The number one British album today in 1973 was the Rolling Stones’ “Goats Head Soup,” despite (or perhaps because of) the BBC’s ban of one of its songs, “Star Star”:
Who shares a birthday with my brother (who celebrated his sixth birthday, on a Friday the 13th, by getting chicken pox from me)? Start with Paul Simon:
Robert Lamm plays keyboards — or more accurately, the keytar — for Chicago:
Sammy Hagar:
Craig McGregor of Foghat:
John Ford Coley, formerly a duet with England Dan Seals:
Rob Marche played guitar for the Jo Boxers, who …
One death of note: Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday night CBS-TV show showed off rock and roll (plus Topo Gigio and Senor Wences) to millions, died today in 1974:
I have spent time on Twitter and Facebook making fun of our vice president, Joe Biden, the possessor of a two-digit IQ but a mile-wide mouth.
I’ve written that Biden makes Dan Quayle look like a Phi Beta Kappa in comparison. Biden is Barack Obama’s impeachment insurance. Biden is to national politics what former U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D–Appleton) was to Wisconsin politics — someone whose ego was in inverse proportion to his intelligence.
But to prove that a stopped (digital) clock is right once a day, Biden has one commendable attribute: He owns a Corvette, as he bragged in an interview with Car and Driver:
C/D: Which cars do you most recall?
JB: I bought a ’51 Studebaker. My dad thought it was nice and calm, but it had that overdrive, and it was fast. Then I bought a 1952 Plymouth convertible, candy-apple red with a split windshield. I think that was my favorite. I had a ’56 Chevy, then in college I bought a 100,000-mile Mercedes 190SL with those Solex carburetors that never functioned. And I still have my 1967 Goodwood-green Corvette, 327, 350-horse, with a rear-axle ratio that really gets up and goes. The Secret Service won’t let me drive it. I’m not allowed to drive anything. It’s the one thing I hate about this job. I’m serious.
Well, we can all hope that Biden gets the chance to drive the Corvette after Jan. 20, 2013. I’m serious.
Not surprisingly, Biden touts the government bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler:
C/D: It must be gratifying to see Chrysler pay off its government loans six years early. Where is GM in its payback schedule?
JB: GM is on schedule. They’ve paid back a significant portion. We still hold 33.3 percent of GM common equity, but the point is that 33.3 percent is worth something. So taxpayers have an asset. But the best news is GM is talking about hiring back essentially the last of the laid-off workers by year’s end. No one ever thought we’d get there.
C/D: You said the loss of GM and Chrysler would’ve killed a million jobs?
JB:One million, absolutely. The critics talk about, “Oh, the market would have balanced things out.” But that’s like saying, “In the long run, we’ll all be dead.” Had we not forced the car companies to reorganize, then given them help, well, the failure of the suppliers then could have caused Ford to fail as well. So this has exceeded everyone’s expectations.
That’s Biden’s (which means Obama’s) view. Now here’s reality, as observed by Megan McArdle of The Atlantic:
What lesson, exactly, are we supposed to learn from this “success”? What question did it answer? “Can the government keep companies operating if it is willing to give them a virtually interest free loan of $50 billion, and a tax-free gift of $20 billion or so?” I don’t think that this was really in dispute. When all is said and done, we will probably have given them a sum equal to its 2007 market cap and roughly four times GM’s 2008 market capitalization.
No, the question was not whether GM could make a profit after a bankruptcy that stiffed most of its creditors and shed the most grotesque burdens of its legacy costs, nor whether giving companies money will make them more profitable. The question is whether it was worth it to the taxpayer to burn $10-20 billion in order to give the company another shot at life. To put that in perspective, GM had about 75,000 hourly workers before the bankruptcy. We could have given each of them a cool $250,000 and still come out well ahead compared to the ultimate cost of the bailout including the tax breaks–and over $100,000 a piece if we just wanted to break even against our losses on the common stock.
And if we’d done that, we’d have saved ourselves in other ways. We would have reduced some of the overcapacity that plagues the global industry. We would not have seen the government throwing its weight into a bankruptcy proceeding in order to redistribute money from creditors to pensioners, which isn’t a good precedent.
But even if you still think that the bailout was a good idea, there’s something you should consider before we start celebrating the administration’s Solomonic wisdom: the Obama administration’s rush to dispose of its GM stake before the 2012 election is probably costing us billions. No one I interviewed for my piece on GM was exactly enthusiastic about an early IPO; doing it so quickly meant that the company had very little to show in the way of earnings and stability.
