The Games; a foot!?!

What do semicolons do, really? (That being said, it seems a real missed opportunity in modern American prose {modern poets use semicolons constantly - I assume, I haven't read a "new" book of poetry since around 2004, but I'd guess it's rife with them - because it's a way of "splitscreening" a sentence and can be liberating for poets because you can avoid a bit further fully saying what you're saying with a half a contradictory sentence} what with all this postmodernity going around...

Anyway...

Sports!  or; more properly; Sport!

That's why I was coming here today - to celebrate the official start of the 2023 SeegerOlympics with our Event Selection "show" on February 1st.

So far, only two events are "live" and they're the two (new!) Musical events: 1) a Music League event with 5 Rounds to work themselves out over the next 10 months and 2) a Christmas Song-Writing Competition, where pairs of Seegers (Reese/Claire, Davin/Jen, Brooke/Andy, Joel/Tim) will compete by composing and recording a Christmas song to be judged by a panel (to include Shane {sorry/thanks Shane} and others to hopefully be determined soon!) of judges who've earned the respect of (at least most of) the competitors in Christmas Song Appreciation...

This year's Competition will include an Exhibition Event - "Clinton Scotland Yard" (CSY), where one team is Mr. X and goes and parks a car somewhere in Clinton and walk from there and has to text their location every so often to all the other players and stay "hidden" for a certain amount of time.  CSY is one of seven (7!: CSY, "Trivial Pursuit Glory", Basketball One-Shot Challenge, Farkle, 8-Person War, Croquet, & Casino Night!) total synchronous events being declared, where all 8 competitors have to be together to play, whereas there was only one last year, which was the final event to be played on the penultimate day of the year, so we will randomly determine the order of those events, and see how many we can get in.

Familiar (but slightly changed) events from last year include a Strategy Board Game Tournament, an Arcade Console Tournament, a FIFA Women's World Cup Pick-'Em and a Sorry! Tournament with the competition being rounded out by Throwing Cheeseballs and Catching Them in Your Mouth, Mini-Golf, Tennis TieBreakers & Competitive Wordle!

It promises to be quite a year, with up to 16 points available!

Forest are Magic! (or, So Long and thanks for all the Fish)

Source: fourFourTwo.com

Lower tier football fandom from across the pond has been a work in progress these last many years... I've been a fan of international soccer since 1990, when I was in Germany with my family during Italia '90 (the first World Cup Final that the United States had qualified for in my lifetime {and in fact the first time within the living memory of almost all Boomers!}).  The US fared poorly in that tournament, but West Germany ended up winning, and we were staying in West Berlin on the night that Germany qualified for the final.  There was an impromptu parade of joy and humanity that lasted all night, and I remember waking up in our hotel room, brushing my teeth on the balcony and looking down on the Ku'damm the next morning as the festivities continued, and some German fan who'd been partying all night raised his beer can to me.

The concept of club soccer first occurred to me, I think, on my visit to Nottingham, England nearly a decade later, when I had a stopover at the start of a spring break in Europe, and we watched a match out at the pubs. It's only now, 23 years later, that I'm realizing the match on TV had to be a Notts County affair (because Forest didn't have a match that mid-week that I was in town).  Watching a fan base come together over soccer felt different, because of the limited chances and scoring within a match, so I decided to become a fan of Nottingham Forest, and they were subsequently relegated from the Premier League a couple months later.  Following a Premier League team in 1999 and into the early 2000s was hard enough, but lower tiers - forget about it, so yahoo.sports.co.uk became a near constant tab on my computer for the next decade or so, repeatedly refreshing the browser during big matches to get score updates.

Meanwhile, I spent the remainder of that football season in Münster, Germany, which is Borussia Dortmund country, so I selected them as a Bundesliga club that I would follow, although I was never as invested in their success. But I did enjoy their success, and when their bad-ass manager, Jürgen Klopp, moved into the Premier League in 2015, I decided I should be a Liverpool fan for the Premier League - because clearly, Forest were still a long long away from top flight competition, and as much as I was enjoying following Forest's progress (now on Twitter instead of Yahoo), Liverpool had matches I could actually watch on a regular basis.  

Just a couple years later (at the start of the 2017-2018 season), ESPN+ started to show matches from the lower English leagues, so for the first time, once every 4 or 5 weeks, I got to watch a Nottingham Forest match.  It was also the first season under the new ownership of Greek oligarch Evangelos Marinakas (he bought it from Kuwati oligarch Fawaz Al-Hasawi in May 2017), and in just over five short (long, long, long) years - we are back in the Premier League!

And so it is, that I have to say goodbye to a "favorite" team.  While my selection of Liverpool was fairly arbitrary - a coaching hire - I've come to appreciate their fan base (not least here in Milwaukee!), and to cheer alongside them.  Thus, my (sub)title - which I now understand to be a malapropism - Scousers (people from Liverpool, but also more specifically Liverpool FC fans) are named after a local stew called scouse (or originally lobscouse), which I mistakenly thought had fish in it, but instead is a beef (or lamb) stew that is traditionally eaten while out to sea!

So, while I have been a lousy under-performing fan of Liverpool and Dortmund (and don't even get me started on Minnesota United FC!), I've been here for some years now of Nottingham Forest, and watching nearly every match these last several years on iFollow and ForestTV (with full, elaborate, BBC Nottingham radio commentary from Colin Fray).  The Garibaldi Red Podcast has also been a huge friend since it started in early 2020 - just before the world went bonkers, and I hope you will follow along with me at Three Lions Pub in Shorewood, or wherever we land to watch matches: MKE_nffc on twitter...

0 - 4 (well there goes that...)

