Note: We’re going to pretend Craig Counsell and Christian Yelich don’t exist for a minute.
Last night, the good, God-fearing, beer-drinking, cheese-eating, brat-eating, lake-fishing men of Milwaukee lost their hold on first place in the division most Central to our National League. They were passed by a unit newly rejoined by a foreigner from a country best known for outlawing most private health insurance. The situation is dire. Dig up Wisconsin’s most infamous senator. No. Come on. Be serious for a minute. Yes, that one. Dig up Wisconsin’s most infamous senator, because the Reds are back.
One fun and silly thing about the Central Divisions in both of baseball’s leagues—and my colleague says this is a bad thing but that’s making me start to question my colleague’s fealty to the NIT—is that all ten of their teams stink. Every single one of them. The Royals are trying to find the magic lamp again but they just keep turning their hands green rubbing various trinkets at a Goodwill out in Liberty. The Pirates found some life for the first time since Jake Arrieta stole their soul but Isaac Newton is on a comeback tour and Pittsburgh’s accelerating downward at 9.8 m/s2. The Cardinals and White Sox hoodwinked the baseball world these last few years by turning loud, dumb offseasons into wins, but the conversion rate corrected and Jerry Reinsdorf is looking like King Louis XVI. The Cubs hoodwinked themselves by letting a bunch of reporters write “this is the year they’re back” pieces in January only to see their 75-win roster open the year on a 75-win pace. The Tigers are still trying to recapture that glorious four-year stretch where they won one pennant. The Guardians are reloading after they accidentally built a pitching staff around guys who (allegedly) like to beat up women. The Brewers have decided that the real aim in baseball is to make the playoffs every season by the slimmest margin possible while alienating your own players. The Twins—who lead the AL version of the Central with a sub-.500 record—are doing the Eric Andre gun meme with Byron Buxton’s corpse.
It’s upon this collection of failed republics that the Reds are trying to impose their way of life.
It must not stand.
To be clear, the Reds stink too. The Reds are a bad team. Looking at numbers from people who know what they’re talking about, the Reds are expected to finish six games under .500, even after winning these last nine games. They still could win the Central. They still should win again tonight, considering they’re playing the Rockies, the Central Divisions’ close cultural ally.
But this is the thing about the Red vision of the world:
It says teams six games under .500 get to win the division just as often as teams who win 100 games.
Dig him up, Bernie.
The 50-Mile Golf Course
Here’s something readers of a license plate/sports blog might like:
The premise of what Kennedy’s doing is explained here, in the fundraiser page, but the short version is that he’s playing one hole at each of 18 golf courses along a section of the Scottish coast, and he’s walking the whole way. 50 bloody miles.
One of the great things about the golf world—contrasted to NBA fans, for example—is how high a ratio it runs between love for its sport and need to evangelize the sport to others. If NBA fans are a 5 out of 10 on loving the NBA and a 10 out of 10 on needing to make others love it, golf people are a 10 out of 10 on loving golf and a 1 or a 2 out of 10 on needing to evangelize. That comes out to being ten or twenty times more enjoyable of people to interact with.
Soccer and Bondage
It’s no secret that The Barking Crow is enamored with foreign soccer’s systems of promotion and relegation, for the simplest reason that in a world with consequences, you don’t get the modern Pittsburgh Pirates. So it should be no surprise that The Athletic’s story this weekend on EFL clubs issuing their own bonds was met in Austin with much rejoicing.
The system has the following origins:
- English soccer teams have trouble getting lending from banks because they are generally a risky investment.
- English soccer teams often need money, especially if they’re going to compete and get better and stay at their current tier or get promoted.
- English soccer teams have taken to raising money from their fans.
The system works as follows:
- Teams issue bonds with a good return rate for investors.
- If the team does get promoted, they often pay out the bonds early, or they at least give investors a promised bonus, further sweetening the pot and linking the success of the investment to how much the club wins.
- If something goes wrong—could be relegation, could just be a mistake—investors lose their entire investment.
In effect, it’s a highly risky way for fans to put a financial investment into their favorite team alongside their emotional and social investments. In a limited way, it’s ownership by fans, more tangible financially than Green Bay Packers ownership but less tangible in terms of voting power. It is not a smart investment, most likely, but neither is betting on one’s team at a sportsbook, and in the majority of bond cases the money goes to the club while in the majority of sportsbook cases the money goes to the sportsbook (and if you do the season–tickets–as–investment thing, which my colleague does, you’re giving a lot of money to the maintainer your preferred resale market, StubHub or SeatGeek or whomever).
I would love a way to put a losable amount of money directly into my favorite teams.
Shaka Smart’s New House
Yeah, it’s creepy, but if the Milwaukee Business Journal thinks you need to know, who am I to stand in the Milwaukee Business Journal’s way?
He’s not moving properties. Just a teardown/rebuild situation. Great news for Marquette fans, yes, but better news for those of us hoping to turn Wisconsin into an NIT caliphate. That house has great natural defenses should NCAA loyalists try to invade by sea (lake) from Michigan.
The Midnight Milk Run
To admit something embarrassing here:
I thought the White Sox were off last night.
I’m not sure how I messed that up, but I forgot Joe Kelly could pitch, and I only learned he had pitched when I got home from running some milk over to the local children’s hospital.
Thankfully, he was nasty and we can let the performance speak for itself.
Unthankfully, someone on Twitter said he left the White Sox’ dugout with trainers? Hoping that wasn’t true. Waiting nervously for any talk about him in the pregame media scrum.
To those wondering why I was called to bring milk to the children’s hospital, it was mostly because of proximity. I do not normally deliver milk, nor was this through Stuber Eats. The children’s hospital staff realized they needed some milk, and they knew I was nearby, and I got the call. It was among the greatest honors of my life.
As some of you have seen on social media, Fargo responded to my absence by farting in my face when I got home and then scooching herself a little further down the couch while I made the realization I’d missed the Joe Kelly outing. She didn’t even get up. Just farted, sniffed the air for a second, and crawled a little further away from her own butt. I had nowhere to crawl.