Car and Driver didn’t bother to ask Biden why the Obama administration is working hard to make sure that no one will be able to buy the 2000s equivalent of Biden’s Corvette. Fuel economy regulations the administration is jamming down our throats and pollution regulations Obama is trying to jam down our throats mean that cars will get smaller and less capable but more expensive. (Particularly pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, which GM was able to build and sell at a profit before 2008 happened. GM also makes money on Corvettes.) But that’s OK because given what the Obama administration is doing to the economy and specifically to the dollar (not to mention Obama’s plans for carbon taxes), neither you nor I will be able to afford a new vehicle from GM or any other carmaker anyway. (Which appears to be what the administration wants given the money it is wasting on “high-speed” rail.)
This is the kind of “industrial policy” that a majority of voters decided they wanted in November 2008. That includes the infamous Cash for Clunkers, explained in this comment:
You had people with 15 year old Ford Explorers that were paid off that still ran perfectly fine. Sure their mpgs went from 18mpg to 28. However, their monthly payments went from $0 to $400. In the course of a 5 year loan that’s $24,000. That much money buys you 6,000 gallons of gas (at $4/gal) which allows you to drive a bit over 100K miles. You’d have to drive for a decade just to break even. I’m also willing to bet that an Explorer can run another 10 years before going to the scrap yard over your brand new Chevy Cruze.
The question car enthusiasts ask is what car-buyers will get in exchange for the tens of billions of our tax dollars. And based on this Motor Trendinterview with GM’s Mark Reuss, you should not be optimistic:
With CAFE regulations only expected to tighten, Reuss sees the truck market evolving into more specialized vehicles. Referencing his time abroad living in countries with much higher fuel prices, Reuss noted that people tended to use the best vehicle for their needs rather than a catch-all pickup truck like you find in America today. He gave the example of a flower shop making deliveries with a full-size [Ford] E-Series van when a Transit Connect would work fine. Where today he sees American craftsman buying a pickup truck that can do anything from hauling the family to hauling a horse trailer, in the future he sees them buying fewer all-purpose trucks and more vehicles that fit their specific needs.
You may have seen Chevrolet’s incredibly annoying Volt commercials. If you have, you know that the Volt is a gas/electric car that can be plugged in. Chevy’s goal was to sell 10,000 Volts in 2011, at about $32,500, including a $7,500 federal tax rebate. According to Jalopnik.com, through the end of September, Chevy had shipped to dealers (sales plus those sitting on car lots) 3,895 Volts, with more than 2,600 of them for sale. Do the math, and in nine months Chevy has sold around 1,200 Volts, about 130 of them per month, including 723 in September. In contrast, Chevy sold 5,246 Suburbans in September.
The financial experts say that families should spend no more than one-third to one-half their annual income on a vehicle. (As of 2009, the average car cost 22.1 weeks of family income.) When you consider all the things that families do — commuting to work, transporting kids to their various activities, or pulling a trailer, camper or boat — the idea that a family will buy one vehicle per family need is absurd, not to mention unaffordable. Between costs and the fact that vehicles last longer, families will be looking for more, not less, out of their vehicles. If GM can’t figure that out, then all that taxpayer money was wasted, because GM will not be long for this world. (Nor, one thinks, will be activities that require further carbon emissions, such as boating or snowmobiling.)
Alfred Sloan, the long-time chairman of GM, was fond of a term called “planned obsolescence,” which would prompt new car sales when cars wore out or their owners got tired of them. That seems to be what the carmakers seem to be refoisting on consumers with such technologies as cylinder deactivation and start–stop, where cars’ engines shut off at stop lights to allegedly save fuel and emissions.
The latter came to mind Monday when I dropped off our oldest son at his soccer match, went back home to pick up our daughter from Girl Scouts, and returned to the other side of Ripon to pick up our other son (his school is across the street from the park where the soccer field is located), and watch said soccer match. Between our house and the school and soccer field, route alternative one includes three stoplights, one four-way stop sign and two additional stop signs; alternative two replaces the two stoplights with one more four-way stop and two more stop signs. One trip means a dozen opportunities for your start–stop-equipped car to shut off its engine. It is impossible for me to imagine that such a system will not decrease the life of the vehicle on which it is equipped. That may represent an opportunity to sell another car for GM; for me, it’s a reason to not buy a car so equipped.
