Monthly Archives: August 2011

What the first week of high school football showed us

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With the first week of the WIAA football schedule in the books, we’ve been shown a great deal about individual teams and entire conferences. Here is a brief breakdown of the area conferences.

Big Rivers Conference
BRC football fans, get ready for a great season. This looks to be one of the best Big Rivers seasons in many years in terms of overall talent and depth of talent throughout the conference. Seven of the eight BRC teams scored opening wins and most of them were impressive wins.
Hudson put on a powerful defensive showing to shut out Wisconsin Rapids. The Raiders look fully capable of competing for a BRC title. Hudson faces a huge test this Friday when the Raiders play at Kenosha Bradford.
River Falls rolled past New Richmond 37-7. The most impressive portion of the Wildcats’ game was their passing attack. The running game will need to be more productive if the Wildcats want to finish in the upper half of the standings.
Menomonie looks like, well, Menomonie. It was another huge offensive showing and their defense will likely get better as the season rolls on.
The Eau Claire schools look to be as collectively strong as they have been in years. Paul Kling has the Eau Claire Memorial team moving in the right direction. The Old Abes are fully capable of being better than their 6-4 record last year. Eau Claire North looks to be significantly better than the team that finished 2-7 a year ago. North started out with a 19-16 win over La Crosse Central.
Rice Lake finished one game short of the State Championship game last year. While the Warriors did suffer some major graduation losses, don’t sell them short. In quarterback Kody Novinska, they have one of the most dynamic players in Western Wisconsin.
Chippewa Falls finished 5-2 in the BRC last year and don’t expect a letdown this year. The Cards have a defense that will overwhelm some opponents, like it did Friday in a 41-13 win over Holmen.
Even Superior, which went winless last year, is already better this season. The Spartans opened the season with a 26-25 win at Merrill. Superior trailed 22-0 and came back to win.

Middle Border Conference
Six of the eight MBC teams opened the season with victories. For a conference that is filled with teams that are supposed to be in a transition, this was an impressive start.
Two of the defending MBC champs, Somerset and Baldwin-Woodville, both scored wins. Somerset rolled past a weak Chetek team 46-6. A true measure of Somerset’s ability will come this Friday, when the Spartans host Bloomer. Bloomer is currently ranked fourth in Division 4 in the state, while Somerset is ranked fifth.
Baldwin-Woodville is ranked ninth in the state in Division 4. The Blackhawks managed a 24-17 win at Hayward on Friday, but the Blackhawk defense didn’t put on a stellar show. Expect better once they hit the conference schedule.
The most impressive opening win was Durand’s 42-18 thumping of West Salem, which has been a pretty fair team in past years. It looks like Durand’s skilled backfield is going to be tough to slow down this season.
Ellsworth showed that good things are happening in the Panther program under new coach Clair Austin. The long-time coach at Goodhue, Minn., brought his winning ways to Ellsworth, which beat Elk Mound 22-7.
Prescott was another of the MBC teams to beat a Dunn-St. Croix Conference opponent as the Cards knocked off Mondovi 17-14. Prescott showed some creativity in recovering two onside kicks and the Cards have a coaching staff that excels at motivating players.
Amery started the season with a 17-6 win over Unity. Amery started last season with a non-conference win too, but didn’t win another game. So the Warriors still have to prove they can within the conference.
New Richmond was a conference co-champ last year, but the Tigers have to grow quickly this season. Twenty-one of the Tigers’ 22 starters were new in their loss to River Falls on Friday. It doesn’t get any easier for the Tigers this Friday. They play at Rice Lake, a team they beat in the state playoffs last year. You can bet Rice Lake is looking for some revenge.
Osceola suffered a 28-8 loss to St. Croix Falls. This may be the hardest team to gauge in the MBC. St. Croix Falls is expected to be one of the best teams in the Lakeland Conference, but most fans expected Osceola to put up more of a fight. The Chieftains play their first home game this Friday against Barron and a loss to the improved Golden Bears would really set back the Chieftains.

