I have to start off by saying that I found each of these items over at a great Pittsburgh Pirates blog called ‘Bucco Blog’, which can be viewed by clicking here.  They are an always interesting read, and will definitely be worth a look when the Brewers travel to play the Pirates for a four game series next week.

• First off, I thought I would point out a page ranking site that I saw on Bucco Blog a little over a month ago.  It is called Alexa and can be accessed by clicking here.  On the Alexa site for MLBlogs, they list the most commonly accessed MLBlog sites.  I was proud to see that My Brewers made the list, which pretty much means that I have enough people visiting the site to be listed on my own instead of in the group of "Other Websites".  Here is a complete listed (please note Brewer Nation, Brian Anderson’s House of Blogs, Ask Dave, and Jenks Joint as other Brewers blogs in the list):

Where people go on Mlblogs.com:

1. http://alyssa.mlblogs.com – 13%
2. http://gameday.mlblogs.com – 5%
3. http://mosaic.mlblogs.com – 4%
4. http://buccoblog.mlblogs.com – 4%
5. http://insidethedodgers.mlblogs.com – 4%
6. http://snaggingbaseballs.mlblogs.com – 3%
7. http://rumormill.mlblogs.com – 3%
8. http://kevinyoukilis.mlblogs.com – 2%
9. http://mlbastian.mlblogs.com – 2%
10. http://pickmeup.mlblogs.com – 2%
11. http://davidwright.mlblogs.com – 2%
12. http://fantasy411.mlblogs.com – 2%
13. http://reid.mlblogs.com – 2%
14. http://dugoutdiary.mlblogs.com – 1%
15. http://js.mlblogs.com – 1%
16. http://bombersbeat.mlblogs.com – 1%
17. http://tommy.mlblogs.com – 1%
18. http://daboogiedownbronx.mlblogs.com – 1%
19. http://whitesoxpride.mlblogs.com – 1%
20. http://marktremonti.mlblogs.com – 1%
21. http://geoffjenkins.mlblogs.com – 1%
22. http://redsoxchick.mlblogs.com – 1%
23. http://babrewer.mlblogs.com – 1%
24. http://brewernation.mlblogs.com – 1%
25. http://yourenotagolfer.mlblogs.com – 1%
26. http://royals.mlblogs.com – 1%
27. http://trsullivan.mlblogs.com – 1%
28. http://yankeeschick.mlblogs.com – 1%
29. http://boogiedownbaseball.mlblogs.com – 1%
30. http://browniepoints.mlblogs.com – 1%
31. http://lacarreraespacial.mlblogs.com – 1%
32. http://turntwo.mlblogs.com – 1%
33. http://mybrewers.mlblogs.com – 1%
34. http://badboy.mlblogs.com – 1%
35. http://sterno.mlblogs.com – 1%
36. http://mlblogs.mlblogs.com – 1%
37. http://allthewrightstuff.mlblogs.com – 1%
38. http://azdiamondhacks.mlblogs.com – 1%
39. http://beck.mblogs.com – 1%
40. http://bestblog.mlblogs.com – 1%
41. http://raymond.mlblogs.com – 1%
42. http://groundskeeper.mlblogs.com – 1%
43. http://mlbkid.mlblogs.com – 1%
44. http://worldcupreports.mlblogs.com – 1%
45. http://davenelson.mlblogs.com – 1%
46. http://danholmes.mlblogs.com – 1%
47. http://thekingsgame.mlblogs.com – 1%
    Other websites – 18%

• Also, check out Pro Trade Live at http://live.protrade.com.  It is a page that you can view the probability of your team winning the game that is currently being played. It also allows fans to predict the outcome of the game being played that day.  I could spend the next 30 minutes explaining the site, but why don’t you just go check it out on your own.  I like the concept and will probably check it out on a regular basis.

It is not very often that a player hits a major milestone in his career, but it is even more rare when two players reach major milestones on the same day.  Today, June 28, 2007, just happens to be one of those days.  In a season where a player, considered by many (including myself) to be one of the biggest jerks in recent history, will break arguably the most hallowed record in Major League history, two of the nicer guys in the league reached a couple milestones of their own.

This afternoon, Frank Thomas of the Toronto Blue Jays (that still sounds weird), hit the 500th home run of his career.  I was always a big "Big Hurt" fan, even though he played for the hated Chicago White Sox.  As a matter of fact, back in the mid 90′s, when I used to spend many of my summer days at Milwaukee County Stadium, I was able to get an autograph from Frank on an 8×10 photo.  At the time, it was the best autograph I had ever received, and one that I still treasure to this day.  He was a great guy when he signed the autograph, and it helped to forever change the way I felt about him as a player.  Ever since that day I have pulled for him, and it became easier after the Brewers switched leagues.  So today, when I saw he hit 500, I smiled knowing one of my favorites had made history.  Another thing that made me happy was seeing that the fan that got the ball returned it to Frank… a classy thing, from a classy fan (something we heard about Twins fans from Todd a week ago).