GM’s recent government-fueled (see McArdle’s explanation) profits notwithstanding, the thing automakers appear to have not grasped yet is that their future includes fewer, not more, vehicle sales. Businesses make profits in an era of reduced sales by increasing profits on each sale. If cars last longer, over time automakers will sell fewer of them, and at some point carmakers will run out of new markets. (China, for instance, which appears to be taking a 180-degree turn away from freedom.) A company increases profits by some combination of increasing revenues and reducing expenses. (See United Auto Workers.)
This is the time of year where automakers used to roll out their new cars and car enthusiasts would be excited about said new cars. Automakers now roll them out all year, but even independent of that, there’s nothing particularly exciting or, more importantly, useful coming from the automakers these days that could be considered affordable. I will believe in the value of hybrids or all-electric vehicles as soon as our family of five and all their stuff can fit in one and be transported to our three-digit-mileage destination without making their parents bankrupt paying for said vehicle. That’s not happening anytime soon.
We begin with an entry from the It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Dept.: Today in 1956, Chrysler Corp. launched its 1957 car lineup with a new option: a record player. The record player didn’t play albums or 45s, however; it played only seven-inch discs at 16⅔ rpm. Chrysler sold them until 1961.
Today in 1957, Little Richard was on an Australian tour when he publicly renounced rock and roll and embraced religion and announced he was going to record Gospel music from now on. The conversion was the result of his praying during a flight when one of the plane’s engines caught fire.
Little Richard returned to rock and roll five years later.
The number one song today in 1963:
The number one album today in 1968 was Big Brother and the Holding Company’s “Cheap Thrills”:
The short list of birthdays starts with a British composer familiar to high school band members everywhere: Ralph Vaughan Williams:
Sam Moore, half of Sam and Dave:
The deep-voiced Melvin Franklin was one of the original Temptations:
Pat Dinizio sang for the Smithereens:
Two deaths of note: Gene Vincent died of a perforated ulcer at 36 today in 1971:
Ricky Wilson, who played guitar for the B-52s, died of AIDS today in 1985:
One of the unpleasant aspects of the two-party system is how people decide to run for an office then, after they don’t win but their primary competitor does, you never hear from them until the winner loses or decides to leave office.
Consider, for instance, Nancy Nusbaum, who ran against U.S. Rep. Toby Roth (R–Appleton) in 1994, then ran against Steve Kagen, who mistakenly won the Eighth Congressional District Democratic primary in 2006. Regardless of whether you agree with Nusbaum politically, anyone who knows her knows that Nusbaum clearly had more political experience and more going on upstairs than Kagen. So why didn’t Nusbaum ran against Kagen, who embarrassed the Eighth Congressional District every time he opened his mouth, in 2008 or 2010?
Another candidate against Kagen was Jamie Wall, the Green Bay business consultant and former state Department of Commerce administrator who ran against Kagen in 2006 (but not 2008 or 2010), and now wants to run against the man who mercifully ended (for now) Kagen’s political career, U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble (R–Sherwood).
The Green Bay Press–Gazette reports that Wall is “Frustrated with what he sees as a ‘mess’ in Washington,” as if this is a new development:
“Congress is broken,” Wall said. “It’s time for members of Congress to act like adults instead of squabbling children (and) focus on the issues that matter more than anything to the people who sent them to Washington, which is the economy and jobs.” …
Wall cast himself as a problem solver who would approach the nation’s challenges in a pragmatic, bipartisan spirit.
“We have a serious, serious problem with the job situation here,” Wall said. “We really need people who will make this their priority and are willing to work in a practical manner to get things done for the citizens of the country and state. We don’t have that right now.”
“In the business world,” Wall continued, “what you do when you’re faced with a problem is you get all the facts together and you think about what they mean. You talk to people who know something about the problem and you come to a solution in a practical way and execute it. That’s certainly not what the pattern of behavior has been in Congress lately. You have people with ideological lines drawn in the sand (who) won’t work well with others, won’t play with others.”
Problem-solver Wall quickly morphed into Democratic attack dog Wall:
“I’ve never met Congressman Ribble, but I do think that he’s part of a broken system which is not serving the American people or the people in Northeast Wisconsin well.”