 It's halftime at Old Trafford (well, I'm at the Colonel, but Liverpool are at Old Trafford), and the visitors are up by 4 first half goals.  Nottingham Forest on the other hand have lost earlier this morning 0 - 4 home at The City Ground.  It's Forest's first loss under Steve Cooper who came on as the new gaffer after a historically horrendous start to their season, which found them dead last in the league, and in the relegation zone.

It's a proper football Sunday with the Packers playing at noon, and the Bears facing a tough match-up in Tampa Bay later on this afternoon.  (And, it the span of starting this post, Liverpool have scored again to give Mo Salah a well-deserved hat trick and disturb the synchronicity of the concept of the 0 - 4 post...

Regardless, I wanted to take the brief 0 - 4 moment to reflect on where things stand from my own sports fandom after a Bucks championship, and a disappointing end to a 4th consecutive playoff season for the Brewers.

Despite the loss today, this is the first run of play from Forest since I have been following them when I've felt unapologetically optimistic about the team.  Coming off the the high of 2 extra-time goals by Lyle Taylor to win at Bristol City midweek, we knew that we would eventually have to lose a game:

So too the Bears, who have inspired little but misery, despair and disappointment over the past 35 years, are generating some optimism this season having won the games the were supposed to have won while losing to 3 superior opponents.  They stand at .500 and might just have an upset within them today against an inflated Buccaneers team.  While this season is clearly not their year to win a championship, I've got an open bet for them to make the playoffs that I feel pretty okay about.

In fact, in my first year of online sports betting*, I have a few remaining open bets that will take me well into the black for my overall history.  It's a strange sports moment for me, finding myself feeling fairly positive about the overall direction and prospects of all of my teams.

*Unfortunately, my ability to place bets is limited by the finickiness of United States geography and civics, whereby, I am permitted to make bets online when I find myself within the boundaries of the state of Illinois, but not Wisconsin, so the only time I make sports bets has been when I find myself taking one or other of my parents to various medical appointments either at Northpointe wellness facility in Rockton or dropping them in Beloit, and then quick like crossing state lines while waiting for them to finish.

Hakuna Regatta

 As a middle-age, white bumpkin, I have encountered a few (less than five) regattas in my day.  Today, we bumbled in to what has to be the most unusual one I'll likely encounter - the Pumpkin Regatta.

What looked to be 4 competitors first carved out and decorated over the course of (i think) about 90 minutes (we didn't directly witness this part, just saw it from across the creek).  Then, at 2:00pm they were off, and paddling like hell (I'm unsure as to whether a regatta is technically supposed to be a sail-based boat race, but these pumpkins were paddled).  The second-place racer had (seemingly almost immediately) fallen out of his pumpkin and was dragging it along behind him as it filled up with more and more water,  

The racer in last place throughout the entirety of the heat tried to sink the first-place racer's pumpkin by paddling water in their general direction while approaching the turnaround (an old tire secured in place a little ways upstream from the waterfall {or whatever a stream-wide, man-made drop of 5 feet or so is called when created for urban [or ex-urban] planning purposes}).

Like many Midwestern Gen-X boys, my first regatta I'd ever was the Raingutter Regatta (which my child's ears always heard as the "ranguddaregada" - exactly none parts of the words made any sense to me whatsoever). Even when I competed in this event for the proto-fascist organization I had been encouraged to join by my friends' parents (my parents never discouraged me from it, but certainly weren't going to actively support me in my taking part), it didn't occur to me that the mini-sailboats we had constructed* were racing down rain gutters.  I just saw them as a flattened version of the racetracks we used for the Pinewood Derby** filled with water...

I'm not sure exactly of the other regattas (I feel like one was a Red Bull sponsored event... I know I went to a Red Bull FlugTag at Miami Beach when I was living there, but I think there was a boating event put on by them maybe in Minneapolis? {this was before they started sponsoring all those soccer teams, and needed to keep themselves in the public consciousness through other means}), but I know there've been a few.

A gathering of angels
Appeared above my head
They sang to me this song of hope
And this is what they said
They said, come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me (lads)
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me (baby)
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me

Imagine if you encountered a gathering of fracking angels, and that was all they said... really disappointing. 

*assembled
**Now Pinewood Derby cars - that is some true function v. form designs there, I tell ya'.  In my day, I constructed 2 of them, the first was all about form.  My buddy Choett helped me paint it (that is, probably, he did it all, because he was a damn good artist, and I routinely got made fun of in Art Class by Mr. Wescott in front of the whole class).  It was all pink with black racing stripes, and had its name "Pink Panther" painted on the front.  I think I added the number, which was wonky.  My second was all function, with the help of Corbin and some random guy he knew who had a drill press in his garage.  We drilled right down the middle, and curved the front so there was a hole straight through from front to back, and awesomely aerodynamic.  Then that guy melted the ball bearings I was supposed to add for weighting the car, and put it in the middle hole, all flat.  It was perfect (except, when I got to race day their scale measured it differently than ours at home had, and the race organizers had to reach into my car with pliers, and pull out some of the metal that had melted in their, thus messing up the weight distribution we had designed, and plugging up the hole at the front and ruining the aerodynamic design.  It's totally fine, though, I'm not bitter or anything...)

first!

I've been a fan of the Chicago Bears football club since nearly as long as I can remember.  But not quite.  I remember very early in my life thinking that Franco Harris was the awesomest football player ever.  I also remember declaring at some point early on that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were my team (I think because of the sweet creamsicle color featured on the magnetic helmet that generally sat in last place on the standings board on my wall.  I was actually wooed some years later by the same phenomenon when I briefly decided that the Florida Marlins would be my baseball team as I hadn't been much of a Brewers fan since the early 80s Ben Oglivie days).

I've come by most of my fandoms earnestly: the Bears were selected when I was very young because we got to go and see their training camp in the summers in Plattville, WI where my mom was completing graduate coursework between school years.  Their winning a Super Bowl in my formative years helped, but that bandwagon jumping has been paid off dearly for suffering through decades of painful disappointment and false hope.

