The Brewers' road losing streak has reached nine games after they were swept in their third consecutive series away from Miller Park, this time by the Boston Red Sox.  This challenging stretch of the 2008 schedule will continue as Milwaukee now heads to the place where the team traditionally plays its worst baseball, PNC Park in Pittsburgh.  The usual suspects of poor pitching and poor hitting have been joined by a newcomer named poor fielding, and nobody celebrates that trifecta in baseball.  Sloppy defense cost the Brewers at least one game at Fenway, and the sharp descent of the club in the last couple of weeks has finally bottomed out in the NL Central cellar. 

  You know your team is having problems when your best storyline of the weekend is the Major League-debut of career minor leaguer Mark DiFelice, who came on in the fifth inning of the finale today.  DiFelice became the third-oldest player in Brewers' history to make his debut at this level, achieving that distinction at the age of thirty-one years and two hundred sixty nine days.  No matter how tough things have been lately, a story in perseverance like DiFelice's warms your heart and inspires your mind without regard to how he fared while pitching against the vaunted Red Sox.

  It was nice catching up with old friends Joe Castiglione and Dave O'Brien, who comprise the Boston radio team.  Castiglione is a fomer Brewers' television announcer who has now been at Fenway for 26 years and is as affable as anyone in the game.  He was hired in Milwaukee by the same man who you can blame for hiring me:  Longtime Brewers' Director of Broadcasting Bill Haig, now retired (Joe says "hi", Bill!).  The mega-talent O'Brien, who also works national games each week on ESPN, is in his second season on Red Sox radio.  I first met Dave back in the early '90's in Atlanta long before his emergence on the international sports stage.  Interleague play is a wonderful thing on a personal level for those of us who get to renew our friendships with people in the "wrong" league.

  I had the honor of shaking the hand of legendary Johnny Pesky this weekend also.  "Mr. Red Sox" is nearing ninety years of age but still looks like he could go from first to third without a problem.  It is ironic that the "Pesky Pole", as the right-field foul pole is known at Fenway, is named for someone who only hit six home runs at the great baseball cathedral in his whole life.  We also got to visit with former Brewer Rob Deer this weekend, not to mention another living legend, Tim McCarver.  Watching McCarver and Uecker swap stories of their excursions long ago is a rare treat. 

  Also in Boston this weekend was fellow University of Georgia alum Chip Caray, who greeted me with the usual "Go Dawgs".  By the way, the buzz from down South is that Georgia may open the college football polls at #1 this summer.  I have enjoyed becoming a fan of the Wisconsin Badgers football program, which gives me two very good college football teams for which to root each fall.

  Closing with a baseball thought:  Does anyone doubt Ryan Braun when he says that "anyone who says contract talks aren't a distraction isn't telling the truth"?  Since closing in on his eight-year, forty-five million dollar deal with the Brewers on the homestand, Braun has smacked eight home runs in eight games.  Free the mind, free the bat.  Here's hoping for a slew of contract signings in the near future.