When pressed to identify specific areas of disagreement with Ribble on policy, Wall noted Ribble’s support for a federal budget plan closely associated with U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, who chairs the House Budget Committee that also includes Ribble.
Wall claims the plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” a recurring Democratic line of attack Republicans have pilloried as a cynical ploy to scare seniors. …
To help kick-start the nation’s sputtering economy, Wall voiced support for portions of President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan, known as the American Jobs Act.
In addition to applauding the president’s proposed extension of a payroll tax cut as “something people of both parties should be able to agree on,” Wall said he favored new infrastructure spending to boost the economy, especially at a time when federal borrowing rates are hovering around 2 percent.
“Right now, we have literally thousands of people who used to work in the construction industry right here in Northeast Wisconsin,” Wall said. “We have decaying infrastructure … That all adds up to me to a case for targeted spending in infrastructure to put people back to work to and — over the long term — make the economy more productive. I’d start with those ideas.”
To review: Wall thinks absolutely nothing should be changed about a program created in the 1960s in a country with substantially different demographics (as in a shrinking ratio of workers to recipients) than 2011 America. Wall believes that, since the $787 billion stimulus bill didn’t delivered the promised less-than-8-percent unemployment, a stimulus bill with a different price tag will. And Wall apparently has nothing to suggest to revitalize the economy after all the jobs from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (to wit, the U.S. 41 project jobs) go away. Great problem-solving skills, there, Jamie.
My advice to Democrats running or planning to run in 2012: You need to find a new hymnal. The approval ratings for President Obama continue to plunge downward. The approval ratings for Congress are worse, but the latter set of approval ratings include congressmen of both parties. Voters who don’t like John Boehner get Nancy Pelosi instead. You think that’s progress?
If the tea party contributed only one thing to American politics, it was to focus attention on the deficit and our $14 trillion debt. Independent of what the money-for-nothing Occupy _______ people think, financial responsibility is now the order of the day. (If for no other reason than the fact that financial irresponsibility on numerous levels helped cause the mess we’re in today.)
Democrats need to convince voters that they can be trusted to, you know, do better than run some of the largest state deficits in the nation, as Gov. James Doyle and majority Democrats did in 2009–10. Want to complain about Republican wasteful spending? Fine. (There are numerous GOP targets from which to choose.) But replacing a president and party that generated record deficits in the first eight years of the 2000s with a president and party that exceeded even that in the last two years of the 2000s’ first decade did not strike voters as progress, as Nov. 2’s election results demonstrated.
The political narrative is that Republicans are for tax breaks regardless of what they do to the deficit, and Democrats are for increasing government spending regardless of what it does to the deficit. Demographics (all the 2006 Democratic U.S. Senate winners get to stand for reelection) and history (the House of Representatives hasn’t swung from one party to the other and back since the 195os), and an economy that is not likely to be perceived as better one year from now, make 2012 likely to be a bad year for Democrats. If Democrats want to change that, they need to change themselves.
If Wall thinks Eighth Congressional District Democrats are as stupidly liberal as the Occupy _______ types are, he’s going to lose the 2012 race too.
Local 578 authorized a strike, but hasn’t taken the step to go on strike yet. Should Local 578 actually go on strike, then every striking member should be immediately locked up at the Winnebago Mental Health Institution. Striking during a recession is inviting permanent unemployment — for those who voted to strike or not.
This is the most recent iteration of this year’s nastiness between union and management. Earlier this year, public employee unions faced off against their bosses, the taxpayers, in the Legislature’s restrictions on public employee collective bargaining rights. Two Republican state senators lost to Democrats in Recallarama, but the Republicans maintain control of the Senate and the collective bargaining right changes are not going back to the way they were.
The difference, however, is that Oshkosh Corp. is in the private sector, and government and schools are not. Government-employee unions should not exist, but this conflict is between Oshkosh and its union. People could vote with their feet on whether or not they support Oshkosh Corp., although I think boycotts of military vehicles over Oshkosh Corp.’s labor relations are unlikely.
