Time: 6:40 Central
Weather: Muggy, chance of storms but They Have A Roof, 78°
Opponent’s hoppin’ SB site: Brew Crew Ball
TV: Twins TV. Radio: Only another 1164 miles from Sturgis on I-90, Gladden
Uh-oh, it’s lefty time. Shane Drohan, a trade pickup for the Brewers this February, made his MLB debut this season, and has been a full-time member of the starting rotation since June. He’s primarily a fastball/sinker/cutter guy topping at about 95 MPH; he will throw a slider and some offspeed stuff, although that isn’t fabulous. He gets a good amount of strikeouts and isn’t prone to the long ball, so that sounds bad for the Twins, but we’ll see.
I don’t have a ton for you this week. Uh, if you want
to, you can read this fawning SABR bio of Bud Selig by a longtime Brewers director of public relations. Which mentions Selig putting the team in a six-team NL Central for many years, but omits the reason why (the NL Central was weak at the time so that helped the Brewers). The post also lauds the glories of Miller Park, and does at least mention that three people died during construction.
Along those lines, as Neil deMause always tells us, stadiums don’t do crap for the local economy (and can actively hurt it). Sports economist J.C. Bradley has a new FAQ covering all the basic reasons why stadiums don’t do crap. Save it and bring up the points with your friends at parties! Like I do! This might be why I have no friends who would invite me to parties.
I found a strange/awful Brewers history post about this guy:
Dan Thomas was a first-round pick for the Brewers in 1972. Milwaukee author/historian Matthew J. Prigge has his story here.
Thomas struggled with the minors his first few years, and in one incident followed an umpire into the parking lot after the game and whomped on the guy. But Thomas did join the Brewers as a September call-up in 1976, and was expected to compete for a starting job the following season. He was sent to Venezuela for winter ball.
Something snapped in Thomas’s mind, and he ended up surviving an attempt to swallow too many pills; the team brought him back to Boston where he recovered in a hospital for three weeks (although at one point he wandered off and was picked up walking alongside a freeway). Thomas re-committed to the super-fundamentalist church his Mom had joined when he was a teenager; he hoped the church would help him stay clean from booze & drugs.
The only problem was, that church demanded strict observance of the Sabbath, which they defined as Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown. That’s missing two games a week. Unless you’re Shohei Ohtani or something, that’s not something a team can afford a roster spot on. And Thomas had shown some promise (an .820 OPS in his 54 games), but he was no Shohei Ohtani. The Brewers let him go, which Selig said he regretted: “It’s just a tragic story. I know a lot of people are mad at us because of what they think we’ve done to him… He’s really a nice kid who wants to do the right thing.”
The tragic part came later; because after making some stabs at independent ball, Tomas ended up broke, and died in jail at age 29, accused of a truly awful crime. Who knows what it was that snapped in his brain. People can be a mess sometimes.
Since that’s SUCH A FUN STORY, let’s transition to Wisconsin whacking.
I don’t mean bagging on Wisconsin, which did have a remarkably stupid governor for some years recently, but otherwise has a lot in common with Minnesota. When I moved here, I instantly recognized the kind of culture that my Wisconsin-reared Mom came from (and escaped as soon as she was old enough to join the Air Force).
No, when I mean Wisconsin whacking, I’m talking about Wisconsin’s greatest-ever band, or the Wisconsin band with the greatest debut album, the Violent Femmes. And one tune that every sports fan in America knows by heart, or at least knows the opening few seconds to: the debut album’s very first track, “Blister in the Sun.”
At any sports facility in America, if the P.A. system cues up the opening guitar riff, everybody knows you do the “clap-clap, clap-clap” in response. I see kids doing it. Which is funny, because that album is NOT appropriate for kids. I mean, the song’s about… well, Wisconsin whacking, isn’t it?
Actually, writer Gordon Gano said he never even thought of that until some fans mentioned it to him in the 90s. Which… I actually believe. I wouldn’t believe him if he said “Add It Up” was about math, but I believe his explanation here.
I hate most rock writing, but this short post about the song by “schill” on the wesbite HistoryOfMusic is really well done. Here’s a paragraph on what the song’s “about”:
‘“Part of its enduring appeal lies in its universality. It’s not just about being young—it feels young. It feels like the inside of your head when you’re sixteen and horny and anxious and trying to figure out if you’re cool or a complete freak. The song gives permission to be awkward, to be unsure, to not have the answers. It doesn’t romanticize youth—it captures its absurdity. “Blister in the Sun” is what you hear when you walk down a hot sidewalk in sneakers you hate, wearing a shirt that makes you sweat, headed to a party where you know no one wants to talk to you. But still you go. Still you walk. Still you strut your stuff. Because that’s all you’ve got.”’
Yeah — I mean, Gordon Gano wrote it in high school. So that makes perfect sense. Good post about a song, schill!
And OK, f**k Wisconsin, but only when the Twins are in Milwaukee.
