LEARN MORE<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
BROKEN AT THE BREAK<\/p>\n
F: What is there, really, to say at the all-star break
\nabout the Brewers?<\/p>\n
A: About the who? The name vaguely rings a bell. A
\nbaseball team, ain’a?<\/p>\n
F: Not a very good one, according to the record. They’re
\n38-56, six games worse than last year and a whopping 19 1\/2 games out of first
\nplace in the NL Central. <\/p>\n
A: To say nothing of 14 1\/2 back in the wild-card race.
\nAnd 4 1\/2 games behind the Cubs\u2014the Cubs!\u2014for fourth place in the division.<\/p>\n
F: They’re just 2 1\/2 games ahead of Miami, which brings
\nthe worst record in the NL to Miller Park this weekend.<\/p>\n
A: Meanwhile, I can understand why Ryan Braun went on
\n\u201cbereavement leave.\u201d Major League Baseball is in the process of administering
\nthe last rites to his Hall of Fame aspirations.<\/p>\n
F: That may be a bit extreme, but it looks like something
\nwill be coming down on Braun, Alex Rodriguez and others, maybe by the end of
\nthis week.<\/p>\n
A: By the way, I just got a tip from an anonymous source
\nthat MLB is planning to revise the appeal process for the players it suspends
\nfor dealing with that Biogenesis lowlife in Florida. Each guy will have a
\n50-pound concrete block tied to his ankles and get tossed into the Hudson
\nRiver.<\/p>\n
F: Why 50 pounds?<\/p>\n
A: Each one represents one of the games a first-time
\noffender gets docked. If the guy floats, he’s innocent. If he sinks…<\/p>\n
F: The process accelerates right to a permanent ban.<\/p>\n
A: Call it streamlining.<\/p>\n
F: Back to the Brewers. Their record in games I’ve
\nattended this year is 7-14, so I guess I’m acting as \u201cthe Cooler\u201d again.<\/p>\n
A: No one has to act very well to become a cooler for
\nthat team. Someone else must be helping produce a 31-42 record when you’re not
\naround.<\/p>\n
F: Tom Gorzelanny’s first two July starts were typical
\nof how things have been going. Against the Mets at home and then in Arizona, he
\ngoes six solid innings, gives up only two unearned runs thanks to errors
\nand loses 2-1. The only difference was that against the D-Backs one of the
\nerrors was his own.<\/p>\n
A: He may be thinking his biggest error was signing
\nhere. But at least he’s making himself more attractive as the trading deadline
\napproaches and so many teams look for pitching help. But the Brewers have a
\nbunch of guys who seem to be doing their best to sabotage their chances
\nof going to a contender!<\/p>\n
F: Jim Henderson and John Axford in the Arizona series,
\nMichael Gonzalez, Burke Badenhop… Their value is dropping.<\/p>\n
A: And Yovani Gallardo must just love Milwaukee.
\nI saw one rumor that Doug Melvin is talking with Texas\u2014imagine that!\u2014about
\nGallardo and Norichika Aoki, because Texas is supposed to have a real solid,
\neven superior farm system. Gallardo should be trying to get there; I
\nthink he has his off-season home in Fort Worth. But he keeps having starts that
\nrange all the way from mediocre to terrible.<\/p>\n
F: Still, it could be a very busy next couple of weeks
\nfor Mr. Melvin.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
OH, THAT WHACKY NIGHT<\/p>\n
F: Last time we noted a couple of interesting sports
\nanniversaries, but another passed by on July 9 without the fanfare it deserved.
\nAnd it marked a major event in Brewers history.<\/p>\n
A: What, the only time Jeff Suppan got past the fourth
\ninning?<\/p>\n
F: Nice guess, but no. This one involved the immortal
\nRandall Simon.<\/p>\n
A:\u00a0I know that name!<\/p>\n
F: Yes, it’s been 10 years since Simon immortalized
\nhimself and the Brewers’ sausage race with a little flick of his bat.<\/p>\n
A: The ol’ Wiener Whacker himself.<\/p>\n
F: Simon, a Pirates first baseman, was at the dugout
\nrail when the four sausages\u2014remember, this was the pre-Chorizo era\u2014ran by that
\nWednesday night. He hit the top of the Italian costume, causing the runner to
\ngo off-balance and fall, and the Hot Dog tripped over the Italian.<\/p>\n
A: But both of them toughed it out and finished the
\nrace, ain’a?<\/p>\n
F: Yup. The Polish helped the Italian get up and the
\nBratwurst won the race. As it happened, the two fallen racers were young women
\nwho were members of the \u201cSuper Team\u201d entertainment squad\u2014Mandy Block, 19, was
\nthe Italian and Veronica Piech, 21, was the Hot Dog.<\/p>\n
A: And their injuries?<\/p>\n
F: Skinned and bruised knees, nothing serious. But that
\ndidn’t save Simon from punishment.<\/p>\n
A: As I recall, the Brewers wanted him tarred and
\nfeathered.<\/p>\n
F: Rick Schlesinger, then the vice president of business
\noperations and now the team’s chief operating officer, called Simon’s action
\n\u201can insane act\u201d and \u201cone of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen inside a
\nballpark or outside a ballpark.\u201d Now, it’s true the injuries could have been
\nworse, but it’s also true that Simon never actually hit Block.<\/p>\n
A: He obviously wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack,
\nbut not exactly Aaron Hernandez either.<\/p>\n
F: Just a goofy guy from Curacao. But he was taken
\ndowntown on a misdemeanor battery charge, later reduced to disorderly conduct,
\nand fined $432.<\/p>\n
A: Did they fingerprint the bat to be absolutely sure?<\/p>\n
F: Two days later Major League Baseball added a
\nthree-game suspension and a $2,000 fine.\u00a0Simon apologized to Block and she
\ntook the whole thing in good nature, saying it was \u201cfunny to me.\u201d All she asked
\nfor was an autographed bat from Simon, which she got on July 11. But the Curacao
\nTourist Board offered her a vacation on the Caribbean island, and I found a Web