Tonight, Craig Biggio also reached a milestone, but his had nothing to do with power.  Biggio got his 3,000th hit as a member of the Houston Astros against the Colorado Rockies.  This week, when he was in Milwaukee, I pulled against him more than I ever have.  No, I am not a jerk, I just remembered back to 1992 when Robin Yount hit his 3,000th with yours truly in the attendance.  It was so great to see this event in person with 50,000 other close friends.  I hoped Yount would do it at home and he did.  It was a moment I will never forget and I wanted Houston Astros fans to have the ability to witness the same for their guy.  Like Thomas, I was very happy to see this "good guy" hit his milestone. 

Overall, even though both milestones may not mean as much as they used to (to some), it was a great day for two great guys and for Major League Baseball as a whole!

WWW typically means World Wide Web, but today it means Win Win Win, because that is what the Brewers just did against the Astros.  And we all know that Win + Win + Win = Sweep, the first of the Astros in Brewers history.  When Damian Miller smacked the game winning home run yesterday, the crowd went absolutely nuts… because, afterall, it was La Crosse, WI day out at the ballpark.  Ned Yost said in the post game press conference that he did not start Damian last season on La Crosse day, and he received letters from angry citizens asking him to please start the La Crosse native this season on their day.  He said that he marked the calender and made sure Damian was the starting catcher. 

http://a1503.v108692.c10869.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1503/10869/v0001/mlb.download.akamai.com/10869/2007/open/tp/archive06/062707_houmil_miller_gwhr_tp_350.wmv

I would say that the move paid off big time… except, of course, for the Fan Zone store.  You see, Wednesday’s are "Walk Off Wednesday’s".  If you buy the jersey t-shirt of a player and they hit a walk off home run, you receive an autographed bat of that player.  So, take hundreds of rabid La Crosse based Damian Miller fans, many of whom probably purchased the shirts to support their local son, and then have Miller hit that walk off home run to win all of those people an autographed bat.  I wonder how many bats were won and how much it will cost to ship them all to La Crosse?  What a great day for Damian, La Crosse, and Brewers fans everywhere!

I was just checking the pitching matchups for all of today’s games and found that there are a lot of old pitchers pitching:

• Woody Williams of Houston is 40
• Greg Maddux of San Diego is 41
• Jamie Moyer of Philadelphia is 44
• Roger Clemens of New York (AL) is 44
• Tom Glavine of New York (NL) is 41
• John Smoltz of Atlanta is 40
• Kenny Rogers of Detroit is 42 (rained out)

Has there ever been a day with that many 40+ pitchers scheduled to pitch?  Just imagine if Randy Johnson would have pitched today instead of tomorrow?  I have not seen or heard about this anywhere else, so I thought I would bring it to your attention. What a group of future Hall of Famer/Old Guys!

I have attempted to post this three times; once right after the 6th inning, another as soon as the game ended, and finally right now.  For some reason my connection to MLBlogs kept getting lost even though I was able to get to any other web page, so I decided to give up and just go to bed.  So here goes:

Wow, what a big inning!  From Weeks’ single to clear the bases, to Graffanino’s two run home run, to Johnny’s grand slam, the nine run 6th was among the most exciting innings I have ever seen.  They were firing on all cylinders from the one of the lineup all the way down to the bottom (outside Bill Hall and the pitchers spot, I guess).  A person could have literally gone to the kitchen to get a snack and a beverage and returned to see that the score had changed from a 4-2 deficit to an 11-4 advantage.  It happened that fast.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous before the big inning because, even though he only surrendered 5 hits, Claudio Vargas had managed to give up 4 runs and looked pretty erratic.  For some reason, the Brewers offense comes alive when he is pitching.  As a matter of fact, the Brewers raised their record to 11-2 in games that Claudio starts.  That is an amazing stat when you really think about it.  Especially for a pitcher that rarely goes any longer than five innings.

Today, the Brewers see if they can make the 3rd time a charm for them, too, as they go for a sweep against the ‘Stros.  Unfortunately, the Cubs keep winning too, otherwise this latest stretch would have been even more exciting than it already has been.  This weekend, we can increase our lead by 3 games by sweeping the Cubs in their home stadium…. but let’s take care of business today first!

VOTE PRINCE…. JUST CLICK ON THE PICTURE OF HIM ON THE LEFT… I’m sure J.J. would appreciate a vote or two, too!

The title reads "Parra Los Sonidos", which translates to, "For The Sounds" (I know para is spelled with just one r instead of two, but you can just play along).  Well, Manny Parra pitched a perfect game "Parra Los Sonidos" last night.  Without seeing it, I can’t explain the game, but can say that it was just the ninth perfect game in PCL history and only the third completed in 9 innings (the rest were 7 inning games).

Parra was promoted from Double-A Huntsville when the Brewers promoted Yovanni Gallardo to the Brewers a couple weeks back.  He is now the highest rated pitching prospect in the Brewers minor league system, unless you are one of those that ranks Will Inman higher than him.  Either way, the perfect game is a good sign for Brewer fans that think Gallardo was the last of the good pitching prospects in the minors.  If he stays on his current pace, he may be up with the Brewers when the roster expands in September.  If not, he will definitely be in competition for a spot on the roster next spring.

