The brand-spanking new Milwaukee Brewers UK fan page is live and kicking on facebook!
Keep involved with like-minded fans over the winter break and up-to-date with the latest from the NL Central.
Search: ‘Brew Crew UK’ on facebook, or click the following link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brew-Crew-UK/154897394608688
Cards win! Cards win! NL wins again!
Wow! What a game! What a World Series! What a season!
Our beloved sport has come to the end of its long, long run for another year. It’s time to swap out rally caps for santa hats, wooden bats for Christmas trees, and catcher’s mitts for woolly mittens. Continue reading
In 1994 a new league was born. It flew under the RADAR of many outside of the American Midwest. It was a time when independent leagues came and went, the Major League was plagued by drug and steroid controversy, and many of the big names in the game today were just starting out in their careers, in some cases still tagging along to ballgames with their moms and pops. Today the League has topped over 900,000 attendees in a single season, a claim that can be made by no other summer collegiate baseball league. Â 
As it comes to the end of its season, before the players head back to their studies or join up with one of the better known Minor League teams and baseball fans in the Midwest devote their entire attention to the pennant races of MLB, let’s take a short look at the Northwoods League.
The Northwoods League was created to provide university students, the next generation of ball players, a chance to experience life on the circuit without major disruption to their studies. Players must have NCAA eligibility; in other words cannot be paid, must attend a specified number of classes, and must perform to a certain academic level to be part of the team.
Unlike most MLB-affiliated Minor Leagues and Independent Leagues, the Northwoods chose to use wooden bats, allowing players to practice with the sort of equipment that would be used in the bigs.
The League is named for the famed woods of the upper Midwest and lower Canada, where the teams are based (7 in Minnesota, 6 in Wisconsin, 1 each in Michigan, Iowa and Ontario, Canada.) It is split into North Division and South Division. Although, as with many league division splits, the geographical location of some teams seems to play little part in whether they are in the North or South.
The North and South divisions meet for an All Star game once a year, in much the same fashion as in Major League Baseball. And just like MLB it is the winning team of each Division pennant who meet in the final.
At least 54 Major League players once graced the Northwoods League. Continue reading
So, I’m away ‘from the desk’ for about a month and it all changes. After my last piece lamenting the Brewers’ apparent lack of steam after the half-time break, they seem to have… re-steamed themselves? OK, enough metaphor stretching for the moment.
As a side note: it still pleases me to meet State-siders in my day-to-day wanderings, especially when they are quite obviously fans of the pastime. Today I had a short but sweet conversation with a girl and her mom about the Phillies success this season. If we’re going to ‘go there’ (and you know we will) I’d have to venture the Philsters as a definite favourite for NL pennant. But then, who could say otherwise?
Let battle commence!
We’re back! The all-singing, all-dancing half time spectacular that is the All Star Game is over and we embark on a whole new half-season.
For my Brewers that means celebrating our first ever All Star MVP – Prince Fielder, as well as appearances from Rickie Weeks and Ryan Braun, making the Brewers the most-represented team on the National League elected starting roster. Continue reading
I came in to this series with a little hesitation. It’s the Brewers at Yankees three-game match up and the first time the Crew have visited Yankee Stadium for over a decade. Technically, the first time ever at the new Yankee Stadium.
With inter-league in danger of becoming old-hat and overplayed there are at least a few inter-league matches which are not seen often. The Brewers – Yankees is one of them, having met only once before in Inter-League play back in ’05 in Mil-town. Back when the people of Milwaukee were cheering for the AL in the All Star Games, the Crew and the Evil Empire met on a fairly regular basis, for a while in the late 70s and early 80s even going as far as to call each other rivals. That was of course back when the Brewers were known as much more of a power house than in recent years.
The Yankees are always going to be a challenge for any team. Though their ability to put a W on the board wanes and waxes, no team should take them lightly. It almost goes without mentioning that they are, and have been for as long as I’m sure any of us can remember, one of, if not the, most popular and talked-about teams in the Major League. This season is no different. As the voting window for the All Star Game draws to a close the Bronx Bombers have more players in the line-up than any other team, a pattern which seems to crop up almost every year. Continue reading
¡Hola ventiladores de béisbol! Or, hello baseball ventilators, as some eagle eyed Spanish-speakers might have picked up from the last edition of Brew View. It should of course be fanáticos, or fanatics. And that’s what this is all about, baseball fanatics. Us fans of America’s pastime based here in the green and pleasant land of hope and glory. Or Britain as it’s more commonly known.
As could be expected my beloved Milwaukee Brewers were just on a short-lived hot streak last week and have failed to continue living up to the hype this week. It was much like having a few too many brews and seeing the bus-pass toting toothless barmaid as a buxom youthful cheerleader.
The Brew Crew did manage to sweep St.Louis with a score of 4 – 3 in their final match-up, but their next series didn’t go quite as smoothly. The Milwaukee men hit the I-94 south to Chicago on Monday to be welcomed by the first of three defeats out of four by the Cubbies. The Cubs themselves aren’t doing too well so far this season, but then again Cubs fans are generally gluttons for punishment.
Last week I compared Major League Baseball to long distance running, the NFL to a sprint, the NHL to a relay, and the NBA to hurdles.
