Just Tweet About It

I know I have mentioned before how there are quite a few good Cardinals fans in the blog world. And there are -- just look at my blogroll. Would a Brewers fan include a Cardinals blog in their blogroll otherwise? 

Twitter is much the same in many respects. We only get 140 characters there to make our point, so subtlety can get lost quickly. I view Twitter like being at a sports bar, and every user is a game on a TV. Some TVs you just ignore right away -- "no, I don't care about netball." Other TVs, you look in for a bit to try to figure out what is actually going on: "sure, I'll give Rugby Union a look." Then, there are the games on TV that you probably pay attention to: "It's 3:30 PM. Who is Alabama playing this week on CBS?" Finally, there are the games you circle; for me, that is Georgia football.

Similarly, there are a lot of users whom I pay attention to like I do Alabama football. You know what I mean -- you see what they are saying, see what they are talking about, and maybe even get into what is going on for a few minutes. There are a few folks that I seek out and try to see what is going on with them; there, it's folks like my pal Peter Steinberg (who still wants all your 1995 Fleer), like @AllTimeBrewers, and like the Cardinals fan I'm thanking tonight: Jmack a/k/a @RMcardsfan. 

J is a great guy -- a pleasant guy, even -- who is a Cards fan in Colorado Springs. Being in Colorado Springs, though, he is getting treated to watching the Brewers Triple-A farm club. That's led him to collecting certain Brewers players as player collections -- in particular Orlando Arcia and Josh Hader.

Recently, we worked out a trade by direct messaging on Twitter. Since he just told me he's on a 90s music bender recently and mentioned Hootie and the Blowfish (hashtag: noshame), it's time for the Dolphins to make Darius Rucker cry.

Just watch for the old-school SportsCenter intro with Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, and stay for the slightly out-of-tune singing! Or, stick around for the not-far-from-annoying close to the video with Chris Berman!

To be fair, I remember I got Cracked Rear View from a girl that I worked with who didn't like it because it was too country for her tastes. She obviously knew that Darius Rucker would go on to become a country music singer twenty years later. 

Obviously.

I liked the CD when I got it, but I really liked the other CD she gave me that was even more "country": Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo.

J sent me three autographed Brewers cards from his collection. The first is this Bowman Inception card of Monte Harrison. Harrison was a second round pick in 2014 from Missouri. The Brewers had to give him a good chunk of change to keep him from going to college at Nebraska to play wide receiver for the Huskers. 

Considering that he would have been playing against the University of Wisconsin regularly, there are hopes it will work out well for two Wisconsin teams.

Harrison has had all kinds of health issues. He was healthy near the end of last year and in the instructional league he really showed off his abilities, according to Baseball America. He'll probably end up back with the Timber Rattlers this season. Depending how things shake out, I would not be surprised to see him traded in the next couple of years for pitching. The Brewers are deep in the outfield, after all.

Here's Hootie reuniting in 2015 during the run toward David Letterman's retirement. I swear -- the rhythm guitarist does not look all that much different 21 years later than he does in that older video. 

The drummer, on the other hand...wow. He has not aged well.

So, it probably was well known back when they hit it big, but I recall hearing that Hootie & the Blowfish actually started off life in Columbia, South Carolina as an REM cover band as freshmen at the University of South Carolina (that's USC(e) to college football fans, as in USC east). This would be consistent with the story of nearly every band from a southern college town from the late 1980s. There were a lot of guys in bands who used being sort of alternative sounding and playing REM songs to try to get laid.

I could make a joke about USC(e) generally being a University of Georgia cover act, but that would be unfair. They are not a UGA cover act. They are a pale imitation of the University of Florida. I keep waiting for them to hire Ron Zook.

The Brewers First round pick in 2014 was high school pitcher Kodi Medeiros from Hawaii. Medeiros struggled last year -- badly -- at High-A Brevard County. I would not be surprised to hear that Medeiros ends up in the Carolina League this year to repeat the level (the Brewers changed affiliates at that level). Here's hoping he fixes what was wrong.

Finally, we have "Time." This song hit #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October of 1995, though it hit number one in Canada. See -- not everything Canada does is worth imitating!

It may be difficult to recall how huge Hootie really was. Cracked Rear View hit number 1 on the album charts in the US, Canada, and New Zealand and was certified Diamond -- which means that the album has sold over 10 million copies in the United States. It has been certified as Platinum 16 times, which means it has sold over 16 million copies in the US. Wikipedia says it is the 16th-best-selling album of all time in the United States. That is massive.

I personally lost the band off my radar after this album. It is just so soft rock in so many respects. That's not to say it isn't melodic, and listenable, and something that when I hear it I wouldn't hum along with it. It is to say that it's just nothing I'd go out of my way to hear too often. I just heard it too much in 1994. 

Jorge Lopez was the token Brewer rookie in just about every single Topps/Bowman release last year -- the way Orlando Arcia is this year. The Brewers are not generally allocated more than one rookie slot, so it can be discouraging when the one who does show up is as terrible as Lopez was last year in Colorado Springs -- where I'm sure J got this card signed in person. Lopez had a 6.81 ERA in 79-1/3 innings at altitude. 

There's still hope, though -- after all, Lopez was born only 16 months before Cracked Rear View came out and he had a really good winter league showing. 

My thanks go out to J for the three great cards, the trade, and for being a good Twitterati. He's no Twitter egg!