Being a fan of the Chicago Bears is (what I long thought was) a uniquely painful experience.  It's not the perpetual basement dweller syndrome of someone like 20+ years of Brewer's baseball (until the playoff drought ended in 2008 in our first season as 10-pack ticketholders and actually once more becoming a Brewer's fan).  Rather, the pain of the Bears is that they consistently show promise and hope - brief spurts of success, only to come crashing back down and making you feel dumb for even getting engaged in it all again.  As I said, i thought this fan experience was unique to the Bears, until I found it again taking up a fan interest in my now favorite sports franchise: Nottingham Forest Football Club.  

A few years ago, I made a very conscious decision to 'get into' club football.  I've watched a lot of international soccer over the years (World Cup, Euro tournaments, US National Team qualifiers and tournaments), but beyond vaguely "choosing" the Chicago Fire as the closest MLS team who I've gone to see a couple of times at Soldier Field and Borussia Dortmund as the "local team" I chose when studying in Germany, I had no loyalties.                  

*   *   *

26 July 2020 - 11:07am CDT

As loyal readers and frequent checkers of this site will know (I see you when you all drop by!), I frequently 'post-date' the most recent post.  Whereby, I start to write a post, and set the date and time of publishing the post at the moment I started writing it, even if (as often happens) I don't finish the post until days (or sometimes even weeks) later.  My thinking with that is that I want to preserve the moment of the original idea, and generally when I finish the draft the post is still the newest on the site (because I don't write here that often).  On many occasions, I don't ever finish the post, and may years later publish and add a dated post script like this one.

The reason I needed to add one to this post is because, like the posts where several years have passed before I get to publishing them I have fundamentally changed between their writings and I no longer inhabit the same world I did when I started writing this post.  I started this post planning to write about fandom, elective, absorbed and inherited.  For the last couple years, my favorite team in all of sports has been Nottingham Forest F.C. 

The post was going to be about how I had selected a team who managed to supplant the lowly Bears as purveyors of heartbreak.  Best described, I think, by Nottingham native, Phil Juggins, who I met a couple of times back when NFFC were last in the Premier League when I visited Nottingham on my spring break from Uni Muenster.  As I dug in to the history of Forest, I found them to be a team that tended to break fans down with flashes of promise and success followed by epic failure.

And then it was Wednesday, and omfg, I've never felt so broken from a sports result.  The Double Doink was nothing compared to Wednesday.  Wednesday will be a historical moment... but it will pass, and will become a part of the groundwater of being a Forest supporter.  I'm sure I am not the only fan of NFFC and the Chicago Bears, but we few are loyal union members of the factories of sadness that are City Ground & Halas Hall.

But maybe next season will be our year...

EPIC (bad) Game Day

Few things in day to day life are worthy of being described as "epic".

Hangovers - to be sure.  A few times I've gone to a good man's home in Waukesha for Epic Game Day (and sometimes have played board games that fit the epic description).  There's a company that calls itself "Epic", but I don't think that it really is all that epic...

Today was an epic sports day for me, and it went so so badly...  Almost all of my selected sports teams were playing today - and they all failed to win.

My night ended with the end of this season's road for Minnesota FC, who a short time ago lost their first ever playoff game.  The Loons are in only their 3rd year of existence as an MLS team.  I started following them closely during the summer of 2018, when I started following a number of European Clubs closely - checking fixtures and watching games when they are available for tv consumption.

A few hours earlier, my Chicago Bears played a craptastic game and lost badly to fall to 3-3 for the season.  In a classic Bear's move, the team suddenly came to life and scored 2 TDs in the final 2 and a half minutes (and even appeared to grab a second onside kick) even though the game was fully out of reach at that point...

I've written of my Bears fandom, but never I think, specifically, about how completely they are the absolute worst fucking team to be a fan of ever with the way they give and take and seem like they're something and then pull a rug out from under and then totally suck, but show signs.  The Double Doink was pretty much the moment my entire Bear fandom had been leading up to for most of my life... and now this.

Prior to the Bears barf-fest, my Liverpudlians failed to win.  They did tie, but meh - now that we win so often, it's a bit of a let-down (though we were somewhat lucky to equalize...).  And, although it was available on ESPN+, I missed the earlier Nottingham Forest match - which we lost to fall out of the top spot on the table.

Looking for the Joel Chicago / Wisco Sweep!

It's a mini-Lake Michigan Circle Tour sports eclipse with the Green Bay Packers playing tonight at Soldier Field in Chicago against the Bears, and the baby bears of Wrigley Field playing in Milwaukee against the Brewers.

I am likely fairly unusual in my rooting interest for this event, hoping the Brewers sweep the Cubs this weekend (to move into a tie {at least with them} for the Wild Card race) and the Bears dominate the Packers in an embarrassing entree for their new head coach, Not Mark McMurtry.

* 6:56pm *

Brewers are holding a 2-1 lead so far in the 3rd and i'll comment later as we go.  I predict the Brewers go 3-1 and the Bears win 27 - 10.

* 7:21pm *

Virginia McCaskey intros the 100th season - the Cubs have tied it up (grrrr), but i still think the Brewers will win 3 out of 4 (to clarify) and will hold the Bears to their score (though i want to up the win margin because of Aaron Rodgers' douchebag moustache - is #douchebagMoustache trending yet?)

* 7:35pm *

Arcia is at second with 1 out!  Packers have gone nowhere in these first 5 plays...

* 7:47pm *

Jackson walks a lead off man after Eddy Pineiro hits his first ever field goal!

Now there's a second on base and Jackson makes a BIG PITCH to get Khris Bryant...  And a first pitch gift against Rizzo...

* 8:38pm *

both enemy teams are on the threat...

hard to remember the last time...

It's NFL early Christmas today, with the floundering Green Bay Packers coming to Soldier Field to take on the FIRST-PLACE Chicago Bears.