As I said, MLB is definitely a long ol’ season and, compared to the seasons of America’s other ‘big four’ sports, the NFL is lighting quick. Don’t ask me why I thought NHL was a relay or NBA was hurdles, honestly I couldn’t tell you. It kind of sounds right, but I have no real basis for that statement. Maybe the relay baton is the hockey stick or puck, and the jumping over hurdles is the jumping of the basketball player.
So this week I thought it might be fun to compare each of these sports with musical styles instead. If I take the list in reverse this time I’ll begin with the NBA. To quote the ever-entertaining Steve Carell in his role as Michael Scott in The Office: An American Workplace…
Football is like rock and roll, it’s just bam-bam-boo… And basketball is like jazz, you know? You’re kind of… Dupee-doo, dupee-do. It’s all downbeat, it’s in the pocket, it’s like… Dupee-do, dupee-do, dapee-dah…
Dupee-doo dapee-dah indeed Mr.Carell. Basketball is all about the rhythm and flow, just like jazz. And quite rightly American Football is bam-bam-boo, all about getting the job done as loud and proud as possible – just like rock ‘n’ roll. Except perhaps when all the action is in the courtroom and there’s a serious threat of there not even being an NFL season this year. In that case it might be the music styling of John Cage’s 4’33” (Just type 4’33 John Cage in to your favoured internet video browser to find out exactly what I mean.)
Ice Hockey is a difficult one. Is it some obscure industrial German techno? Is it the gangsta mentality of hip-hop with rival rappers dissing each other and drive-by shootings? With the recent Vancouver Riots after the Stanley Cup loss to the Bruins, Ice Hockey seems violent both on and off the ice.
Now we come to baseball. Which musical genre is the Major League? I would have to suggest classical music.  Classical music has been around for a while, it knows what it stands for and it’s not offended if the young whipper-snappers have to listen to a decade or two of bad pop and RnB before they come to appreciate it. Classical music, like baseball, is often long and identified by a series of shorter segments. It has allegro and crescendo, building up and relaxing, and can even carry on a few bars/innings after you think it’s about time it was all over.
Baseball is the only sport which ascribes the word classic to several events in the season calendar. Baseball teams work together like the instruments of an orchestra, with the manager as the conductor and the bats as the batons. Make that scoreboard dance!
If you have any alternative comparisons for the ‘big four’ or think that baseball is actually more like… Japanese post-punk with a twist of Jamaican dancehall, let us know below!
¡Hola ventiladores de béisbol! Or, hello baseball fans, for those of us who don’t speak Spanish!
Welcome, welcome one and all to this first edition of Brew View, the (hopefully) regular column in which I give news, views, and scandal on the team which holds a special place in my heart – the Milwaukee Brewers, as well as insight on the Majors as a whole.
The Crew donned their Milwaukee Cerveceros kits last night for the second game of the series against the St.Louis Cardinals. The Cards are currently just one win ahead of the Crew, with the same loss record, making this series very important for each of the NL Central rivals.
On Friday Milwaukee shut-out St.Louis by 8 runs in spectacular fashion in the home ground of Miller Park. Saturday’s game was another win for the boys in blue (this time actually wearing the alternative gold/yellow Spanish-language jerseys) with a score of 5 – 3 at the end of 9 innings. Let’s take a look at how it all went down.
In the bottom of the second Prince Fielder released a classic homer in to the scoreboard for the first run of the game, bringing the big guy’s season home run count to an impressive 18.
In the top of the fourth it was the Red Birds time to fly with Yadier Molina sending one to the left outfield wall, driving in Colby Rasmus. Half an inning later Casey McGehee smacks one to the right, Jon Jay of the Cardinals leaps up to pluck it from the air.
It’s the top of the sixth now and Lance Berkman smashes a homer against the far outfield wall bringing the Cards to 2.
Not content to stay behind in the count, Rickie Weeks steps up to the plate in the bottom of the sixth with a man on first. Weeks managed to fly the ball just inside the right field foul pole, to drive in two. Â In the same inning Corey Hart steps up with two on and two out. He sticks one to right centre, allowing Fielder and McGehee to reach home base.
In the top of the next inning Donnie Descalso drives in Skip Schumaker, sending the ball just past Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, to bring the final score to 5 – 3.
Props to Brewers pitcher Zack Greinke, making his eighth start of the year with an ERA of 4.93 up to this game. Greinke achieved nine strikeouts over seven innings. Let’s hope that Earner Run Average gets down a bit as he gets more games with the Brew Crew under his belt.
John Axford gets the save. The Ax Man proving that he still has the touch, and is a valuable part of the organisation.
That was certainly an eventful game and I’m looking forward to the third and final of the series this evening. Also worth mentioning for this evening is the weekly Sunday night BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra broadcast, today focusing on the Cleveland Indians visiting Yankees Stadium with guest presenter Simon Brotherton.
¡Adiós tuercas del béisbol!
The crack of leather-bound cork on wood. The soft thud of ball in glove. The smells of summer: of hot dogs and beer and freshly cut grass. Baseball season is truly here!
Well, it’s been here f
or a while now, and we’re not even half way through yet. At the time of writing my team, the Milwaukee Brewers, have just completed a closely fought four game sweep of the Florida Marlins, immediately followed by a fairly disappointing series at home to the New York Mets.
The long painstaking draft was completed earlier this week and the All Star Game, marking the spiritual if not physical half-way point in the baseball season, is still a way away.
If I were to start at the start, which by all accounts would be the logical thing to do, I should let you know just how a young Briton from the rural county of Dorset came to be such a fan of this most American of pastimes. Continue reading