\nphoto showing her getting nuzzled by a dolphin during that visit the next
\nwinter.<\/p>\n
A: And she got her 15 minutes of fame out of the way
\nearly.<\/p>\n
F: Yeah, for a couple of days she was a national
\nmini-celebrity. Which seemed to make the Brewers a little annoyed\u2014possibly
\nbecause Schlesinger’s initial comments turned out to be a little, um,
\nexcessive. I was covering the July 11 game, against Cincinnati, and the Brewers
\nrefused to make Block available to the media for interviews, or allow photos of
\nher receiving the bat.<\/p>\n
A: As Barney Fife would say, \u201cNip it! Nip it in the
\nbud!\u201d<\/p>\n
F: Block and Piech were back in the race that Friday
\nnight\u2014but holding the tape at the finish line. Block was invited to a mall
\nevent where she would have signed \u201cDon’t Whack Our Wiener\u201d T-shirts, but a
\nBrewers spokesman told me, \u201cWe told her that as a Brewers employee we’d prefer
\nthat she not do it, and she agreed to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
A: Hey, why not let the kid make a buck or two?<\/p>\n
F: Simon wound up getting traded to the Cubs in August,
\nand in September he returned to Miller Park. I had the game that night too, and
\nSimon told me he and Block had talked by phone a week after the incident. \u201cShe
\nsaid she knew I didn’t try to hurt her and I said I appreciated the way she
\nhandled it,\u201d he said. Oh, and Simon also bought Italian sausages for an entire
\nsection near first base.<\/p>\n
A: The Brewers should have enjoyed the whole thing more.
\nGod knows it was the highlight of that ’03 season!<\/p>\n
F: Well, the team didn’t lose 106 games as it had the
\nyear before.<\/p>\n
A: Not for lack of trying! Let’s go to
\nbaseball-reference.com… The ’03 team went 68-94 with an ERA of 5.02 and 219
\nhomers allowed. How about some of these stats: Glendon Rusch, 1-12 and a 6.42…<\/p>\n
F: Ooh, it was that year. Rusch wound up getting
\nsent to the minors.<\/p>\n
A: Ben Sheets, 11-13 and 4.45 with 29 homers allowed.
\nMatt Kinney, 10-13 and 5.19 with 27 homers. Wayne Franklin, 10-13 and 5.50 with
\nthirty-six homers. The Brewers gave up 873 runs for the season while
\nscoring 714.<\/p>\n
F: Ouch. A run differential of minus-159. You’re right;
\nSimon was doing ’em a favor.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
YOU CALL THIS A GAME?<\/p>\n
F: Imagine my surprise when I turned to your column last
\nweek and saw the illustration of you not only playing soccer, but making
\na rather bold tackle with your cleats dangerously close to a player’s, um, man
\nzone.<\/p>\n
A: That’s how I play the game. Hey, you want to flop? I’ll
\ngive you something to flop about!<\/p>\n
F: It was just such a shock to see you involved in soccer,
\neven in a photo-shopped way.<\/p>\n
A: Well, I sure got interested in the sport when I saw
\nthat little item in the Journal Sentinel
\nlast week about the mayhem in Brazil.<\/p>\n
F: I saw that too. A referee in an amateur match ejected
\na player, the two got into a confrontation and the ref pulled a knife and
\nstabbed the player to death.<\/p>\n
A: And then a mob stoned the ref to death, chopped off
\nhis head and quartered his body. I thought, holy cow, maybe there’s more to
\nthis soccer stuff than I thought. Those English hooligans got nothing on
\nBrazilians!<\/p>\n
F: I figured that would catch your eye. Remember the
\nColombian player who was murdered after the 1994 World Cup because he
\naccidentally put the ball into his own net?<\/p>\n
A: But soccer’s so big in Brazil that I’m figuring the
\nkillers will get off on \u201cjust cause\u201d after about five minutes in court.<\/p>\n
F: As you well know, Brazil will host the World Cup next
\nyear. And another item in the JS reported that local restaurateur Mike Eitel
\nhas a plan for a five-acre site along the Park East Strip where fans can watch
\nthe matches and party. Are you up for it?<\/p>\n
A: I’m afraid that’s out of my geographic partying
\nradius. Since I’m a pedestrian, being in that area would increase my chances of
\nfalling into the river when the evening’s over. But I know Mike Eitel is a good
\nguy and a smart businessman. I’m sure the place would be successful. But
\ngetting back\u00a0to that Brazil situation, it makes me think of something that
\nwould be perfect for the NBA.<\/p>\n
F: I’m worried about where this might be going.<\/p>\n
A: If the league is really serious about curtailing all
\nthis flopping by players, it could allow the refs to pack a shiv, and if guys
\npulled really egregious flops they could just stab ’em.<\/p>\n
F: Fatally?<\/p>\n
A: Ref’s option. Or you could widen the policy to
\ninclude consistent whining about calls. After, say, the third complaint,
\nsomething more painful than a technical foul would be an option.<\/p>\n
F: Let me know how the NBA responds to this idea. <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Frank Clines covered
\nsports for The
\nMilwaukee Journal and the Journal Sentinel. Art Kumbalek keeps his
\n\u201ctats\u201d under cover.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bucks have done a lot to transform themselves in the last two weeks, but their effort to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3776],"tags":[676,208,3874,7,40482,40475,677,121,6,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-235993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-hawks","10":"tag-atlantahawks","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-bmo-harris-bradley-center","13":"tag-frank-clines","14":"tag-hawks","15":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115044471679275518","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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