(Note from Steve: I decided that, since I missed most of the games this weekend because I was moving things into my recently finished basement and at Chicken Fest in Darboy, USA – and you all already know what happened – I will bypass providing analysis of the games and have instead provided a cool story from my friend Jeff Sullivan.  I thought it was a good change of pace as we kick off a new week, and welcome any of you to do the same!  I will return to the Brewer coverage you have all come to enjoy, in the very near future.  Make sure to leave Jeff a little love in the comments section of the post.  Have you ever experienced something similar to this?  If so, e-mail me a story and pictures and you can be the next guest blogger on My Brewers.)

I know this has nothing to do with the Brewers, but Steve assured me he would grant an exception.  After all, I didn’t see anything about the Brewers in his Sopranos post, right?  Steve and I have been friends since grade school and spent countless hours together watching the Brewers at the old Milwaukee County Stadium.  This is the story of my recent encounter with my favorite baseball player, Kenny Lofton.  I am a fanatical collector of his baseball cards and I have followed him since the early 1990s when he was on the Indians.  I live in Wisconsin now, but this story takes place in Seattle.

My wife and I were moving from Washington state to Wisconsin and we went to the Rangers-Mariners game on our way out of town.  The date was May 31st, which also happened to be Kenny’s 40th birthday.  On our way to the game my wife made a quick sign on a piece of posterboard that read "Happy Birthday Kenny!  #7."  This was premeditated of course, and we were hoping to have him see it during batting practice and maybe give a smile and a wave.

After getting to the park, we walked over to the Rangers dugout area.  I spotted Kenny hanging out next to the stands between the on-deck circle and the backstop.  We made our way to that area but were stopped by an usher about 10 rows from the field.  It looked like that was as close as we would get because they limit admittance to those with tickets in that area.  A few minutes went by and finally Kenny turned around and caught a glimpse of my wife holding the sign.  He seemed surprised and gave a quick smile and a point.  We were pleased and decided to stay put to watch the rest of batting practice.

About 10 minutes later Kenny turned around and gave us a quick "come on down" wave.  The usher told us it was OK to proceed and he even let us borrow a nice blue Sharpie.  Kenny was nice enough to stop talking to the family he had been conversing with and spend a few minutes with the two of us.  He autographed the jersey I was wearing (it was a Lofton #7 but from his time on the Braves).  Then he signed the sign my wife made with a beautiful, huge auto in the upper right corner.  He also posed for a picture with us which turned out really well – this was my favorite part.  We thanked Kenny, wished him a happy birthday, and told him good luck in that night’s game.  He was not very chatty, but maybe he thought we were stalkers.  Others who are not sports fans would probably agree…

The few minutes he took to interact with us were more treasured than he can imagine.  I know baseball players are people just like we are, but I also realize that most people aren’t constantly bombarded by strangers asking them to write their name on things.  I’m sure it’s old after 16 years in the bigs.  The other thing that made it special was my wife’s excitement and support for my fanaticism.  She was truly the hero of the day with her sign and she even looks more excited than me in the picture!  Thanks Steve for letting me share my story with other baseball fans.

Jeff

More on this story as it becomes available.  I know that Prince will be missed.  It is a shame he will not be able to start in the All-Star Game.  Let’s keep him in our hearts and prayers!

He was the heart and sole of the Brewers all season.  I knew something didn’t seem right as he rounded third base after running twice as long as he has ever run in his entire life.  He’s traveled that distance many times before, but at a much lesser speed.  I guess it’s true that you can not go from a trot to a sprint without consequences.  This will be difficult for the Brewers and their fans to overcome.

(Note: I have just been informed by a friend of mine that The Onion is a ‘fake newspaper".  I guess I just wasted a good cry on a fake sports article…. how embarrassing!  I’m happy he is actually OK, but I feel like my emotions have been trampled over.)

This was taken on April 4, 2007. It is a picture of Nick Westergard from Oshkosh, WI and Tara (the future Mrs. Westergard) from Sheboygan, WI. It was one of their first 10 loses of the season and Suppan’s debut.
Final Score: Dodgers 5 – Brewers 4

In case you care (queue the sound of crickets chirping)… I will be the featured person on 102.9 The Hog (the top rated radio station in my old home town of Milwaukee) tonight between 10:00-11:30. They are interviewing me and playing my Perfect 10 songs during that time. If you live in the Milwaukee area you can listen on the radio, otherwise go to www.1029thehog.com and stream it over the Internet.

I’m hoping not to embarrass myself (I am by no means South Side Rob or Big Rygg when it comes to being comfortable on the radio)! At least it should help you fall asleep.

By the way, Brewer fans will be happy with one of my Perfect 10 choices… as long as they actually play it. See what I mean below:

Laugh all you want at a couple of my choices… I honestly like the songs listed and put that list together in about 3 minutes.  I know there are a few I like better than some of the ones listed, but that was my Perfect 10 of that moment!  You can see my music taste ranges significantly.

And how about that shameless plug for My Brewers?

Do you have a Perfect 10 of your own?  Post it in comments.