Milwaukee is no All-Star city

Good news! We here at Pearls of Wisdom, Inc., are proud to announce our first BIG giveaway. If you...

• bare a passing resemblance to Jeff (No Wisdom) Pearlman

• can write at a fifth-grade level

• love Emmanuel Lewis

• enjoy midwestern hotel chains

• have ever dreamed of being a untalented journalist with bad breath

...then this is the place for you. All you have to do is fill in the following blank: Playing the All-Star Game in Milwaukee is a complete joke because (your answer here). Click here to send in your essay on this topic. One lucky winner will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Milwaukee -- of course -- where he or she will wear Jeff's press pass, sleep in Jeff's Holiday Inn (guaranteed to be smoking) room, be blown off by countless players and eat at any one of the city's four good restaurants. Submissions due ASAP. (My editors inform me that I'm not authorized to run a sweepstakes in my column. That's OK. You wouldn't have wanted to go to Milwaukee anyway.)

Pearls of Wisdom

This week, for no particular reason, I devote me five Pearls of Wisdom to Yankees fanatic (and one of the few people thus far to write in to Pearls of Wisdom) Alison Coburn, President of the Bucknell Tri-Delta Alumni Association.

Coburn No. 1: In the midst of their 11-game losing streak, several Tigers swore that things would be different with a healthier lineup. Maybe they were on to something. Robert Fick has started in right the last four games and Detroit has scored 27 runs. "We know we have the talent to be much better than this," ace Jeff Weaver said after the club's 10th-straight defeat. "Just look around." Indeed, the middle of the Tigers' lineup is, um, not terrible. Dmitri Young is a legit run producer, and he and Craig Paquette are perfect gap hitters for Comerica Park.

Coburn No. 2: During spring training, an American League scout told me he thought that teams were learning how to neutralize Ichiro Suzuki . "Pitch him inside hard on the hands, and it could hurt him," the scout said. Uhh -- nope. The 2001 AL MVP, whose 10-game hitting streak was snapped on Wednesday, looks as good as he did last season. Heck, he might even be more comfortable.

Coburn No. 3: Watch out for Milton Bradley. The Indians center fielder has a nifty glove and a .323 average going into play Thursday, but that's not what thrills Cleveland management the most. When he was coming up with the Expos, Bradley routinely earned a "bad guy" rep by yelling at umps, ignoring coaches and going through moody stretches. The Tribe has seen none of that attitude. He's a star in the making.

Coburn No. 4: The axing of Davey Lopes in Milwaukee was an absolute necessity. For all of his baseball smarts, Lopes was a terrible communicator who often went days without speaking to his coaches and players last season. As one scout told me during spring training, "A manager like that wears quick on a team." Jerry Royster, the new man in charge, is much more of an affable, light-hearted sort, perfect for the young Brew Crew.

Coburn No. 5: Shane Spencer may have returned to the Yankees starting lineup Thursday night (in place of the struggling Gerald Williams), but you know the guy's gonna get screwed soon enough. It happens every year. At some point, Yankees manager Joe Torre will announce that such-and-such outfield job is Spencer's to lose. The 29 year old will play well, then hit a cold spell, then -- surprise! -- lose his job. This time Spencer is competing for time against John Vander Wal, a career pinch hitter with an iffy glove. Spencer's opportunity? Forty at-bats.

My Top 5 List of the Week

Five reasons the movie Major League is crud:

1. No matter how fast Willie Mays Hayes may be (or how deep the infield is playing), there's no way, with two outs and Hayes on second, creaky-kneed catcher Jake Taylor tries to bunt in the winning run and capture the pennant.

2. No matter how fast Willie Mays Hayes may be, nobody (not even Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines, Omar Moreno, Vince Coleman -- need I go on?) takes a 12-foot lead off first and survives.

3. If Pedro Cerrano knew -- without a doubt -- that he would only be pitched curveballs, he'd bat, oh, .460 with 90 homers.

4. Jake Taylor throws like a 12-year-old girl.

5. If Rick (Wild Thing) Vaughn really surrendered a home run, then pelted the next batter with a fastball, 25 men would have charged the mound to beat his head to tomato paste.

Bonus: If the Indians had the lowest payroll in the league, flew on a jet circa 1950, fed their players crackers and water and still sold out Cleveland's 50,000-plus seat stadium, the owner would make crazy bucks and would, under no circumstances, want to move the team to Florida.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jeff Pearlman covers the baseball beat for the magazine. His Pearls of Wisdom appear every Friday on CNNSI.com. Jeff will answer your inquiries in future editions of Pearls. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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