If this seems similar to 2009’s drama between Mercury Marine and its union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 1947, it’s not. Mercury Marine promised to close its Fond du Lac manufacturing facilities unless IAM Local 1947 made concessions. Under the economic concept of “enlightened self-interest,” the union eventually agreed to the concessions. Add contributions (as in the half-percent sales tax we Fond du Lac County residents are paying) by the state, the City of Fond du Lac and Fond du Lac County, and instead Mercury moved its Stillwater, Okla., manufacturing to Fond du Lac. Oshkosh also has a more diverse economy than Fond du Lac, although a prolonged strike would have an undeniable economic impact on the Oshkosh area.
(Which makes one wonder where new state Sen. Jessica King (D–Oshkosh) has been in all this. King’s predecessor, Sen. Randy Hopper (R–Fond du Lac), worked hard to get a Mercury Marine deal, and was rewarded by being defeated by King. Will King realize the impact of a strike and publicly advocate for a settlement, or will she take orders from her union masters and stand with the working-t0-unemploy-themselves workers?)
There is one definite similarity, however, as the Oshkosh Northwestern noticed — attitude:
One Local 578 member wore a t-shirt saying “I’m voting no because we deserve better” called the offer “a joke” for a work force that builds military vehicles that can save soldiers’ lives.
“People lose sight of the fact we’re building vehicles for the military,” he said. “This offer was a slap in the face.”
I think the Local 578 member lost sight of the fact that he builds vehicles for the military, whose members are actually serving the country. Unions are not serving the country; they are employees who have decided that everybody should be treated exactly the same, regardless of their actual contributions to their employer. Every time Oshkosh Corp. has had a job fair, the number of applicants vastly exceeded the number of new hires.
The only time a strike ever makes sense is during a booming economy when stopping production negatively affects the bottom line. Anyone who thinks we’re in a booming economy now is ignorant, to say the least. Moreover, given current political trends, I am dubious that military vehicle manufacturers are going to get much new business from the federal government in the foreseeable future. Of course, Oshkosh Corp. builds much more than military vehicles — Oshkosh airport fire trucks, Pierce fire trucks, McNeilus concrete mixers, Medtec ambulances, Jerr–Dan tow trucks and other vehicles — but not in Oshkosh.
One comment on the Northwestern website to the story points out another similarity between the Mercury Marine situation and the Oshkosh Corp. situation. Neither Mercury nor Oshkosh is a locally owned company. Mercury is a division of Brunswick Corp., and Brunswick was ready to move Mercury’s Fond du Lac operations to Oklahoma. Oshkosh Corp., as is Brunswick, is a public company, and the shareholders (and half of American households own stock in a publicly traded company) do not care where Oshkosh builds its vehicles, or about the Oshkosh workforce; they care only about profits.
If the contract rejection is an effort to get a better deal, that’s one thing. If Oshkosh’s union actually goes on strike … well, if Oshkosh management is responsible, Oshkosh already has plans to build its vehicles somewhere besides Oshkosh for reasons independent of possible strikes.
Those who pay attention to such things may notice that this blog now has its own domain name, steveprestegard.com. I figured after six months of daily posting that my deep thoughts deserved something more than a Blogspot or WordPress domain name.
Since the old address seems to flow into the new address, you will be able to find everything I’ve written since March 31 at either presteblog.wordpress.com or at steveprestegard.com. (I think.)
Should I figure out how to do it (Google Apps is proving recalcitrant), I may even get my own email address.
Meanwhile, in addition to Twitter (@presty1965) and Facebook (where I am the only Steve Prestegard), I am now on Google Plus (where I also am the only Steve Prestegard).
Proving that there is no accounting for taste, I present the number one song today in 1960:
The number two single today in 1970 was originally written for a bank commercial:
Britain’s number one album today in 1970 was Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”:
The number one album today in 1981 was The Police’s “Ghost in the Machine”:
The number one single today in 1987:
The number one British album today in 1992 was REM’s “Automatic for the People”:
Today in 2007, Blender magazine released a list of what it deemed the worst lyricists in rock music. Sting topped the list for name-dropping Russian author Vladimir Nobokov in “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and for quoting a Volvo bumper sticker in “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”:
Birthdays start with Alan Cartwright, who played bass for Procol Harum:
Morgan a smash up the middle, base hit to center! Here comes Gomez! Around third! The throw and the Brewers win! … The Brewers are moving on, on a base hit by Nyjer Morgan! He’s being mobbed! Whoa, what a scene! Nyjer Morgan … who has delivered so many times this year, delivers a base hit to center field to score Carlos Gomez! And the Brewers have beaten Arizona! What a scene out here! Morgan mobbed at the mound! Whoa!
