What's That? Brewers Win?!

And I didn't get to see it because effing CSN+ had technical difficulties in the bottom of the 9th inning. Instead, I was treated to this AWESOME graphic (that actually pretty accurately sums up the season for both teams) and some really poor quality audio of the game.

Thanks for nothing Comcast!

You Know What They Say ...

... better three months late than never: the Soup has officially been tossed out of the pantry.

If this had happened, say, at the end of spring training, I could probably muster a shit or two. But, with the move coming with the Brewers languishing at 23-34 -- and a half-game behind the fuckin' Pirates in the standings -- and the season torpedoed, I'm having a tough time getting excited about this.

Shitty team cuts shitty pitcher. Wheeeeeeee.

Have You Looked at Your Payroll Recently?

SB Nation -- the braintrust behind our little baby, Anonymous Eagle, and about 3,982 other fan-run sports blogs -- launched some regional sites last night, and two of the head cheeses at SB Nation talked to the New York Times about the company, their philosophy on covering sports, the niche the SBN sites fill, and the ingredients for a good marmalade.
Buried in that article is a quote from Marty Kaiser, the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“As long as we have the reporters to cover the teams better than anyone else, we’ve got a place in the future,” said Marty Kaiser, editor of The Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee and a former sports editor for The Chicago Sun-Times.

Mr. Kaiser: this is a picture of one of the reporters your newspaper employs:

You may wish to revise your statement.

Dear Jeff Suppan...

Please take a cue from Mr. Griffey:

"While I feel I am still able to make a contribution on the field and nobody in the Mariners front office has asked me to retire, I told the Mariners when I met with them prior to the 2009 season and was invited back that I will never allow myself to become a distraction," Griffey said.

"I feel that without enough occasional starts to be sharper coming off the bench, my continued presence as a player would be an unfair distraction to my teammates and their success as a team is what the ultimate goal should be," he said.

Here I'll even do the editing for you:

"While I feel I am still able to make a contribution on the field and nobody in the Brewers front office has asked me to retire, I told the Brewers when I met with them prior to the 2007 season and was invited back that I will never allow myself to become a distraction," Suppan said.

"I feel that without enough occasional appearances to be sharper coming out of the bullpen, my continued presence as a player would be an unfair distraction to my teammates and their success as a team is what the ultimate goal should be," he said.

INSTANT REPLAY...

Two words that strike a chord with any baseball purist, but after tonight's blown call you are going to have a hard time defending why baseball shouldn't use more instant replay. Over the past few years there have been multiple instances of just obviously wrong calls. I understand the human element of baseball and I'm not saying instant replay should be used for ball/strike calls, but more objective calls such as fair/foul and safe/out should be reviewable plays. Allow the manager a challenge or two. I guarantee that the majority of the games won't even have instant replays but there has to be a mechanism in place to correct obviously incorrect calls.

The call by Jim Joyce is a disgrace and its just another recent example of umpires inserting themselves into the game and the spotlight. A bad call cost Gallaraga something that has only happened 20 times in the history of major league baseball and there's nothing anybody can do about it but bitch, whine, and apologize. After the Willie Mayes catch in center for the first out it seemed meant to be. Aren't there unwritten rules in baseball that say a pitcher with a 3-0 perfect game with 2 outs in the 9th and a bang-bang play at first would get the call to complete the perfect game?

Anyway, now that I'm done bitching, whining, and apologizing, it got me to thinking about the near no-hitter that Yo threw against the Reds I think. Aside from the perfect game vs. a no-hitter comparison, which would be worse: losing a no-hitter/perfect game because of a blown umpire call or because of a bad scoring decision? I'd give the edge to blown umpire call because safe/out is less subjective than a official scorers ruling.