Why Ryan Braun is MVP and Other Random Baseball Thoughts

Ryan Braun - Straight-up killer.  And MVP.

So, most of this past week I had been thinking about writing some posts on the end of the baseball season, thinking about what to write, thinking about how to do it, and - as I have been wont to do ever since I started this blog - doing nothing about it.

One of the posts I wanted to do involved making my case why Ryan Braun should win the NL MVP instead of Matt Kemp (as I fear is going to happen).  I was also going to touch on the other major awards from my vantage point, though they are generally not too controversial this year.  I promise that I will get to those ideas briefly near the end of this post.  I also do need to go back and review my preseason predictions as promised (note: that is NOT going to be pretty - thanks a bunch, Twins!). 

However, I would not be a baseball fan with a blog or any outlet of writing words down if I let what transpired on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 go by without saying a little about that most magical of nights for any true fan of the game.  Although all Braves and Red Sox fans would probably use different words to describe it.

I Will Not Forget

The internet certainly does not need another account of the events that happened 10 years ago today on September the 11th, 2001.  I did not know anyone who was killed or had a loved one killed or injured in the attacks, I have never lived in New York City, and had not yet lived in Virginia in 2001.  I had not seen the Pentagon since I was a little boy in 2001.  In short, I have no more personal connection to the events of 9/11 than the vast majority of Americans, and my story is not one of extraordinary courage or hardship or hope.

And yet, as I find myself ten long years and half a country away from where I was that fateful day, I find a need to talk (or blog in this case) about my feelings about those events.  One of the pastors at our church (Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chesapeake, VA - go to www.builtonjesus.org to find out more) preached a sermon this morning that touched on 9/11 in the context of the Biblical texts concerning teaching the Word of God to children.  One of his points was that you tell your children Bible stories and stories about important events that occurred during your lifetime because they did not live through those events.  It is important to remember the past, because in recounting the past, they learn about what God has done for his people in the past and may glean lessons that help them to deal with their future

While I do not hold any conceits that my story will lead to any important lessons or meaning, I do know that an 18-year old boy away from home for the first time in his life made a promise ten years ago to never forget the events that happened that day.  It is 3652 days later (give or take), and I have not forgotten.

Return of the Blog

In the words of Capt. Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly in the episode "Trash":

Yup.  That went well...

Clearly my commitment to regular blogging was not quite up to snuff back in spring when I last posted something up here.  I would apologize to any loyal readers if, of course, I had written enough posts to HAVE loyal readers.

However, since I didn't really set out with any real purpose for this blog other than a desire to write something every now and then, it's not really an issue that I decided to take a 6 month break.  I do intend to actually start posting regularly up here, and have some ideas on how to actually make that happen.  We'll see how it goes!

Randomness on Campus or Why I Love Working at a College

While on my afternoon run through campus today, I saw something that gave me a subject for my first post-an unexplained, random sighting of weirdness that is so common to college campuses. I'll get to what exactly it was in a minute, but first, a little background. At my undergrad alma mater, the University of Michigan, there was plenty of random weirdness on campus. Possibly the best known example is Bra Guy. His normal attire was a pair of men's jeans, no shirt, colorful bra (red seemed to be a favorite) and a pack of cigarettes conveniently stuck under the bra strap. His apparent occupation was to strut his stuff around campus, giving people something to talk about. My sister and I once saw him riding a bike in a neglige (also red). Then there was the Diag Screamer. I assume this guy was a student, since I saw him frequently and he was wearing a backpack, but his claim to fame was listening to music with his headphones and then screaming the lyrics at an incredible volume, causing everyone around him to give him plenty of space. Whenever I spotted him, he was on the Diag, hence the moniker. Also frequently on the Diag were a variety of Diag Preachers who shouted such encouraging thoughts to passersby as "You're going to hell!" Hardly the most effective method for saving souls. This usually ended in a screaming match between the Diag Preacher and a bunch of angry students. Another good example of campus weirdness is Hash Bash. Hash Bash is basically an excuse for all the pot smokers on campus and in Ann Arbor to congregate on the Diag and surrounding areas under an illegal haze and somehow still manage to not get arrested. I could go on some more about random weirdness at U of M, like the 6 foot tall vagina constructed on the Diag to advertise the play The Vagina Monologues (people were encouraged to walk through it) or the guy who plays the harmonica and the washboard by the UgLi (undergraduate library) who looks homeless but is really a professor, but let's move on to the recent random weirdness I've seen on the campus of my graduate alma mater and current place of employment, the College of William & Mary.