Source: sportsmockery.com

It's a marquee, albeit noon, game - it's a rematch of Week 1, where the Bears owned the first half and then collapsed under an epic Aaron Rodgers comeback.  During the final few minutes of that game, shane and i were texting that the Bears were only going to get better, and this week nearer the end of the season would be a damn tough game for the Packers.  Now, Shane is a full-throated Packer fan who was in part being kind to a friend during an embarrassing defeat, but i think he had a glimmer of what might be in front of him as a Packer fan.

3+ months later and the landscape has changed quite a lot.  The Bears enter 6-point favorites, and even with that, the strangest thing about this game is that Bears fans, myself included, feel fairly confident that we are the much better team playing this game today.  It doesn't mean we can't lose, but it does mean we will probably win, and should all things being equal win convincingly.

The question then arises, how best to watch such an epic match-up.  There are a plethora of mostly Packer-slanted events across Milwaukee.  You could go to:

• The Cactus Club and see the cover band Green Day Packers
• You can happily watch the game at every bar in Milwaukee, to be sure, but here are some of the best spots...
• The exception might be the local best soccer bar, which on Sundays becomes the High-Bear-y Pub

But no, for me, and a game this big, i need to be in my home, on my couch - i may text the outside world on occasion, but the emotion of this game day is my own and my highs or lows that may be to come over the next few hours need to be my own.  I don't want to gloat (or be gloated upon).  Although i appreciate the collective fandom experience, and think it's an important part of modern life that we mostly miss out on and it makes us all the worse (so says one of my favorite books!).

Enjoy the game everyone... for once, i feel pretty good about it and i'll see you all in late January for discussion of any snark and commentary!

F(r)ight Night!

I'm clearly not the first person to have this thought, but as I sit and watch the early minutes of bad that is the Bears Colts game (I always think of a Bears Colts game as a Super Bowl rematch!) at beautiful Lucas Oil Stadium, I am awaiting a day of competitive, combat sport competition - first this epoch battle to see which defense is absurd and which is merely amateurish. 


www.thundertreats.com

This will be followed by the second presidential debate, featuring Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, which, worst case scenario, may well end in an actual brawl (not quite joking).  I think best case, it will be wildly offensive, spite-filled, and misogynistic. 

I don't usually do timely here, but the reason these two items conjoin in my mind, is because I often think about what these massive stadiums will look like after our civilization is faded. 

This presidential cycle has looked a lot like the beginning of the end - either a continuation of tap-the-brakes policies, occasionally modestly holding off ecological and economic catastrophe; or a fool and compulsive liar who will do goddess knows what if he is elected. 

I've seen this all before - but mainly on TV or in game play.  See you at the stadium (or maybe the thunderdome?)



Fantasy Life

My Fantasy Football League draft is underway (after coming in 2nd last year in both my Yahoo Baseball and Football leagues, I feel poised to make a big splash this year).  With the 2nd to last position in a snake draft, I was able to nab Aaron Rodgers, then 2 picks later, Brandon Marshall.

I'm also hovering around 2nd place in my Baseball league. 


*   *   * 

December 2017
I don't recall, and won't bother to look up, how I actually finished up these seasons, but I know that I didn't win either league, because I don't think that i ever have (at least in the last many years). 

I do recall that this post was going to be a reflection on gaming - fantasy sports and fantasy rpgs.  I think there may have also been some attention paid to my childhood and my present moment, as i have begun to re-engage in both fantasy lives.  (Although, i think 2013/14 was my peak moment for fantasy sports, I have since returned to a perpetual basement dweller in both leagues*.  My 2013 baseball was half a point away from victory, and on the eve of the last day of play, i neglected to pick up a few extra starting pitchers, which had been my practice the last few weeks, and didn't move up in any of the pitcher categories).

* Shane still hasn't convinced me to join fantasy basketball.   

The Enlightening Discourse of Boers & Berstein

Ah Facebook...

You so often serve as a useless window, staring at the brick wall of human inanity, but sometimes - just sometimes - you illuminate the world around us - just a little bit.

As I've been perusing "the news" on Facebook over the last few days, reading first the meatball lead-up to a typically heart-wrenching end to a Chicago Bears season followed by alternately whiny Bears fan tearing their young, injured quarterback apart for appearing on film looking disappointed about not finishing the biggest game of his life and gloating Packer's fans, I've noticed a disturbing trend.

The tone and substance of the posts and comments that the end of the football season is being discussed are frighteningly similar to the parallel comments on the outcome and lead up to the 2010 elections. The gloating, the often vicious (or at least thoughtless) commentary, the bombastic tone - and ultimately the pathetically uncritical scope of most of the writing on facebook about sports events, elections... anything really demonstrates one of the real shortcomings of the medium.

Not so, though, the medium of the radio. Much like television, radio has enormous potential for imparting information in useful ways. Marshall McLuhan called radio the...


*  *  *

July 2018
..."tribal drum".  What strikes me as most amazing about not just this observation of McLuhan's, but most of his work, is how prescient his writing is today


* * *

October 2018
... and even today.  Or moreso today! 

The Tribal Drum seems like exactly the theme I was planning to return to not so long ago.  Boers & Bernstein has been the sound of Chicago Sports Talk Radio (and importantly, The Score has always been that same voice) of the aughts and most of the 2010s.  This post, despite its academic and leftist turn, was first and foremost a celebration of the best Sports Talk Show that I've ever know. 

Noam Chomksy (via Michael Moore) was the first person to point out to me that the discourse found on a typical sports talk radio show was more elevated than the discussions found on any NPR or news radio or (general right wing) talk radio in the United States. 

I don't mean to pretend that there is not a meatball contingent in sports talk - just that there is an equal or larger meatball contingent in any news broadcast (I'm looking at all y'all FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, ABCNBCBS, blech).

