're probably happy about
these contrived geographic rivalries
and the opposition laying down like lion and lamb.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the astros are now members of the american league west
having kangarooed from the nation league central.
that makes for 6 divisions,
each with 5 teams.

the astros are the first team to switch leagues since
the milwaukee brewers did it to begin the 1998 season.
that was the first time it ever happened.
it's true.
a lot of teams relocated west,
but no team prior to the brewers had ever switched leagues.
it still smells a little like a bud selig milwaukee braves fantasy,
but the brewers weren't the first team chosen.

anyway, some medium core baseball fans are not even aware of the astros switch.
i blame that on interleague play and the astros being maybe the worst team in baseball,
but either way,
no one seems to hate anymore and so no one cares about the astros switch.

i don't know how this will alter the game in terms of league runs and wins and losses,
but there's probably a way to calculate the potential change.
i don't need a maid to do my laundry or cook me dinner.
i need a seamhead that can be beamed up on my call.
scotty!!!