Article:Weekly Wisconsin Sports Wank 2008.07.21

This article is also viewable at my website theroguehour. Hello, once again all and any Wisconsin sports fans. It's been a real tough past two weeks in the land of cheese and honey, and by now a lot of us are probably sick of hearing the name of a certain quarterback, so let's try to shift the focus to some of our state's other sports teams (who happen to be doing quite well btw)

'''Brewers. C+''' Crew is 3rd in the Central 6-4 in the last 10, which was aided a bit by the completion of a season sweep of the Giants this weekend where we also took one of their players, in a trade. Yes the Brewers traded away another piece of the future to win this season when they took Ray Durham and reliever Jake Taschner (a Racine native) in exchange for farm gem Angel Salome and Class A outfielder Darren Ford. I don't know about you but the fact that we still had Salome was helping to ease my fears of the consequences of losing Matt LaPorta in the Sabaithia trade (which is paying off pretty good so far, he's won his first 3 games (2 complete games) with a 1.88 ERA). Makes me nervous to see more of the top tier farm talent dwindling but at least we still have Mat Gamel (right?).

But don't think this trade for Durham is any reflection on Rickie Weeks, according to Yost. Ned emphasizes that Durham is not a replacement for Weeks, says Rickie will be just fine platooning, and that he's not sure why people are down on Weeks just because he's a scrub when he's always been pretty lame ( or words to that effect). And by all accounts Durham is very happy to be coming to Milwaukee, yes you read that right.

Althought I didn't see much of the All-Star game, I saw Sheets go lights out the 2 innings he pitched (though I'm uncomfortable ever watching him pitch because you can just see the wear and tear his arm goes thru because of his pitching motion) and was glad that Braun made a good showing too. Would have been nice if he could've stole some thunder from Josh Hamilton in the Home Run Derby though (as if).

And in today's wild speculation out of nowhere, a rumor that Mark Attanasio would like to become the Paul Allen of the Midwest.

Bucks. So how long did it take for serious concerns about Joe Alexander's skill level to be raised? Oh about one game into the Las Vegas summer league schedule. I think David Thorpe's quote "Simply put, the worst performance of a first round pick I've seen thus far in Vegas" sums it up nicely. The Bucks though did finish up 4-1 in league play, and Alexander did show some improvement during the five games. Brew Hoop has some good notes on the Bucks performance in Vegas. I'm intrigued by the talked about emergence of Ramon Sessions, which is one of the reasons I'm still suspecting the Lue, Allen signing of being the front end setup for some larger deal Hammonds has in the works (I hope). The Bratwurst has a trade scenario that doesn't involve Lue, but ends with Milwaukee getting Shawn Marion and Mario Chalmers. If you think that's far-fetched try this proposal that gets us Udonis Haslem, Mike Conley, and Greg Buckner. Not quite as sexy in my opinion but personnel that, under Skiles, could return adequate production.

Milwaukee Bucks Blog is back with commentary on the Bucks offseason.

Time for Bogut to learn that along with big NBA contracts comes increased media scrutiny from the Bob Boozer Jinx.

Does the Yi trade prove that Herb Kohl is not the meddling owner type some were making him out to be after the Larry Harris debacle?

University of Wisconsin football. Soon, very soon Saturday mornings will be sacred again. Here's some preseason hype from ESPN.

Marquette University men's basketball. Just cuz Peaches 'n' Crean left doesn't mean the program will roll up into a ball and die. We don't know for sure about X's and O's yet but so far Buzz Williams has shown himself to be a hell of a recruiter so far. And the rest of the team hasn't been exactly laying around getting fat either.

Packers. Ok, this is the moment I've dreaded but I have to at least mention the Pack. But we all pretty much know the status quo don't we? Brett and management are engaged in some kind of Packer-fan-hell-edition game of chicken waiting to see who will blink first. So instead of tirelessy going thru all the innuendo spewed out this week on the subject I would like to recount the intriguing number of random persons, not necessarily possessing any accredited football knowledge, who felt the need to comment on the whole affair.

First of all Greta Van Sustern proved that you can have little or no knowledge of the sport of football but still be allowed to hold actual Packers stock. Tony Dungy lets Peyton know what would happen if he put the Colts in that situation. Tim Brown says "Yeah people forgot about me as soon as I left the league, but I still got something to say about Favre". Newt Gingrich gets winded during the theme music to Sunday Night Football but felt like he could chime in. Minor league baseball teams are beginning to mock Brett.

The Favre saga has done a lot to seperate the hard-core Cheeseheads from the casual Packer fans (with the Cheesheads general attitude being pro-Packers and the casual fans being pro-Favre) but how can you judge the fan who is willing to go to these lengths to have Favre back.

And hey there's alway the one great thing we got out of all this, the Vikings nuts in a vise.

Update: Oh and shout out to Marco Rivera, who retired today. Now there is a guy who should be revered as a true Packer hero.