Dunn-St. Croix Conference
The results from the first week of the season showed that the D-SC football race is wide open this season.
Teams like Boyceville and Colfax, which have been locks for the bottom half of the conference, both earned impressive wins on Friday. Elk Mound and Mondovi, two perennial playoff teams, were less than impressive in opening losses.
St. Croix Central has an offense capable of putting up big numbers, which showed in the Panthers’ 36-34 win at Barron on Friday. But giving up 34 points to a Barron team that hasn’t won in two years shows that the Panther defense has a great deal of improving to do.
It had to seem like Christmas in Colfax after the Vikings pounded Eleva-Strum 39-21 on Friday. The Vikings haven’t won a conference game in the past three seasons, but this is starting to look like a team that can end that losing streak.
Boyceville has a talented senior class, led by Ryan Bloom. The Bulldogs started the season by beating Cameron 18-0. This could be the season Boyceville turns the corner and finishes above .500.
Spring Valley inflicted a beatdown on Plum City on Friday, 38-18. The Cards aren’t the deepest team in the conference, but with threats like Kyle Bosshart and Chase Luebker, they are a threat to win every game.
Elk Mound has won 15 games in the past two seasons. With veteran coach Dan Pedersen the Mounders might be young at the start of the season, but they’ll be ready to play when the games count.
Mondovi’s another team that’s dominated in recent years, winning 25 games the past three seasons. The Buffaloes graduated their two stud running backs, so they need to rebuild their ground game. They do have quarterback/defensive back Cole Ede to build around, which is a very good thing for the Buffs.
Glenwood City is a team in need of star power. If the Toppers are going to contend in the DSC they need people to step up, especially on defense. Cumberland has a good offense, but scoring 53 points against the Toppers pointed out Glenwood City’s weakness on the defensive side.

Minnesota Twins: Who will pay for wasted season?

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As the Minnesota Twins coast toward oblivion, the question arises:
“Who will pay for the front office blunders that led to this abysmal season?”
This has easily been the poorest showing by the Minnesota Twins in more than a decade. And if the front office doesn’t get a clue quickly, we will be stuck with a series of poor seasons.
The implosion that happened this season has been in the offing for several years. The Twins have not drafted well. They have made poor decisions on free agent signings. And with their lack of contract negotiations with several current players, the Twins could be waving goodbye to several of their best players.
The move that has topped all others as the most incompetent front office signing in all of baseball was the Twins’ pursuit and signing of Japanese infielder Tsuyosky Nishioka. Nishioka may be the worst starting infielder in the major leagues, yet the Twins keep trotting him out because they sank $14.1 million into an infielder who can’t field, can’t throw and can’t hit. When the big money teams like New York and Boston weren’t showing any interest in Nishioka, didn’t the Twins get the clue? The Twins thought they were pulling a coup. Instead, they ended up looking like the biggest rubes in baseball.
Nishioka is just half of the confounding infield choices the Twins made. For several years the Twins have been trying to turn Alexi Casilla into a starting infielder and every time he’s been a flop. So what made them believe that this year would be any different? Casilla has one or two stretches every season where he looks like an all-star. But most of the season he looks like someone who is at best a utility infielder and is more likely, a career minor leaguer.
The Twins have not invested a high draft choice on a middle infielder for years until they drafted a shortstop this season. But the drafting oversight has left the Twins scraping for marginal prospects and other reaches as their infielders. This year that oversight blew up in their faces.
Of the Twins’ last seven first round draft choices, only one is in the major leagues. That would be rookie outfielder Ben Revere. The Twins draft record has been spotty, to say the least. Fans have to wonder if there are issues with coaching staffs in the minors, or with the Twins’ scouting process. Not only do the Twins not have any stars in waiting in the minor leagues, they have very few players who are even close to being major league ready. That’s why we see Luke Hughes and Matt Tolbert called up over and over, instead of seeing prospects who are part of the long-term solution.
The contract the Twins gave to Joe Mauer is going to weigh down the team for years. You have to wonder about how much thought was given to the Twins’ current roster when the Twins designed Target Field. The Twins have a number of hitters with power like Mauer, Justin Morneau, Jason Kubel, Michael Cuddyer, Delmon Young, Jim Thome, etc. So why did the Twins build a field with deep power alleys so nobody can hit homers? They’ve turned their power hitters into singles hitters.
Now the Twins have to decide on the contracts of the power hitters. There is almost no chance the Twins will offer Young arbitration after this season, so why didn’t they try to trade him after last season when he was a valuable commodity. Young saw how the Twins were handling him and all the positivity he built last season has now changed back into bitterness.
The management’s failure to act on contracts for Cuddyer and Kubel is another blunder, as was the resigning of Thome this year. The Twins didn’t have room for Thome’s at-bats this year, even with all of the injuries. And if Kubel and Cuddyer leave, brace yourself. Next year’s Twins offense will be far worse than what we are seeing this year.
So what will be done? Changes in the front office should be made, but ownership will likely use injuries as the excuse for this year’s failures, instead of looking at the real cause. Ownership will probably pick out one of Ron Gardenhire’s coaches as a token sacrifice, when the problems with the team are coming from much higher up the food chain.

