I Look Like I’m Having a Stroke, I’m Missing Cake But, At Least The Sounds are in First!

It’s been a great start to the season. Seriously. It feels like 2005 all over again. In 2005 the Brewers put together a AAA roster that included potential superstars Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks and they were as good as advertised. Home runs, stolen bases, incredible athleticism, the whole package. After one month you just looked down on the field and you could see a potential championship. It didn’t hurt that at this time in ’05, Corey Hart was on the verge of being sent back to AA he had such a horrible start and beginning in May hit the switch and started hitting line drives everywhere.

In 2007 the same feeling is starting to overtake me. The Sounds have won six in a row as of this blog and are firing on all cylinders, except hitting with men in scoring position but you can’t have it all. Where would you put it? The pitching staff is tops in the league and the bullpen is shortening the game by three innings almost every time out. The two top prospects the Brewers put in Nashville are playing like top prospects. Opposing pitchers are finding out fast that pitching Ryan Braun down and away does not work all that well, he just hits homers the opposite way. Iowa found out tonight that trying to jam Braun will result in Braun getting a free guitar for bouncing one off the scoreboard. Pitch him away? Nope. Pitch him in? Ouch. I’ve been in baseball for 16 years and the only place left is down the middle……….Let me know how that works out.

Yovanni Gallardo had a rough first start. He was a little nervous and was leaving some pitches up and in AAA those get hit…hard. He shooed the butterflies away before his second start and struck out 12 New Orleans Zephyrs in six innings. It helped that New Orleans hitters somehow got the idea that major league baseball expanded the strike zone. Previously it had been from the knees to just below the letters, but the Mets AAA club was operating under the impression that the strike zone was being called from just below Grants Tomb to the moon. I really did think that Gallardo would throw a fastball and Lastings Milledge would hit himself in the head. Milledge is the big prospect for the Mets but from what we saw, he is to outfield defense what blenders are to brain surgery. In his first game he managed to strike out on a pitch over his head, butcher a fly ball and get picked off of first. The only way he could have hurt the Zephyr’s worse would have been to run over pitching prospect Phillip Humber in the dugout and then take the mound and give up JD Closser’s game deciding homer. That would have been the …. I don’t know…quadfecta or whatever word means screwing up each and every aspect of the game.

Back to Gallardo. He’s real good. Good velocity, good control, unflappable, keeps the ball low and knows what he is doing. Fun to watch. He even fields his position well. He’s put in two very solid efforts and while it is great to see Gallardo and Braun excel at AAA, it also means we will probably lose them all that sooner to the big leagues.

The Tennessean did a very nice feature on me in Mid April. In my ten years with the Sounds I had never had one written about me and it was a lot of fun. Finally a forum for my communist views! I tried to explain to the reporter, the very patient Bryan Mullen, that Leprechauns really were living in my attic, but he cut that out of the article. He asked me about my background which turns out to be one of lying (that’s how I got into the biz) vice (I bartended in the off-season for the last five years) and addiction (I am a huge Jane’s Addiction fan) I didn’t get a chance to wax poetic about my love of baseball and of Nashville, the closest I came was “Boston Baked and Fried has awesome Buffalo Grouper Tenders!” Not exactly Vin Scully is it?

Then came the bad part. The picture. There is a very good reason I am on the radio. I can’t smile for the camera. I always look like I’m having a stroke and the longer I have to smile the more I look like I ran face first into a patio door. They tried everything to get me to look normal to no avail. I looked like I needed sleep while at the same time having my face screw up like I swallowed a lemon. Luckily the article was fun and I didn’t come off as the curmudgeonly lunatic I really am and even my mom liked it (Though she did say the picture was horrible. Whose fault is that? Huh Mom?)

We are going through a craptastic part of the schedule. Gone for eight days, home for four, gone for eight, home for four……Wait! What the hell?!. Greer Stadium may not be as nice At&T Bricktown Ballpark but at least I get to sleep in my own bed! I had to leave my dog a picture of me so he’d remember that I own the place. The worst part is that some music festival I have never heard of is taking place May 11^th and 12^th at Riverfront Park and I will be in Colorado Springs (lucky me). One of my favorite bands, Cake, is playing. They are an incredibly inventive talented group who somehow turned Gloria Gaynor’s 70’s disco anthem “I Will Survive” into a very cool song. I will hate to miss them but Colorado Springs awaits! (Kill me now……please).

Here are two more bands you should go see. They play country mostly, though one plays a lot of covers and not enough of their amazing originals and the other plays on the road so much I never get to see her unless I’m in North Dakota or Jackson Hole, WY and lets face it, who is? In any case they are both incredible, beautiful and don’t run the other way when they see me.

The first is Magnolia, you can catch them in various Nashville locales, the other is Marci Mitchell and you should catch her when she is in town because she doesn’t get to play here much though she promises that will change.