The View From Wisconsin

A lot of catching up to do, thanks to my little "vacation" instigated by a trip to the doctor's office.

• Wisconsin football head coach and athletic director Barry Alvarez has decided to step down as the head coach of the Badgers after the 2005 season. Talk about your surprises; everyone kinda knew that Barry was going to probably retire after a while, but no one knew that it'd be done that quickly. And he also named his successor at the same press conference. Do you get the feeling that some of the libs on the Madison campus aren't going to be happy he decided to stay in-house for the hiring of the new head coach?
• Put this one in the "Saw It Coming A Mile Away" department: Bob Goodenow announced that he was "stepping down" as the director of the NHLPA. The whispers will probably never cease as to whether he left voluntarily or he was fired. It became painfully obvious that he was overruled in the negotiations that led to the new CBA. I still think he deserves to be considered for the HHOF, but whether or not he'll make it in is for history to decide.
• I happened upon a website in my web journeys: the Political Compass (www.politicalcompass.org). Interestingly, I'm considered to be pretty much centrist on the grid – somewhere around the politics of German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, just to the right of center economically and a little less on the authoritarian scale.
• My 20^th HS reunion for the Park class of 1985 was last weekend. I haven't heard anything from the reunion committee about the booklets that were supposed to be printed up and sent out – though I did get an e-mail from a fellow graduate who swore that she saw me there. That would have been a neat trick, considering I was spending more time with my dad at Froedert than I was anywhere else.
• Speaking of which, my dad goes in for his third knee surgery in five years Monday morning. I sincerely hope that this time they get it right; I can't stand to see him in the hospital for so long.
• To say that the Brewers' defense has been a stumbling point for the team is like saying the Grand Canyon is a "pretty big drainage ditch." It's almost like all nine players on the field have their minds somewhere else while they're playing – and it's not just when they're out in the field. Case in point: the infamous "bunt" by Ben Sheets that led to a rally-killing double play just last weekend. I still haven't figured out if Yost called that play or if Sheets did that on his own. Either way, with the trading deadline mere hours away, you'd have to think that it might be time to cut bait for the Crew. It might be a good idea to move Overbay and bring up the Prince – and get two-thirds of the Brewers infield of the future playing together over the last two months of the season.
• The Packers opened training camp last weekend – and Javon Walker reported (on time) after he found out what the "owners" of the team though of him and his agent. At the annual shareholders meeting of the Packers, the nearly unanimous opinion among the crowd was that the team shouldn't back down from its stance and just fine the dickens out of Javon for every day he didn't show up. Since Javon wasn't making much to begin with, he really didn't have much choice. Meanwhile, Rosenhaus is more concerned with getting T.O. a new deal in Philly than he is with Walker. Think he's discovered where he sits in the pecking order by now?
• My "raise" goes into effect this week. I use that term loosely, because most of it is going to be wiped off the face of the earth by my premiums for health care insurance. I know, there's been incessant complaints that state workers didn't pay for their own health insurance – but my pay rate is somewhere stuck in the 20^th century in economic terms. I don't think I can stand another one-two percent raise – especially since I've gotten several notices from my various money-seekers that they're increasing fees and rates.
• As an avid reader of the comic strip Pibgorn (courtesy of comics.com), I'm openly wondering about something: has creator Brooke McEldowney "jumped the shark" with his current storyline? First, he pulled in the old kooky farmhand Thorax, from his other strip 9 Chickweed Lane, as an almost Deus Ex Machina for his previous storyline. Now, he has a convoluted story that has seemingly altered time and space itself – featuring none other that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a pregnancy. In the few short years that I've been following the strip, I've gotten used to strange plots and bizarre twists of storyline, but this one seems to take the proverbial cake.
• Now that the NHL is back live, the Predators have done what they do best: they traded their proverbial "third round draft pick" for Florida tough-guy Darcy Hordichuk. Outside the running gag of the third round draft pick (a nod to the deal that sent Cliff Ronning away to Minnesota), the deal reunites the "enforcer" Hordichuk with his former minor-league coach Peter Horachek. The two won the final Turner Cup in 2001 with the Orlando Solar Bears.
• My issues with "relic cards" in sports card packs has ascended to a new level. In recent purchases of two soon-to-be-defunct card sets from Donruss/Leaf/Playoff, I managed to pull two rather interesting uniform relic cards. From Donruss/Playoff's Absolute Memorabilia set, I got a Hideki Matsui/Deion Sanders team tandem card; from the Leaf set, I pulled a Frankie "Watch Out For Flying Chairs!" Francisco "Shirt Off My Back" card. The problem with the cards? Both of them were too thick for the extra-wide top-loader card protectors I had purchased, mostly for the purpose of storing specialty relic cards such as these. I had to go to my friendly neighborhood memorabilia store to get a special screw-down card holder for the Matsui/Sanders card; for Frankie's card, I used a five-card holder I had on hand as storage.
• By the by, I'm at 34,810 total cards in my collection, spread over 494 different sets. Interestingly, only 37 of those are complete (the most recent being a purchase of the 1991 Leaf Baseball set, series one and two). I've done some rearranging of my card boxes, so I've got things pretty well organized. Only thing that bugs me is that I've got some empty boxes sitting around now, and I've got to resist the urge to try to fill them.