Quick Hits

- I attended the Cubs/Brewers game last night much thanks to Brandon and his blue wristband baller tickets that he got in the drawing in March. We sat in the Upper Deck directly to the left of the Press Box which was a new perspective for me. I've probably watched 15 games from the Wrigley 500 Level in my life, but always flared out along the sidelines toward the foul poles. I enjoyed this new vantage, mainly because no seat at the Friendly Confines provides the same experience as another. Every chair in that building has it's own tread in your mind, every section has it's own personality. That being said, the surroundings of "Section 517, Row 7, Seat 4" were...... rowdy.

- This statistic is courtesy of Bleed Cubbie Blue: "Over at Baseball Prospectus on Monday evening, Nate Silver, perhaps presciently, noted that Milwaukee had, through Sunday, blown 13 leads of three runs or more (and nine of those from July 28 through August 26)."

- My favorite thing about keeping score during a game is what you ultimately do with the scorecard. I've only kept 2 scorecards in my life: The first Interleague game played at Wrigley against the Brewers and Carlos Zambrano's complete game, five hit, ten strikeout effort against the Astros on 8/17/03. The rest of them I usually just leave it there, finished or otherwise. I sometimes stop after the 7th or 8th inning and redirect my attention towards cheering, usually by then we're into the bullpen and you run out of space after four pitchers. Though sometimes, after a deluge of runs by the other team in the 5th or 6th inning causing us to fall woefully behind, I'll dramatically tear up my scorecard and throw up my hands in utter futility. You never know.

-USA Basketball is extremely entertaining right now. I highly recommend it.

- I've heard Yi Jianlian's name mangled numerous times by three different Chicago sportstalk radio personalities this morning after news of him signing with the Bucks hit the wire. This was usually followed by laughter and a snarky "whatever". Seriously, it takes 30 seconds to look up the pronunciation on this guy (EE jee-AHN-lee-AHN). If you're not going to do that, don't basically mock him for having a name that is difficult for you to verbalize. And for the record, it's pronounced Don-ah-FEE you lace-curtained half-an-Englishman.

- Lance Briggs, don’t sweat it. I careen my $350,000 cars off the side of the Edens at 3:15am and leave the scene of the crash all the time. The good news is, we can rebuild KITT. The bad news is, you are not Pauly Shore and this isn’t a Ja Rule video. You cannot do “whatever you want”.