Here's the random weirdness tally in the past few weeks for W&M:

1. About a month ago, I was chased by bees while running. Not weird nor entirely random, you say? Well, these "bees" were actually 20 or so female students with paper wings on their backs, running in a pack and making buzzing sounds. Okay. Well at first, we were running towards each other and after I registered what was coming towards me, I looked for a way around them. They had other plans, however. As I approached, they split ranks and I passed through the middle of the buzzing crowd. I looked back because, really you don't see this every day, and I saw them change direction. Then they chased me. Buzzing. And I, being fleet of foot (ahem) picked up speed until they got tired and went to freak out someone else. I still have no idea what they were doing.

2. Last week, while walking to a meeting, I passed a girl carrying a large, clear plastic container with two baby pigs inside. My head whipped around and I'll admit it, I stared. Yup, confirmed, she was carrying two live baby pigs. Weird, I thought, but I had to make it to my meeting so I didn't have time to satisfy my curiousity. On my way back to my office from the meeting, I passed another student, this time leading a llama. Apparently there was an impromptu (as impromptu as it can be while still managing to acquire farm animals) petting zoo on campus. Sweet! Again, no idea what they were doing.

3. Today while running, I saw the random weirdness that caused me to write this, my inaugural post: three students, standing on the corner of Jamestown and Richmond Roads, dressed head to toe in bright yellow banana suits. 'Nuff said.


This post is dedicated to those crazy kids in banana suits. I love working on a college campus! And no, I have no idea what they were doing.

Refreshingly Short Posts from the Other Half

Hi, I'm Sarah, Jeremy's wife, and I promised Jeremy I would contribute to this "blogging project" on a somewhat regular basis, so here goes. My goal is to provide you with a much needed break from the amazing verbal insanity that he puts forth every week-like the barrage of baseball statistics you suffered through/read over the last few days. (What's that, hun? This is your blog and I'm just a guest? Sorry, I'll try to keep my cheekiness in check in the future.) Unlike my husband, who has never met a page requirement he couldn't majorly exceed, I've never met a page requirement that didn't cause me major anguish to merely meet. And I'm the one who ended up writing lots of papers in undergrad and grad school...go figure.

You can expect a lot of content related to running, cooking, gardening, farmer's markets, sustainable agriculture, books (often about running, cooking, gardening...are you sensing a pattern yet?) and the occasional random posts to keep it interesting. If you're reading this blog mainly for the sports, consider this your bit of culture...or just an annoying break between the myriad baseball posts. Oh, and I do like sports too, especially University of Michigan football. Go Blue!

And with that and in the spirit of brevity, I'll move on to my first "real" post.

P.S. For the record, I think Jeremy is a great writer, just a little long-winded!

Milwaukee Brewers 2011 Season Preview

Hopefully we'll be seeing more of this in 2011 - both the walk-off bomb and the home run (get it?)!

Otherwise known as "Way more words than you ever wanted to read about the Milwaukee Brewers."  I figured a good way to wrap up my baseball preview extravaganza would be to profile my favorite team and talk about their chances this season.  Partially this is because, for the first time in my living memory, the Beermakers actually have a reasonable chance to contend for the World Series this year.  I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this - obviously, as a fan I'm thrilled, but this is a lot of pressure that I'm not used to come Opening Day!

I'm also a little late on my schedule this week.  It turns out that writing small novels each night when you're not used to it is somewhat taxing, and Wednesday night I needed to recharge the sleep batteries a little bit.

If you haven't already, check out my AL and NL season previews from earlier in the week.  For the most part, I did those without reading a whole lot of the myriad season previews by other sportswriters and bloggers, which I have done since.  This means that you could look at my previews in two lights: 1) they are pure, unbiased, uncontaminated, fresh perspectives on all of the teams, or 2) they are a bunch of baloney and WAY different that what a lot of the experts are predicting.  Probably a little bit of both - I guess we'll find out at the end of the year!


One more thing - as with all of my opinions and analysis, most of this is pretty much off the cuff and shoddily researched, though I have done SOME sifting through stats and such.  If you want a more balanced, reasoned, and researched preview of the Brew Crew, I would recommend checking out a lot of content at BrewCrewBall or one of the other myriad baseball blogs floating around.  One more administrative item before I begin - I pulled any and all images here off of Google Image Search, so don't sue me if they're yours!


With that, let's get into it!