You really have to hear Bob Uecker’s call of the first playoff series win for the Brewers since 1982, which means the Brewers will face St. Louis in the National League Championship Series starting this afternoon.
The Cardinals did themselves and the Brewers a favor by defeating Philadelphia in the other National League Division Series. Thanks to the National League’s win in the All-Star Game earlier this year, the National League will have home-field advantage (hosting games 1 and 2 and, if necessary, 6 and 7) in the World Series. And because wild-card St. Louis won instead of number-one seed Philadelphia, number two seed Milwaukee, possessor of the best home record in baseball this season (and 3–0 at home but 0–2 on the road in the postseason so far), gets home field advantage in the NLCS.
The Brewers and Cardinals have a history, of course. St. Louis defeated the Brewers 4 games to 3 in the 1982 World Series. And since the Brewers moved to the National League, Cardinals–Brewers games have been must-see occasions, particularly since the Cubs have reverted into their usual state of ineptitude.
I’ve been to St. Louis twice to watch the Cardinals, first at the previous-plastic-iteration Busch Stadium, and at the current Busch.
In 2008, my father, his high school buddy and I went on a four-game road trip that started in St. Louis (above, I'm with the bust of Cardinals announcer Jack Buck) …… included Cincinnati and Comiskey Park in Chicago … … and ended up at Miller Park with an extra-inning game that included two sausage races.
St. Louis probably has the best atmosphere for baseball in the major leagues, both because of the Cardinals’ well-designed (but expensive-to-dine-in) stadium and because the Cardinals are subject number one of every day in St. Louis. The Cardinals are a well-run operation that fixed one of its errors when they moved their games back to where they always belong, 50,000-watt KMOX (1120 AM), a station you can probably get in your car in your driveway after sunset.
More history: Milwaukee native Uecker was a Cardinal who was the backup catcher (to Fox Sports’ Tim McCarver) when the Cardinals won the 1964 World Series.
Uecker’s World Series contribution to the Cardinals wasn’t during the seven games, however. Before Game 1 in St. Louis, probably because it seemed like a good idea at the time, he decided to try to catch fly balls with a tuba:
Associated Press photo
(Although I have not checked, I think it’s safe to say that when the UW Marching Band played before Game 3 of the 1982 World Series, no UW tuba player tried to emulate Uecker.)
Doug Russell adds other reasons for the Brewers–Cardinals rivalry:
And now, just as the Packers had to get past their chief rival to get to the Super Bowl; that is what is standing between the Brewers and the World Series. Remember, of course, that a true rival isn’t one that just beats up on the other; there has to be success at the same time. You actually have to be playing for something to make a rivalry all it can be.
Along with mutual success, the other key element of what makes a hated rival is how much hatred can be spewed among their fans.
Cardinals fans are a passionate lot. They have long supported their team through good times and bad. They are, without question, the most passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans in the game.
Just ask them. …
The Cardinals, led by manager Tony La Russa, also think that everyone should comport themselves with the dignity of attending the opera or ballet when on a baseball field. It is called a diamond after all.
You see, though, that’s why they hate the Brewers. Because the Brewers are a fun, irreverent, boisterous group that have un-tucked their jerseys; gestured their “beast mode” to the crowd; and actually look like they are having a good time playing a child’s game.
Russell quotes the unrelated Chris Russell of stltoday.com:
“It’s okay to hate the Brewers. Really, it is. They have that familiar upstart swagger that the Cardinals are used to seeing in teams that catch a few breaks, go on a one-year run and suddenly feel invincible. Typically failing franchises like the Brewers, Reds and Cubs seem to feel like the world owes them something for being long-time losers. They bitch and moan and sulk when things don’t go their way, but then when they get their rare season that involves a playoff push they act like they are part of this juggernaut that can’t be messed with. Like they’ve been there before and other teams just can’t stack up. It always comes along with a brash, yet undeserved, cocky attitude and public outcries that involve choice words for the only team in the division that seems to be everyone’s rival. The Cardinals.
Every wonder why that is? It’s because those teams haven’t been there. They retool every year with crops of washed up veterans and hopeful youngsters, and when that one magical season works for them they don’t know how to handle it. The proof is in their playoff success. Or lack thereof. The Cardinals, on the other hand, have been there, and have been the cream of the crop in the division – with few exceptions – since 2000. …
[Brewers fans] boo everything. It’s almost as if they don’t know what’s going in the game at all. Someone makes a lineup change and you’d think Santa walked onto the field in Philadelphia. It’s okay to boo, but at least know what you’re doing. Idiot douche bags.