Note: About two hours after posting this blog, the Twins indeed did trade Delmon Young. He was traded to the Detroit Tigers for a minor leaguer who is a longshot to reach the major leagues. There is also a “player to be named later” involved. If this trade had been made six months ago, Young would have brought a bundle of talent in a trade. We can hope the erstwhile player to be named is a top prospect, but don’t count on it. This looks more like a salary dump than anything else. Hopefully the Twins use that spared salary to up their offers to Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer.

Brewers, bratwursts and 50-foot tall New Richmondites

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My wife says we can’t go anywhere without me running into someone I know.

That happened again over the weekend, adding a larger than life story to a fun weekend in Milwaukee.

The yearly local sports schedule doesn’t leave much time for vacations and I’m guessing most of the sports editors of weekly papers around the state try to work in their vacation time in July, before high school sports begin anew in early August.

My wife, Deb, and I planned a long weekend in Milwaukee to see our daughter, Sarah, and her family. We chose this weekend because the Milwaukee Brewers were playing at home. That might seem selfish, but we’ve never been to Miller Park in the 10 years it’s been open. It seemed that every time visited Milwaukee in the past few years, the Brewers were on the road. So we arranged for tickets to Saturday’s game against the Houston Astros as one of our main stops for the weekend.

Miller Park is everything I’d heard it was. The roof was open on the hot, sticky evening, but I walked up to the upper deck just to get a close look at the gears and gadgets that make the roof open and close. It was impressive to see the size of the equipment needed to move the roof the width of the ballpark.

We’d barely settled into our seats when we got the larger than life surprise. I was trying to look into the broadcast booths to see Bob Uecker at the microphone when Deb grabbed my arm and started pointing at the scoreboard.

There on the 50-foot tall scoreboard was Sue Bonte Lee, the owner of New Richmond’s Agate Inn, running out to the pitcher’s mound to throw out an honorary first pitch before the game. Sue was chosen to throw out the first pitch because she’s a state officer for the Tavern League of Wisconsin. A full story on Sue’s experiences can be found in this week’s edition of the New Richmond News.

The Brewers put on an impressive show in Saturday’s 6-2 win over Houston. Corey Hart, the Brewers’ first batter of the game, drilled an opposite field homer into the Houston bullpen. Hart’s always been one of my favorite Brewers, so it was nice to see him rack up four hits in the game.

Another Brewer who impressed me was catcher Jonathan Lucroy. He’s a scrappy catcher who isn’t afraid of anything. One of the Brewers’ biggest needs the past few years has been a competent catcher and Lucroy looks like he’ll become a top all-around catcher.

One of the most memorable moments of the game was provided by Prince Fielder. Late in the game the hulking first baseman turned on a pitch. It looked like it should have left a vapor trail, it was drilled that hard. They measured the titanic blast at 475 feet.

I’d always considered a homer hit by Darryl Strawberry, while he was playing with the St. Paul Saints, as the hardest hit ball I’d ever seen. Strawberry was trying to resurrect his career at that point and he showed he still had some of the fastest wrists in baseball. He hit a line drive that was still rising as it cleared the right field fence at St. Paul’s Midway Stadium. The Saints don’t measure homers, but I’m guessing that easily would have been in the 450-foot range.

Fielder’s homer is the one homer I’ve ever seen hit with the same kind of velocity that Strawberry put into his homer.

The day before we went to the Brewers game, we enjoyed the other scheduled event in our weekend plans. We went to Germanfest in Milwaukee. Deb and I are both mainly of German ancestry, so we were intrigued when we heard about the event. It was like attending a German state fair.

There was German food of every size and shape. Most of it came in two food groups: meat or beer. Not that either of those should be surprising in Milwaukee. The food was incredible. It’s no wonder the photos of all my German ancestors showed big-strapping people. They ate well.

We tried a wide variety of foods, from rollbraten to Bismarck herring sandwiches to potato pancakes. They were all good, but a clear favorite was a cream cheese strudel.  My sweet tooth is longing for another bite of the flaky pastry and sweet cheesy filling as I think of it.

It was an incredible weekend and it was a great way to recharge the batteries as we head into the fall high school sports season.