2011 Baseball Preview Part Deux: National League

As promised, I'm back to tackle my previews and predictions of the teams on the senior circuit, leading up to Opening Day on Thursday.  Part Deux of my Preview (and you have to pronounce it duouh, as in Hot Shots, Part Deux) will work just like the first post on the AL from yesterday - I'll list how I think each of the divisions will play out as well as one question mark and one strength for each team.

Since the NL has 2 more teams than the AL and it took me long enough last night, let's get started!

2011 Baseball Preview Part 1: American League

I'm making this up as I go, but the structure of these team-by-team previews will go something like this: I'll predict the order teams will finish for each division, and elaborate on each team with some question marks for the season, some exclamation points for each team, and the bottom line (I thought about continuing the grammatical theme and calling that the period, but that sort of fell flat as I soon I thought more about it).  I'm not gonna be like most sportswriters and predict actual records for two reasons: 1) first and foremost, I'm lazy and that sounds like a lot of work, and 2) because it'll be less embarrassing at the end of the year when I look back to find out how wrong I was now.  I will give a rough guess as to how many games back from first each team will be, though.  Oh, and another warning - I'm not gonna explain baseball statistics here.  I know it's like a foreign language, I'm sorry.  If you're really curious, I would head over to Baseball Reference for explanations.

So let's get into it, starting with the evil Empire of baseball divisions...

Baseball Preview Week!

In honor of Opening Day (T-minus 3 days!), and also partly to give myself something to write about, I decided to designate this week Baseball Preview Week here at the Hanke Daily Herald World Headquarters.  The schedule will go something like this (unless I get lazy and it goes nothing like this):

Monday: American League Team Previews and Predictions
Tuesday: National League Team Previews and Predictions
Wednesday/Thursday: Milwaukee Brewers In-Depth Extravanganza

As you can see, I'm not above letting my personal biases stomp all over decorum and objectiveness.

Organizing the Bookshelf (the real one - not the link above)

You know you're big-time geeks and/or have no social life when the big event of your weekend is reorganizing the bookshelves after a major shopping spree at a used book store and a Border's that is going out of business.  I seem to dimly recall a time when I did things like go to bars and parties on the weekends.  (In some cases, the foggy memory may be less because of the time between then and now and more due to the beverages consumed at said parties/bars!)  However, there's always a great sense of accomplishment and a weird feeling of pride when the job is done and you can step back and admire a newly organized library.

Of course, it's also a great way to find out ways that you and your spouse are very different...

The NCAA and the Color of Money

So, how's your bracket?  It was one of the more entertaining first weekends of the NCAAM BBall tourney, in my opinion, but it just wouldn't be March Madness if one of my Final Four picks wasn't out before 5 PM on the first day (Louisville in this case).  Despite that, I actually have a pretty good bracket this year so far (90th percentile on ESPN.com), but with both Louisville and Pitt out, I probably have a slow, painful fall to the bottom to look forward to.  Thank goodness it's illegal to spend money on March Madness brackets - if I wanted to donate $X to my friends, I would just give them it to them straight.  Anyways, with the NCAA basketball tournaments (men's and women's - Title IX is our friend) beginning over the weekend, I thought it would be a great time to muse on the role of money in collegiate athletics. 

So About that Daily part...

Yeah, so the plan to post regular content up here hasn't gone so well so far.  I am planning on rectifying that.  We'll see..

Feb. 14th, 2011 - Best Day of the Year!!!

No, I haven't sold out to Hallmark, Kay Jeweler's, Jared Galleria of Jewelry, or Russell Stover's.  I haven't turned in my Man Card (or my I'm Always Right Card, for that matter!) after 3+ years of marriage and decided that rom-coms are now my favorite movie genre.  And I definitely haven't been perusing the romance section in Barnes & Noble (which is so unfortunately placed right next to my Sci Fi/Fantasy section).

Nope.  The reason Feb. 14th, 2011 gets Best Day of the Year status for a different reason.  I'll give it to you in four words:

Pitchers and catchers report.

Ah, the sweet sound of baseball...

Behold the Power of Cheese!!

So, I had planned on making a longer post this weekend about the upcoming game, but things sort of got out of hand, so I’ll just be brief.  Go Pack!  If I had to wager, I’d say Packers 38 – Steelers 34, but I’m not totally confident.  Should be a good game.  In any event, a picture is worth 1000 words, right?

Let there be blog!

The question of where to begin is always a difficult one.  In fact, it probably stumps more would-be writers than many other problems.  I do know that in my case, where to begin is actually not that difficult in this case, since I don't really have a purpose here.  You could say that, at the moment at least, this is a "blog about nothing!"