Chomsky & Moore point out that the American populace is not, as often seems the case, uninformed unintelligent unsophisticated.  If you listen to callers on sports talk radio (not all of them, but the good ones) the extent to which they are informed and intelligent, and their arguments sophisticated.  B&B ensured this - they elevated conversations and called out bullshit when it wafted in.

Our political dialogue today seems like our sports fandom.  Even more so in 2018 as it was in 2011, but it's been a trend line since the 1990s.  The primary difference between the two reveals itself on sports talk radio - the ability to be self critical and diagnose the problems within your own team. 

Of course the part that's easy to forget is that we're all on the same team...

Does this make me a 'commish'?

Tonight, as i was watching Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire in an effort to prepare my wife & me for seeing 'the new one', i was switching back and forth between the movie & the Brewers game (Mike Cameron is my hero... today)... After we got through with the movie, i looked about the baseball world & found that i could actually EXPERIENCE the baseball world...

Just now, i'm watching Delmon Young battle Dallas Braden (?) with Joe Crede at 2nd. I actually get to watch the Twins set up a come back against the A's (which they had something of the exact opposite of yesterday)...precisely the opposite, actually...

I'm not exactly sure what I want to suggest here, but today, i found, i am allowed to watch just about any Major League Baseball game i want to...

Other than the fact that Shane will likely be at my house from now on to the end of the summer, i'm confused as to how the DirectTV world works. I've certainly never subscribed to MLB's network, but by randomly switching networks in order to not have to pay extra for Brewer's games, i've somehow come into extensive coverage of all sorts of baseball (as well as complete - 6-matches-at-a-6-time Wimbledon coverage)...

I guess what i'm suggesting is that i have suddenly become a much bigger baseball fan than i would have been and i'm not sure i'm ok with that. My only fear is that i won't see how much worse the Brewers are than i've thought them to be... As far as i understand, the Brewers are the best team in the NL Central by far... but they're just 'underachieving'...

It's an odd place to be in... I'm wondering (idly, obviously, or i'd look into it) if this is a mid-summer situation so that i might get suckered into buying this package or if it's just mine... for nothing (in which case i will plan to become a crazy-ass baseball guy)...

Getting to watch the bottom of the 7th of the A's - Twins matchup is really something... to me, at least... What it means is that i can really try to understand more of how baseball really works... I can watch another team i would like to support try to battle their way back into a pennant run and it's really, quite, exciting... don't you think so, shane?

the Jay Cutler Era

This evening marks the dawning of a new era for the Chicago Bears. Today, the Bears made what may be their most audacious move in team history, trading their first round picks this year & next year, plus a third round pick (this year) & Kyle Orton (all round nice guy, but not a great dog name) for Jay Cutler & a fifth round pick.
Jay Cutler's addition to the Bears will mean that fans in Chicago (not to mention Bears management) will finally have to take a sharp, critical look at the rest of the team they're fielding.

For years now (how many years since Sid Luckman {hell, i'd take a Jim McMahon} was in town?) Bears fans have been able to look at the quarterback position as the source of all of our woes. While i was a long-standing supporter of Rex Grossman (going so far as to even name my dog after him), i always had the sense that he wasn't a real answer to our problems, but the Bears management had put so much into him, wagered on him, that i wanted to believe.

Now they've got a bona-fide, honest-to-goodness quarterback in Jay Cutler. Tomorrow, the Bears will have to start to realize that they haven't had a viable Wide Receiver since, what, Willie Gault? Their line seems a bit shored up this season, assuming Chris Williams pans out, but it's still cobbled-together & kinda old. On a bright note, they do have pretty good Tight Ends. Hooray, we've got good tight ends (note, several, not just one, so whenever we're in a 2 TE set, look out world).

Their defense, the erstwhile strength of the team, is all but gone. Tommie Harris may never be Tommie Harris again. The rest of the D-Line is on something of a precipice, they could work out, but didn't get it done last year. Linebackers, well, Brian Urlacher... John Madden loves him. He's good, isn't he? And Lance Briggs (is he still with us? did he successfully escape? {NOTE: this blog is quite possibly the worst informed blog on the planet, i literally know nothing of which i speak}). Once you get back to the D-backfield, we're fairly lost. A lot of players who've proven they are players, but not recently.

Finally, Devin. Oh Devin. I can only assume you were a real thing. That you, indeed, are...ridiculous. There were all sorts of reasons that we gave for you not returning half a dozen kicks for TDs, but i've still got faith (Bears fans need a good deal of this).

Ultimately, i think if Devin (or some combination of Devin & Manning) can pose the scary-ass danger they did up until this season, and the Bears can start most drives between the 40s & Jay Cutler doesn't arrive in Chicago and realize just how low the bar is set here, and the defense behaves as a Bears defense is meant to behave and if the coaching staff doesn't coward their way toward a long sequence of losses... we might actually be okay this year. I am feeling fairly optimistic, but, then again, i've had this same feeling each of the last 20 or so seasons, so don't trust me on this...

The Milwaukee Admirals

or, the least indie indie site in the room.

