Tag Archives: basketball

Check you later Zack Greinke

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Well, the day that we inevitably knew was going to come has come and Zack Greinke is no longer a Milwaukee Brewer. I wish he could have stayed and won the World Series; but the bullpen, luck and the injury bug had other plans. Now he's gone.

It's been a weird run. There were a lot of really great times. I'll never forget the day I found out he was coming to Milwaukee and I invented a dance to go along with it. I was so excited I nearly peed my pants. I was smiling and laughing and dancing. I was so, SO happy. Insanely happy. I even wrote about it:

Greatest moments of my life:

  1. Son being born
  2. Something involving my girlfriend*
  3. Zack Greinke becoming a Brewer

The point here is that I can't imagine what it felt like to want to close this site or to not like baseball anymore because I love this site and baseball and the Brewers more than anything in my life right now. I just want to write, watch and read about the Brewers every second of every day for the rest of my life. The Brewers are going to the World Series and then they are going to win it. We are about to see the greatest Brewers team of our lifetime. Everything that came before will seem like a joke.

Hey, 1982 what a season am I right? Yeah, what a season... FOR LOSERS! 2011 BITCHES!!!!

Besides the World Series and that laughable girlfriend comment, I think I agree with most everything that I said at that time. Last year's team really was the greatest team of my lifetime. They just didn't know how to not pitch Marcum and Narveson in the most important game of the season (I really need to stop doing this) and it ended sooner than it should have. The Zack Greinke trade brought me from a place where I wasn't sure if I still wanted to be in love with baseball and made me be totally in love with it again. I've never wavered again and I'm really glad it worked out how it did. Every fifth day was like a mini-holiday for awhile there. I saw some amazing games at Miller Park with Zack on the mound and it was pretty awesome. I liked it. Continue reading »

RIP 2012 Milwaukee Brewers

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Well, the improbable has become the basically impossible and I am throwing in the towel on the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers playoff hopes. Notice I said playoff hopes and not the team itself? Yeah, that's how you do it. There is a lot of summer left with basically nothing to do so watching the Brewers is still going to be one of the cornerstones of my life until the season is over. I will still want them to win baseball games because watching my favorite baseball team win games is fun for me. I've never understood why some people take on the opinion that once a team is eliminated from the playoffs they should lose every game for the rest of the season to improve their draft pick. What fun is that? You people watch too much basketball. I'm not saying the Brewers should be adding pieces or not doing trades to improve themselves for the future, but if Yovani Gallardo is pitching and Ryan Braun is hitting then that can be a fun team to watch. You should want those guys to win especially if you, you know, have tickets to a game and want to have a good time. This isn't rocket science. This is rocket science:

It's okay to still like a baseball team that isn't going to the playoffs. If you don't agree just watch the Packers practice in sweatpants or whatever.

I really had high hopes for the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers and there has been nothing that happened this season to make me doubt those high hopes. Things simply didn't go their way. Their shortstop got hurt, their bullpen wasn't that good which was exacerbated by the fact that some of their better arms had to fill in for injured starting pitchers, a handful of players decided not to show up in April, John Axford had his wisdom teeth pulled and decided it would be fun to pitch like he was still in the middle of surgery and luck never once felt like it was on the Brewers side. A few breaks the other way and this team is right in the thick of it, but if I start agonizing over "what ifs" now I might start crying. WHAT IF ROENICKE DIDN'T GO MARCUM THEN NARVESON IN GAME 6 GUYS!? WHAT IF HE USED BEST RELIEVERS INSTEAD!? WHAT IF!?

/looks at unused NLCS game 7 ticket
/cries

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MPD Book Club: The Book of Basketball

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brooksteppeBill Simmons is a writer for ESPN that you probably have heard of. He's probably the biggest "celebrity" writer on the internet and is responsible for roughly 1/5 of the posts at Deadspin. Despite influencing roughly every sports blog on the internet and setting a gold standard that anyone who thinks that it's a good idea to write on the internet should try to attain, he is one of the most divisive figures in the sports blogging world. Often accused of being smug, a name dropper and overusing the same references time and time again (I once emailed him begging him to stop with the Battle of the Network Stars references) Simmons is generally un-apologetic over his style. His style is his style. He has his fans (which I count myself as one) and his detractors, but in the end there's not much you can say negatively about him. His "voice of the fan" perspective has become skewered a bit over the years, but it still is a "voice of the fan" because when it comes to baseball, the NFL or gambling on the NFL he doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time (just like a real fan.) However, when it comes to basketball Bill Simmons leaves the "voice of the fan" behind and becomes something wholly different, one of the greatest living basketball writers alive.

Now, I've never been the biggest basketball guy. I think it's a great sport to watch, but there have been one too many times in my lifetime when the officials have clearly affected the outcome of a game and you can't tell me any different that the league didn't influence these decisions. The most egregious example would of course be the Dallas/Miami Finals from a couple of years back. I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way and was completely turned off by this series, but somehow the NBA always finds ways to pull me back in. Whether it's Lebron James or Brandon Jennings, I always find a reason to end up watching some games and a lot of this can probably be attributed to the writing of Bill Simmons. His passion for the game in his columns is infectious and there have been more than a few times I have ended up watching a playoff series because he will not shut up about it (Bulls/Celtics from last season is a great example.) When I found out that Bill Simmons had written a 700 page book about basketball I pre-ordered it right away. I've always enjoyed him as a writer and he is far too serious about the sport of basketball to mess this up. When The Book of Basketball arrived eight days ago I dug right in and I wasn't disappointed. Continue reading »