O&A Board Regular
Registered: Oct. 00
 | This disaster of a commissioner is a disgrace to the sport of baseball. I hate him. Minnesota who will more than likely double the amount of wins than the Brewers and have a chance at a playoff spot he wants contracted and Montreal who has one of the best farm systems in all of baseball and has produced some great major leaguers and should be relocated not contracted. But the Brewers who have sucked for so long and made the biggest profit (after revenue sharing) of any major league team incliding the Yankees and the pathetic from the day they got a team, tampa bay devil rays are allowed to continue. Hope everyone is ready for the lockout next season.
quote:
Boohoo on the bad news Brewers
By Jim Caple
ESPN.com
Funny how Bud Selig never mentions his Brewers as a contraction candidate. They're such an obvious choice.
How bad have the Brewers been? "Happy Days" was on the air more recently than the Brewers were in the playoffs. Yes, you could see the the Fonz in October primetime more recently than Bernie Brewer.
But wait, it gets worse. The Brewers enter Wednesday's game with the worst record in baseball, playing so badly they fired their manager barely two weeks into the season. No team has gone longer without a winning record (that's 1992 in case you've forgotten). The Brewers play in baseball's smallest U.S. market, one that is within easy driving distance of two teams in Chicago.
So why are the Brewers not considered a candidate for elimination and the Twins are? Two simple reasons. One, Buds owns them (wait, I'm sorry, he doesn't "own" them because he placed the Brewers in -- wink, wink -- "trust'") and two, they play in a new taxpayer-funded stadium. And in Bud's new world order, victories aren't nearly as important as whether your luxury suites have gray Tennessee or white Italian marble.
Of course, that argument isn't quite so persuasive when you consider that Milwaukee's attendance is down 28 percent from last year (from over 34,000 per game to 22,280 per game) and the Twins are drawing nearly as well as the Brewers, even though Bud's elimination scheme prevented Minnesota from selling tickets until shortly before the national anthem played on Opening Day and even though the Twins have yet to host a marquee team.
Oh, and Milwaukee's roof doesn't work.
Well, it works but it leaks, is rusting and also makes this loud, very unpleasant sound when the Brewers open and close it. Sort of like when Bud explains how contraction would work.
The Brewers, the manufacturer and the stadium district say the roof is completely safe but the sound is so loud that the Brewers don't open or shut the roof when fans are in the park out of concern they would become alarmed by the noise. That means the team must make the decision whether to have the roof open or closed hours before the game starts. They base their decision on forecasts several hours out, and as anyone who has ever lived in the Midwest can tell you, summer weather is about as predictable as Carl Everett's mood ring.
Last Saturday, the Brewers closed the roof under sunny skies during batting practice because, they said, it would be too cold in the stadium otherwise. The team announced the temperature was 66 degrees at game time. And remember, this is in a state where 50,000-plus fans think nothing of sitting in Lambeau Field in mid-December.
Engineering firms are inspecting the roof to see what the problem is and how best to fix it as quickly as possible. They need to, because the Brewers are hosting the All-Star Game and it would be a major source of embarrassment to the commissioner if he couldn't open the roof. Or a worse embarrassment if he did and fans around the world heard this awful racket coming from the pivot that operates the whole thing.
Twins owner Carl Pohlad may moan about the Metrodome, but I'll say this for the old stadium -- at least that roof works.
(Milwaukee's grass isn't growing real well, either, but that's another story ... )
I've often heard Bud describe the pain he and Milwaukee felt when the Braves left town and listened to him go on at length about how important a team is to the fabric of the community. It all rings a little hollow. After all, he's the man who thought nothing of ripping the Seattle Pilots away from Seattle. And he's the man determined to rip it out of another couple cities.
Look, I don't want to see Milwaukee lose its team. The city has too much baseball history and tradition -- from Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews to Robin Yount and Paul Molitor -- to deserve losing the Brewers. And besides, I don't want any community to lose its team.
I only wish the commissioner felt the same way. And maybe if it were his team he had to worry about, this elimination plan wouldn't appeal to him so much.
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