Last Saturday (October 25) i attended a Milwaukee Admirals hockey game in response to an assignment for my Indie Culture Seminar which asked me to write about a ‘site of indie culture’. I selected an Admiral’s game primarily because it was the least ‘indie’ indie site I could come up with. That is, the Admirals (and independent sports teams or leagues in general) perform many of the same tasks & fulfill the same roles as we might assign to indie culture: resisting (or at least defining itself against) 'mainstream' culture, providing a more 'authentic' experience than the overly commercialized mainstream product, and locating itself (often geographically or spatially, but not always) somewhere outside the 'mainstream'. I want, in some sense, to frustrate this working definition of indie culture by looking at an area of culture that we likely can mostly agree is decidedly not ‘indie’. I see independent sports leagues in as in some way defining themselves against the mainstream (major league sports) by paying players substantially lower salaries and often arguing (at least implicitly) for a more ‘authentic’ competition because of the lower, more equitable payrolls. The Admirals also operate with little to no media coverage (they get minimal coverage on local sports talk radio and newspaper coverage, but nationally get absolutely no attention). On the other hand, hockey games (and sports events in general) seem to be exactly contrary to what we might define as ‘indie’ in that the way they are marketed (corporate sponsorships abound both on the website and at the game), the commodification of all aspects of the game (souvenir shops at the Bradley Center are almost entirely filled with Admirals goods), and even the sport itself (which we might call a ‘mainstream’ sport as opposed to more ‘indie’ sports like Roller Derby or Frisbee golf).

* * *

Walking toward the ticket booth of the Bradley Center it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly that this ‘site’ and the people walking into the site are anything but ‘indie’. Groups of 30-40something adults and families seem most prevalent. At the ticket booth, 20 minutes before game time the best cheapest tickets available were 3 rows off the ice. Walking around the stadium on our way to our section, a group of high school kids played “Brown Eyed Girl” on a stage set up on the lower level. We bought a couple beers (Pilsner Urquells, a beer of ‘distinction’), some popcorn, and found are seats as the zambonis were finishing up their circuits. (At Admirals games you can, evidently, buy a ride on the zamboni before the game and between periods. On one zamboni a young boy of maybe 7 or 8 was having the time of his life, while on the other one, a middle-aged man in a Packers sweatshirt waved awkwardly and I wondered who he was and why he might have decided to ride the zamboni, which seemed like such a kid-centered novelty).

The game got under way and I was immediately struck by the way fans seemed to be watching the game. Not being an expert on hockey (or really even much of a hockey fan) I can’t say for sure, but compared to the way I’ve seen professional sports fans watch games in the past, these fans seemed to attend to the game much more constantly than I had expected. I’ve been to one NHL game and a UND hockey game before, but both times my seats were much farther away from the ice, so the attention being paid to the game might have had something to do with the proximity (and given the low attendance and closed off upper deck everyone was close to the ice, relatively speaking). The crowd was generally quiet and when they yelled anything, it was generally specific instructions or critiques (“put a body on them!” “Play it in”) rather than the more general yells I am accustomed to (“C’mon!”s or “Boo”s). While on the subject of specific quotes, I noted that throughout the game, whenever a player would come out of the penalty box the announcer would say “And the teams are at equal strength” to which the crowd would reply “That’s Debatable!” This surprised me the first time it happened, but was a comforting ritual that instantly made you feel like a part of the crowd. The game itself was fairly exciting, a number of lead changes and ultimately the Admirals lost. A full account can be found on the Admiral’s website if you’re interested.

The Admirals play in the AHL (American Hockey League), which currently serves as a feeder system for NHL teams, with teams generally having exclusive or joint contracts with NHL teams, but operating as an independent league. I was surprised by the number of people wearing Admirals gear as well as how many people had come up from Chicago and were wearing Chicago Wolves jerseys (particularly because Chicago has the NHL Blackhawks in their home market). In fact this segment of the crowd might be the most useful when talking about indie vs. mainstream sports. Why, when AHL hockey is an inferior sport at least from the perspective of the individual athlete’s ability, would someone choose to be a Wolves fan? Is there some extra cultural capital from enjoying this ‘more authentic’ experience, a less commercialized, less ‘sell out’ game? Or, perhaps they see their viewership ironically, some sort of ‘lo-fi’ hockey. Or, it might just be that there seems to be a lot more fighting and checking into the wall at this level. My clearest memory from the game is of the aftermath of an Admirals forward getting smashed into the glass just in front of us. The crowd around me was laughing and cheering and saying things like “Dude, did you see his face just before his face hit.”

FICFs

Last Wednesday afternoon i attended my first ever Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Having recently developed a keen hatred for the Cubs & Cubs fans (where before there was a deep, abulic indifference), i thought the event might be uncomfortable, awkward, or even dangerous (though, less so once i decided not to wear my shiny new Prince Fielder t-shirt).

They were playing the Houston Astros, in a rubber game on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. We got to the stadium just before first pitch & grabbed snacks & beers on the way to our seats. I'd heard the food at Wrigley was simply abysmal and the "brat" i was served definitely backed that up. On the upside, they had Old Style available at about half of the concession stands.

We got to our seats, which were the cheapest we'd found on stubHub & were impressed to find we were very close to the field along the left field line (near the foul pole). Alfonso Soriano (literally "big jerk") was close by when the Cubs were in the field and he joked back & forth with the Bleacher Bums (at one point after Fonzo had misplayed a fly ball, they pointed to Right Fielder Fukudome's snazzy catch as an example of something he might try).

Our seat-neighbors were cordial for the most part, decidedly un-Chicagoan. Then the 3rd inning started. The Astros took a 4-1 lead, scoring the last 3 on a home run by Carlos Lee (el Caballo, literally "Carlos Lee"). Actually you can find the entire game, obsessively blogged by some guy listening to the radio broadcast. Down 4-1 the fans starting turning. They became the cynical, slightly jerky (but still harmless) Cub fans i've come to know...

At that point, Nathan & i decided to get out of the sun, stretch our legs, and see the stadium sites. We wandered back around the stadium and walked through some better infield sections. It's amazing how close to the action you feel at any of the lower deck sections at Wrigley. It's also astounding to think how long people have been walking these same sections - Wrigley is a really old (at least relatively) feeling place to see a sporting event (i suppose the Colosseum in Rome might put this into perspective, but still).

As we were headed back we were accosted by a guy trying to get us to sign up for credit cards (or checking accounts) in order to get a free t-shirt. Nathan quizzed the guy about damaging his credit score by running a credit check, but the guy assured us that as long as you don't do it all the time you had nothing to worry about... We (surprisingly) declined the offer, but as we were finishing up a conversation with him the Cubs hit a grand slam.

