The View From Wisconsin

Warning! He's got brand-new hockey cards, and he's not afraid to blog about it!

Finally, today I went over to the local Target and picked up a box (and a pack) of the 2008-09 Upper Deck Victory hockey cards. My first pack featured Ovechkin and Crosby - I swear, all these common cards.

Not too bad a pull, though - 72 singles, and the 3x5 card is Martin Brodeur. I pulled two Preds players - Captain Jason and J.P. DuuuuuUUUUUUUmont. No Radulov, thankfully.

On to some other topics:

• The U.S. Women's Olympic Softball team had a real scare this morning against Canada. Five outs away from their first ever loss in the Olympic tournament... and the wheels just completely fell off for Dionne Meier and the Canucks. That sixth inning was just painful to watch. Two outs and she couldn't get anyone out.
  
• I always thought that soccer (pardon me, futball) didn't have rain delays. I was proven wrong by the US-Canada women's game this morning. Of course, when your goaltender tries to make a save and slips on the pitch, twisting her back in the process, I think I can understand the reluctance of the officials to continue the game while it's raining. What's funny is that the game took another 80 minutes to complete after the suspension because Canada tied the game.
  
• I think I'm getting burned out by the constant "Phelps Phelps Phelps" talk on the mothership of NBC. I mean, yeah, he's en route to breaking the biggest mark in US Olympic history. Don't go so drastically overboard with they hype, kids.
  
• Back to pro sports here in Wisconsin: After Ben Sheets lost (again) in a rather hard-luck decision, you gotta wonder if Attanasio and company are going to want to throw too much lettuce his way when he's up for FA in November. In his last ten starts, he's 3-5 with two no-decisions, a 3.37 ERA, 1.230 WHIP ratio, and six quality starts... but the Crew is 3-3 in those six starts. He's thrown three straight quality starts - but lost two of them. The Brewers have scored 37 runs for him in those 10 games, while he's given up 29 (25 earned). He's pitching at .500 right now, essentially. Is that something you throw $10-20 million at to be your club's ace pitcher?
• The speculation game's already being thrown around in the Cheesehead Nation: What does Aaron have to do to get you confident he's the man for the job? No Interceptions? Four straight wins? The Super Bowl? Two of them? Walk on the Fox River?