The Observers reconvened this week completely refreshed—Artie by a couple, three days of swatting insects in the Northwoods and Frank by 2,200 miles of driving...
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Home Sports
Wednesday, June 24,2009
Patching Up Some Loose Ends
The Fairly Detached Observers
Astute sports commentary can get tiring, and the Observers felt the need to recharge. So this week Artie is up in the Northwoods and Frank is back East for a family wedding and other fun. But they stockpiled some dialogue so readers wouldn’t have to go blather-less. Frank: The Packers are...
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Wednesday, June 17,2009
Pitching In With Some Speculation
The Fairly Detached Observers
Last year the Brewers made the playoffs for the first time in a generation, but it required a bold mid-season move that added CC Sabathia to the starting rotation. This year Sabathia is gone and the Brewers still can’t count on pitching help from the minor leagues. Will they need an ’09...
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Wednesday, June 10,2009
What’s the Count? Anything and Everything
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Major-league baseball swims in them, and 21st-century technology makes it all too easy to raise the numerical sea level. The Observers love baseball numbers dearly, but the latest milestone got them wondering which stats are really worth the...
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Wednesday, June 3,2009
Proper Observance Is Only Fitting
The Fairly Detached Observers
The Brewers passed the season’s 50-game milestone Sunday with a 5-2 victory that completed a sweep of Cincinnati. The Observers were on hand, and marking a milestone of their own. Artie: Three hours and three minutes for that game. Nowhere near my ideal of 2:24, or the 2:36...
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Wednesday, May 27,2009
The Wide, Wide World of Walkways
The Fairly Detached Observers
The Observers played zone coverage again last week. Frank was on another New York visit, including a stop at the new Yankee Stadium, and Artie was at the home office monitoring the Bucks’ fortunes in the NBA draft lottery. Artie: So you’ve been to the new Cathedral of the Almighty...
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Wednesday, May 20,2009
An MVP at Stringing Us Along
The Fairly Detached Observers
Five weeks have passed since the Milwaukee Bucks ended their season, and in that time the NBA has managed to get through two rounds of playoffs, producing conference finals of Orlando vs. Cleveland and Denver vs. the L.A. Lakers. It’s another five weeks until the NBA draft, and...
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Wednesday, May 13,2009
Doses of Dismay? Too Manny to Count
The Fairly Detached Observers
Where will it end? Manny Ramirez has joined Alex Rodriguez on the list of baseball stars who have either tested positive for banned drugs or come under suspicion of using them. Not that the Observers are surprised. Artie: So Manny gets a 50-day suspension? Cripes, I wouldn’t mind...
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Wednesday, May 6,2009
Taking a Stance on Major Issues
The Fairly Detached Observers
At last the Miller Park roof was open for the Milwaukee Brewers' 13th home game of the season. Beaming down on a 4-3 victory over Arizona were the sun and 44,000 fans, including the Observers. After zipping back Downtown on the No. 90 bus, they continued to bask and confab. Artie: Wow! The first pitch was at 1:07...
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Wednesday, April 29,2009
Whatever We’ll See, We’ll See
The Fairly Detached Observers
The Observers split their forces for the first time in 2009, with Frank on a family visit to New York and Artie manning the central office in Milwaukee. They talked by phone after the first day of the NFL draft. Frank: The Big Apple media didn’t say much about the Packers’ top picks. How’d it go for the Green and Gold? Artie:...
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Wednesday, April 22,2009
Are You Ready for Some Folderol?
The Fairly Detached Observers
Pro sports have no off-seasons, just times when they suspend the games to get to the really important stuff—deciding who’ll get paid how much by whom. Just as fans are getting focused on baseball, the NFL power-sweeps into the picture this weekend with the two-day extravaganza of its annual player draft. The...
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Wednesday, April 15,2009
Waiter, There’s a Flaw in Our Soup
The Fairly Detached Observers
Pitching was the main concern for the Milwaukee Brewers this winter, and the question mark wasn't any smaller after the season's first week saw the Brewers go 2-4 against San Francisco and the hated Chicago Cubs. Most troubling were the two starts by Jeff Suppan, the top veteran after the departures of CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets. Suppan got bombed by the Giants and handed the Cubs three runs on bases-loaded walks Sunday night. With a $12.5 million salary...
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Wednesday, April 8,2009
Nice Work If You Can Get It
The Fairly Detached Observers
Big-time sports isn’t recession-proof. Major League Baseball enters its season fearful that attendance will drop. The NBA recently took out a $200 million line of credit to help financially ailing teams. NASCAR sponsorships have disappeared and teams are shrinking. Milwaukee’s PGA tournament won’t have...
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Wednesday, March 25,2009
Defeat Tastes Almost Sweet
The Fairly Detached Observers
The first week of the NCAA basketball tournament began well but ended sadly for local fans. Marquette beat Utah State, 58-57, but lost to Missouri, 83-79, despite a stirring second-half rally. Wisconsin upset Florida State in overtime, 61-59, but went cold against Xavier and lost, 60-49. Scanning the survivors in the...