We continued back toward our seats, but it suddenly came to us that the reason our food might have sucked was due to the wrong type of food... In Milwaukee, you order a brat at the game, in Chicago, a Chicago style dog. We grabbed dogs & more beer (loading up with hot peppers & a frighteningly green relish) and headed back to our seats. While we were in our respective lines, the Cubs scored 4 more runs for an 8-run bottom of the 3rd. We got back in time to watch Theriot ground out to end the inning.

The fans in our section were in high spirits by the time we came back.

"Did we miss anything?" we asked.

"Nooo. Nothing, you didn't miss anything. Though, if the Astros start scoring again, you're going to have to leave again," They replied.

In fact, somehow, the fans, not just the game, were extremely enjoyable. At the end of the game, winning soundly, fans were in good spirits. DoucheBag Cubs fans & Drunk Bleacher Girls were cultivating meaningful relationships in the last couple of innings... Singing "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" at Wrigley was something special, even if it was Ron Santo singing... Then they sing some "go cubs go" song when they win...

Overall, i was actually somewhat disappointed by how accommodating & not-overly-douchey the Cubs fans were... And while everyone was laughinghavingagoodtime and singing their songs, i actually saw what might drive someone to being a Cubs fan. There's a good-timie-ness to it that is almost unavoidable. By the end of the game, i was even cheering for the Cubs and i'm a fucking Brewers fan.

I mean, i still hate the Cubs & hate Cubs fans when they come to Milwaukee, for sure, but Wrigley... actually kinda cool.
thanks, gilk, for getting me to wrigley, finally.

Evidently not everyone has brewer fever...

Last night as I was listening to the end of CC Sabathia’s dominant 3-hit shutout in my backyard, a strange voice kept cutting into the broadcast. Bob Uecker was announcing just the 3rd (& final) hit given up by CC when this nameless trucker (I would come to know it was one side of a CB conversation) says “you gotta be really screwed up to have your dad take off […] then yer’ mom to take off you gotta be screwed up.”

This was actually the second or third thing I’d heard the guy say & I’m not sure if he was breaking into just my broadcast or that of the entire AM620 listening audience, but I ran into the house to grab a pad of paper & a pencil. It’s times like those that I wish I’d taken a secretarial shorthand course back in the 60s (or had a Truman Capote-type memory), because I couldn’t keep up with the conversation & missed a lot of it, but what I did catch, I present here, for your…amusement(?).

***Note: Breaks between lines vary from a matter of seconds to as much as a minute. Any lines that are incomplete contain […] to indicate missed dialogue, again ranging from a few words to several sentences.

Trucker: “One day […] we’ll see a shrink”

T: “How many times we can see a shrink, Tom, eh?”

T: “[…] Sorry if I messed up your Christmas […]Heh-heh-heh heh”.
Something unintelligible about “whitewash”

T: “…almost 40 years old and you’re paying for his doctor and all that […] probably hold the door open for her and touch her […] but we’re all paying for it.”

T: “Well, you guys shouldn’t come up here then, you should stay in the south. Nobody gives a crap.”
An MGD commercial runs in what has now become the background.

Bob Uecker: “…Hard fought series here in St. Louis…”
Ryan Braun hits a solo homerun (25) in the top of the 9th.

BU: “Ryan Braun adds a Badger Mutual Insurance Run […] Prince Fielder with a walk, Hit By a Pitch and 2 Strikeouts […] 0-2 pitch…”

T: “Can’t know what any of these _______ are sayin’ right now.”

T: “What he got—let me guess. […] You got who’s hitting your […]”

T: “This guy is taking your money and you’re pissing and moaning about who’s taking your money […] you should be busting his door down if not, put in for new work.”

T: “More ambition than Tommy had in his entire life.”

T: “Yeah, he’s a fudge packer.”
Corey Hart hits into a fielder’s choice and Billy Hall comes up.

BU: “There’s a runner out there for Billy Hall […] 41,415 at St. Louis tonight […] 2-2, had a good cut […] Corey Hart almost got picked off. Corey’s got a couple of hits tonight and a run scored.”
Bill Hall strikes out.

T: “That SOB, it does not work. […] Hey, I’ll give you a perfect example. My son was 16, he’s ________ to work on the farm, worked the extra summer […] Tommy Sehry out there _________ a donkey or a goat. […] kid worked like a bugger today […] work ethic, ________ and health insurance that we are not paying for today.”
Pujols bats.

T: “Tommy got up there, Caballo’s up there. […] Yeah, I’m sorry for ______ you. You are in cahoots with Tommy. Well not cahoots, but whatever you two are in.”

So, that’s the whole of what I jotted down. It provided an interesting counterpart to Uecker & Jim Powell. All in all, it was a good game and a surreal broadcast.

Doe!

Last night i went golfing by myself, which is as rewarding an experience as going to movies by myself or sitting in coffee shops by myself. I played Grant Park Golf Course, which is close to (but out of eyeshot of) Lake Michigan on Milwaukee's southSide - after 7pm, they have "sunset" rates, which is $7 for as many of the 18 holes as you can get in. I got through the front nine, just barely (because of a couple larger groups that wouldn't let me play through).

I stepped up to the 9th tee, it was getting darker faster than it should have been due to the cloud cover and there was a light rain (better than the last 2 holes' middling rain) falling. I hit my tee shot once the foursome turned the left dogleg and it felt good. No idea where it went, didn't see it at all, but it felt like a nice shot.

I decided to play a 2nd ball, an orange ball, a "Noodle 2" in fact in case i didn't stumble upon my first ball. It was a line-drive right, into some trees, i saw it bounce, then saw somebody move toward my ball, "Shit!", i thought, "i almost hit that dude", but i quickly realized there wasn't anybody in the woods, rather two deer. I almost hit one of them with my orange ball, though they didn't seem to mind.