(One wonders what St. Loo’s Russell thinks of Phillies and Yankees fans, who, contrary to his assertion, really do boo everything.)
To those gross generalizations, Milwaukee’s Russell replies:
This is why Brewers fans hate Cardinals fans. That column sums up what they think of the rest of the league, wrapped up in one spiteful, uppity, self-absorbed, hate filled, nonsensical, fantasyland fueled diatribe. This is how they all think. This is how Cardinals fans view themselves; the lone arbitrator of what is right and what is wrong with baseball. They get to decide because they are the only ones that respect the game. Again, just ask them. …
So that brings us to today. Once again, it’s the Brewers and the Cardinals; two teams that cannot escape each other. In the two biggest series in franchise history, what are the odds of both being played against the same franchise?
But, that’s what makes a rivalry great. Mutual success and mutual distaste.
Not to mention rivalry-fueled overstatement.
More pertinent than the rivalry between the teams’ fans is the rivalry between the teams. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Haudricourt merely had to stick his recorder or notebook in the middle of this:
When it was suggested to St. Louis rightfielder Lance Berkman that there is a general perception that the Cardinals and Brewers don’t like each other, he bluntly replied, “And that’s correct.”
Right-hander Zack Greinke, who will start Game 1 for the Brewers on Sunday afternoon at Miller Park, certainly did nothing to quell the bitterness when asked if the clubs genuinely dislike each other.
“Maybe now,” he said. “I think no one really likes (Chris) Carpenter. Besides that, I think (the Brewers) respect mostly everyone on their team.”
Greinke referred to the Cardinals’ ace, whose 1-0 shutout of favored Philadelphia in Game 5 of the National League Division Series propelled wild-card St. Louis into the confrontation of NL Central rivals. That comment drew an immediate and expected response from St. Louis manager Tony La Russa.
“Very disappointed that Greinke would say that,” said La Russa. “I don’t know him a lot, but I always thought he was a high-character, classy guy. That’s a bad comment to make unless you know Chris Carpenter.
“Our attitude is we look at ourselves and we grade ourselves. And even if we don’t like what’s happening on the other side, it’s not our business unless somebody crosses the line.
“So, I think the Brewers should take care of their players and their comments and not be concerned about other players and comments. But, like I said at the beginning, if they had Chris Carpenter they would be cheering for him and believing in him and they would not allow somebody that was a teammate to make a crack like that.”
It’s certainly no secret that the Cardinals do not like Brewers centerfielder Nyjer Morgan, going back to past transgressions when Morgan played for Washington, including a forearm shiver he gave unsuspecting catcher Bryan Anderson in a game last season.
Then, there was the confrontation between Carpenter and Morgan the last time the Brewers and Cardinals met Sept. 7 in St. Louis. Carpenter struck out Morgan in the ninth inning, cursing him after doing so and then turning his back.
Morgan tossed a wad of chewing tobacco toward Carpenter, prompting Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols to come across the infield to confront him. That action led to the benches and bullpens clearing, but it stopped there. …
Brewers rightfielder Corey Hart had perhaps the best take on the feelings about Morgan and Carpenter.
“With both of those guys, if they’re on your team you like them and if they’re on the other team you probably don’t like them,” said Hart. “Whether you like the guys or not, you respect them.”
My favorite Ray Charles song was number one today in 1961:
Today in 1969, the BBC’s “Top of the Pops” refused for the first time to play that week’s number one song because of what singers Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin were supposedly doing while recording “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus”:
According to a classmate of mine, Madison radio stations play Britain’s number one single today in 1971 too often:
The number one single today in 1976, which makes wonder if, to paraphrase Chuck Berry, Beethoven would have been rolling over at this:
Birthdays begin with John Lennon:
John Entwistle of the Who:
Jackson Browne:
Terry Balsamo played guitar for Limp Bizkit and Evanescence:
Uecker’s World Series contribution to the Cardinals wasn’t during the seven games, however. Before Game 1 in St. Louis, probably because it seemed like a good idea at the time, he decided to try to catch fly balls with a tuba:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 