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Wednesday, March 18,2009
March’s Mad Men
The Fairly Detached Observers
And so it begins: three weekends of hysteria known as the NCAA basketball tournament, when players vie for glory and bracket scholars chase an economic stimulus package called the office pool. The Observers’ predictions, of course, are for entertainment purposes only. Artie: I think I filled out my bracket too quickly...
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Wednesday, March 11,2009
Not Steeped in the Classic
Baseball was in the air when the Observers met on the balmy day that preceded the dreary weekend. With the major-league season a month away, fans had something besides spring training to focus on: the second World Baseball Classic, aimed at building the sport’s international appeal. The Observers have global...
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Wednesday, March 4,2009
Looking for Quality Minutes
The Fairly Detached Observers
Crunch time is here in college basketball and it’s near—well, kind of getting near—in the NBA. That makes every game important for the Marquette Golden Eagles and Wisconsin Badgers, fighting for maximum advantage in the NCAA tournament, as well as the UWM Panthers and Milwaukee Bucks, fighting just to have...
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Friday, February 27,2009
The Young and the Brainless
The Fairly Detached Observers
What a mess. Alex Rodriguez, baseball’s hope to succeed Hank Aaron as the unblemished home run king, instead joins Barry Bonds and others whose achievements will always be questioned. A-Rod’s admission of past steroid use—prompted by...
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Thursday, February 19,2009
Déjà Vu All Over Again
The Fairly Detached Observers
Here we go again. Brett Favre has told the New York Jets he’s retired, just as he told the Packers a year ago. It didn’t stick then, and the Observers have their doubts now. Frank: That was pretty obvious of Favre, to re-retire the day after the Observers’ weekly deadline. As though that would keep us from sending a few...
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Thursday, February 12,2009
A Few Practice Swings
The Fairly Detached Observers
Forget what groundhogs or weathermen say. Winter is gone thanks to the magic words of baseball: “Pitchers and catchers report.” The Brewers’ spring flingin’ starts this weekend. The Observers never stop flinging it. Artie: The Brew Crew was mighty thin in starting pitching before adding Braden Looper this week...
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Wednesday, February 4,2009
Eagles Fly, Badgers Burrow
The Fairly Detached Observers
Six hours of Super Bowl pregame coverage. SIX HOURS! And that was just on NBC; four hours on ESPN put the TV gasbagging into double digits. The Observers pride themselves on never watching one second of such “maybe this, maybe that” silliness. As kickoff approached, the only blather they listened to was...
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Wednesday, January 28,2009
Umpire
Sports in Real Life
I’ve spent the last few days in Daytona Beach, Florida. Yes, the weather has been great. Seventy degrees and sunny, but technically, I was working.
During the past few weeks I’ve been working with umpires. Major League Baseball type umpires. First, an article with umpire legend and Milwaukee native, Bruce Froemming. This week, I’ve been at the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School in Ormond Beach, Florida.
Like you, I didn’t...
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Wednesday, January 28,2009
Plus and Minus Signs
The Fairly Detached Observers
All great partnerships can benefit from occasional times of separation. And so can the Observers, or at least half of them. Frank: There’s been big football news since we last met, but I’ll need help with details. As you may have heard, I recently spent some time in California. Artie: Oh yeah, I got a clue from the dozen...
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Wednesday, January 21,2009
Buck Up: It’ll Take Time
The Fairly Detached Observers
As improvement goes, it’s not as eye-catching as a breakaway slam-dunk. But the Milwaukee Bucks hit the season’s halfway mark playing close to .500 basketball, something they haven’t done over a full season in five years. A new coach (Scott Skiles), new players (Richard Jefferson, Luke Ridnour, Luc Mbah a Moute)...
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Monday, January 19,2009
Above the Rim?
Sports in Real Life
For many years I’ve been daydreaming about sports. Not in your traditional “I wish I were Hank Aaron, or Tony Mandarich” kind of dreaming. In this wonderment I look at a sport and consider why some things aren’t different or more sporting.
How could we make professional sports more interesting? What if we made golf balls out of something a little denser? How about filling the little orb with ball bearings or cement? Let’s see Tiger blast a chunk of concrete off the tee 300 yards...
Read more.....Search Shepherd Express
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Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of
slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on
everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs
might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dram
Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,
an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions
for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello
intended one s
You wouldn’t expect to find T-bone and sirloin dinners at a place with stool seating and a location next to a shop hawking cell phones and cigarettes. But one of the city’s most evocatively named eateries, ZaZa Steak & Lemonade (4919 W. Capito
The enduring fantasy of older men is that a gorgeous
young woman will fall in love with them, find them sexually arousing
and long to imbibe their wisdom while sitting at their feet. That
fantasy is the spring driving Woody Allen's often-hilarious f
Away We Go, a droll comedy-cum-drama by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty),
perceptively explores the lives of more-or-less ordinary 30-somethings
lost in a world without much meaning. Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Bu
Says You
..Search Shepherd Express