I walked in their direction, slowly, pulled my cell phone out of my bag and tried to shoot a few quick photos (nothing doing, it was too dark to get much of a shot). I didn't end up finding that orange ball, but the two deer ran to the middle of the fairway & i followed, figuring i might just skip the 9th, but their path took me over my original ball, the Nike Swoosh looking up at me.

I hit possibly the best 5-iron shot of my life then, just short of the green and looked once more at the deer, who were headed back toward the 9th tee now. I watched them go, then got to my ball, realized all the lights in the clubhouse were out and mine was the only car in the lot & proceeded to chip poorly & three-putt to end my round. Naja, it was worth it, though, and i played an ok round... Not great, but ok.

See, see!

So, with CC Sabathia added to the Brewer's roster and starting tomorrow night (i'll be there, likely getting booted out of the slightly more expensive seats...again), i think it's time to take a look at the sporting world of sportJoel.

** Updated 14 November 2009 **

I'm not sure what I was going to write about, but there is a vast text base from which to work... Email me for a copy* of "Sport Joel" & "Probe-Film", both of which offer up fantastic insight into the early sport-i-ness days of joel.

*Please specify format you'd like the footage delivered in. Pricing will start at the basic "VHS tape - $15.00, DVD - $30.00". These prices are subject to change (after I've figured out how to make the first copy, future copies may get much cheaper...

missing links

Saturday morning at 6:45 am i found myself for the first time in far too long a time pulling into the gravel parking lot of Turtle Green's Golf Course just west of Clinton with my brother tim. It'd been almost a year since the last time i'd golfed, also with tim, at an Omaha course, but this was something different, entirely. It was the course i "learned" to play on, and it was not yet 7 in the morning (a couple of guys were finishing up the 9th hole as we pulled in).

The clubhouse was still closed & locked up, so we headed for the first tee-off, then realized we didn't have a scoreCard. There were none outside, but tim checked the carts and found this one clipped to the steering wheel of one. I took on the "Ace" line, naturally. Tim played as Floyd and we were ready.

The last time i'd teed off at Turtle Greens was during our rehearsal dinner, and i'd played just the first hole, but hit what was & is the best tee shot i've ever had. It was lofty & long and ended up just over the lip of the small hill before the first green (my second shot, a 9-iron, went perpendicular to me and straight into the treeline). This time around i was a bit nervous at having overachieved so much my last attempt, but my first shot was strong & true, pretty much the same shot, just shorter.

Now, let me just say straight out that i am not a good golfer. As my scorecard above can attest to, i lack consistency, focus, and a good scanner. That being said, though, i think i'm starting to realize that i really love golf. If only i did it more than, say, once or twice a summer. Already, after just one time out i've got a shortlist of Must Have Clubs (a 7 or 8 wood & a pitching wedge - in my own bag i have a "loft wedge" which is occasionally useful, but when the next club up is my 9-iron, i have a lot of holes in my short game {mostly having to do with the fact that i'm a terrible golfer}). I hit 9 pretty decent tee shots (only #6 & #9 were out of the fairway and those because i actually went over the green).

Overall, it was a pretty lousy round of golf (though i did beat my goal-score from when i was 12 years old), but it felt great. Who knew you could get up at 6:30 and feel so good... i should do it all the time. In fact, if only i didn't have to work all the time, i think i'd be golfing constantly. Yet another reason to retire immediately. So, everyone, dust off your clubs (if you haven't got clubs - Nathan Gilkerson, i'm looking at you - go buy a set at a garage sale), hit the municipal courses and let's start cracking some windshields... Golf-Ho (that'll be my code-name)

Oh Yeah, Eu-Ro

Who's got Euro 2008 fever. This guy (& andy, evidently who made multiple soccer-related phone calls on day 2 of the tourney). Generally i have a fairly moderate interest in the tournament and don't really pay attention until at best Round 2 & often just the semis & finals, but this year feels different.

Perhaps it's that the first (lame) SeegerOlympics point of the year is up for grabs, or that I have an extremely low key temp job with outstanding high speed internet so i can watch the games online, but whatever it is, i'm hooked. Not since i'm pretty sure i saw Chris Rogers in a bar in Bratislava watching the Euro 2000 semi-finals have i been this invested in the outcome...

Of course my rooting interest is conflicted by the SeegerOlympics pick... I always sort of want Germany to win, but my tourney pick was Portugal who won their first match soundly and are playing in a little under an hour.

In fact, i've made a couple picks against my better judgement (or against my rooting interest, perhaps in fact with my better judgement) these last few weeks... When we didn't go see the Tubes last week Andy & i made NBA finals picks. Now, i think i can safely say that i care less than almost anyone who would call themeselves a sports fan who wins the finals this year, but I thought it would be the Lakers, even though my very minor rooting interest would be for KG & therefore with the Celts... So, go Kobe, i guess... & go Portugal, really?

Fandom is a bit of a sticky thing for me... I mean, aside from the really obvious ones (Brewers to win the NL Central & da Bears) i have a lot of problems with finding fandom... Even this Friday, when we go to the Brewers/Twins game i feel like i'll want to wear my Brewers t-shirt & my Twins hat... Who am i cheering for? a 2-1 split? When i watch an MLS game i really can't figure out who i want to win... Having a local team helps, sure, but i can't say with any real sense that i was a Bucks fan when Chad Jorgensen gave me a ticket to a game, nor do i really care if the Omaha Royals were winning or losing (minor league baseball is an even more complicated fan situation, because when the players you root for get too good, they leave town)...

So, i guess go Portugal, go Germany (but boo Andy), go Sweden (because your fans throw their beers into the air every time you score) & go watch some Euro 2008...