The View From Wisconsin

So much for that pursuit of .500 for the Brewers. Nothing like a little beat-down or two by the reigning league champions to put your mindset about the team back in the dumpster.

I see that housing costs are rising faster than pay raises. No duh - my lender jacked up my monthly payment by over $40, mostly because my municipality is jacking up its tax levies. Good thing I can take private Mortgage insurance off of my payment now.

The NHL has been offered $100 mil by Comcast's OLN Network to take over the league's cable broadcast rights. ESPN has the right to match, but they were seeking a deal worth only $30 mil, according to sources. Bettman and company would be foolish not to take it at this point.

Speaking of the NHL, teams will have new looks when they hit the ice this fall. Reebok is now the exclusive manufacturer of NHL sweaters in place of CCM, and they are going to sport a few changes. First, some of the v-neck sweaters will have the NHL logo at the valley of the neck. Second, the shoulders will have a new third-logo design; the Preds sweaters will have the skull logo instead of the old N-tower logo. Not sure if I'm keen on this change, but I understand the reasoning.

The Packer Flu will probably be out in full force on Friday and Saturday, once again. It seems like workplaces come to a screeching halt when they Packers play, even when it's the preseason. It's sad, to a point. I'm just glad I'm on vacation.

On the card collecting front: I made a recent purchase of a wax box of 1991-92 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards at a bargain price of $4 from a local dealer. Unfortunately, as I opened the first pack, I realized that this wasn't going to be a good thing. See, the dealer bought the boxes as part of an estate deal, and apparently these boxes had been stored in a garage. A hot, humid garage. Bubble gum doesn't like heat or humidity. Guess what the cards in these packs looked like? Yep - crapola. On the good side, I did return to the dealer and showed him the damage, and he gave me two new boxes of different sets for my trouble. I'm going to go over the cards during my vacation next week, to see if any of them are salvageable. The insert cards - which were all facing the bubble gum slab - are beyond repair. Goo Gone doesn't even budge the gum.

An update on the Palmeiro observation... obviously, since the drug suspension was announced, a lot of negative press has been foisted on people. I suspect that the BBWAA will come down hard on Raffi when he's first eligible for the HOF, be that in 2010 or whenever. However, I don't think we can keep him out of the Hall forever - 'roids or not.

Time for bed...