Oh captain! My captain! This glorious elegy was written by Walt Whitman for his slain leader Abraham Lincoln. While captains in sports weren't instrumental in freeing the slaves, and they didn't spend much time presiding over a civil war, they were often responsible for bolstering the psyche of a team and improving winning records.

The Observers took a week off from baseball to prepare for a "look back, look forward" analysis of the Brewers that will run next week. But there was plenty of football to talk about. Frank: Boy, the state owes Aaron Rodgers one. After three straight Packer losses, his big second half in Seattle had everyone breathing more easily.

The Interstate highways across the nation, as well as the shock absorbers on the Madden Cruiser, breathed a collective sigh as NFL broadcasting icon John Madden will take a break from his magic bus. Madden will miss the road trip to Tampa, his first abandoned broadcast in 476 games, since Reagan first moved Nancy into the White House. Madden, 72-years-old, says he's just taking a break from the rigors of the road.

Milwaukee area professional baseball club has multiple openings. Great opportunity. Seven months a year, winters off. (An occasional October, perhaps every 30 years or so.) A wonderful work environment, spring in Arizona, summers around the country to virtually every major city. While in Milwaukee you have an option of a roof, depending on the weather.

We can all sleep better tonight with the realization a deer is helping our kids cross the streets. Last time I checked most deer ended up on the front of a bumper when they tried to cross a highway or street. Perhaps we'd be better suited to follow a badger or lemming across the road, you hardly ever seem them as a heaping blemish on the street.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda: the epitaph for the major Wisconsin teams this past weekend. Or perhaps it was coulda, shoulda, woulda. The Brewers’ season ended with the Phillies’ 6-2 playoff victory at Miller Park. The UW Badgers slugged it out with Ohio State but fell at Camp Randall, 20-17. And the Packers dropped a 27- 24 decision to the Falcons at Lambeau Field. Once again the Observers conferred by phone, with Frank visiting family in Philadelphia and Artie amid the mourners in Milwaukee.

With two of the four remaining playoff teams being in colder weather cities (Boston and Philadelphia) it would only take one rainout to move a world series game into November. So, it's possible that I'll actually have something more exciting to watch than the paint-drying like experience of this presidential political race. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the hometown newspaper of each of the four remaining playoff teams treats the upcoming presidential election online.

Miller Park-It's a Sunday morning in October. Yes, there is a playoff game in Milwaukee, the second in fact, in almost 3 decades. Of course this is something you already know or you're getting far too much fresh air riding your bike on the lakefront. white Brewer towels waved in each section. The fans in Milwaukee did their part, even if the fans in Chicago could not. As if it couldn't get any more warm and fuzzy, the owner's father sang the National Anthem.

As the bank crisis spreads and George W. Bush continues to push for a bailout it seems fitting that we in the sports world could turn this into a bracket. At this point it looks as though Bush and the Republicans are a lot more like the USC basketball team of last year's tournament than the Trojan football team any year. I'm not trying to blame this on the right either. Charles Rangle and his comrades also have a lot of culpability in this mess by passing legislation that allows anybody who can make and "X" to get a home loan.

Way back in July the Shepherd's own Art Kumbalek and Frank Clines predicted that the Brewers would prevail based on numerology, or as Artie would call it "numberology." In this article "It's a Lock Bye Gosh" they called for the Brew Crew to be where they are right now...poised to take the pennant.