Greater Milwaukee Men

This year, in addition to the players, MLB  and People Magazine are recognizing people who are true heroes, military men and women, via their Tribute For Heroes program. From thousands of nominees three people were selected for each team. One winning candidate from each team will win a chance to attend and be recognized at the 2013 MLB® All-Star Game® in New York, and one will be featured in PEOPLE magazine. So head on over and vote, you can do as many times as you want. The three outstanding representatives for the Brewers are here .

The YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee today announced it has received a $25,000 donation from Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks to help support the Y’s Swim School. Swim School is a community supported learn-to-swim program hosted at the Northside YMCA designed to help urban youth learn to be safe in and around water. The program is offered to second and third graders who attend school in Milwaukee’s Lindsey Heights neighborhood. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the second leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 14, and African American children ages 5 to 14 are three times as likely to die from drowning as white children. Lack of access to public swimming pools, along with a negative perception of water, contributes to these statistics.

As you may have heard, Craig Counsell, Brewers infielder and Whitefish bay native, retired from playing baseball only to join the front office of the Brewers . The Brewers announced Craig joining the Brewers front office as Special Assistant to the General Manager. Apparently Counsell's first love for baseball was managing, not playing, but I am sure the skill and dedication he brought being a player, and that experience, will make him a great front office man in whatever aspect he finds himself in the coming years. it doesn't hurt that Counsell  follows in the footsteps of his father, John, who worked in the Milwaukee front office for eight years himself.

The Major League Baseball Players Trust  and Volunteers of America  are working with high school students across the United States, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico, are working together to inspire and train the next generation of volunteers through a program called Action Team . The two organizations teamed up in 2002 to encourage high school students to get involved in their communities and help those in need. Action Teams, composed of Major League baseball players and high school students, work together to encourage students to volunteer. High schools can get in on the action at any time, and the Action Team is constantly growing. To date 38,500 high school volunteers have helped more than 142,000 people in their communities. It is always good to see professional athletes get involved and promote activism, fundraising, and volunteering, but this program is especially great since it seeks to start with young people while still in somewhat formative years and ge...

On a week when there have been more typically bad morality plays in professional sports, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a piece on an inspiring former athlete - Larry Hisle of the Milwaukee Brewers . The story talks about how Hisle works with disadvantaged males of all ages as part of his work for the Brewers as the manager of youth outreach, a paid position but a vocation he is called do and would do regardless. Entering the Holiday season of the US Thanksgiving Day and various religious special days, it seems that professional sports wants to drag us down and keep us in the negativity of the state of the economy and other political issues. Between the dangerous and vindictive actions on the race track, allegations of abuse in college football, and the NBA lockout, sports don;t seem so inspiring. But Hisle and the his former and current employer the Milwaukee Brewers give some hope. First kudos to the Brewers organization for having the outreach program and especially for ...

I am not a fan of baseball or basketball, though I love football. One reason  I like football better is the lack of guaranteed contracts. In baseball and basketball you can miss time, even an entire season, and still get paid. But one player, Royals Pitcher Gil Meche, decided that was not right to himself and gave back $12 million in salary since he is missing the entire season from an injury. Meche has a contract for $12 million on 2011. In baseball, as with basketball, whether you are injured, are suspended, if you underperform, or miss time for any reason you are guaranteed your salary - only in rare cases of non-sports related injuries or gross misconduct can the team get out of paying it. But Meche realized that he would get the salary though he will miss the entire season from injury. Meche said: “When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I w...

I normally try to stay way from stories of men doing the wrong thing and stick with good examples, but the recent number of news items on men overreaching for baseballs in MLB games has struck me. And there are two current stories of fans and baseballs that have parts of them that show some honor. Last week a fan died trying to catch a ball thrown to him from Rangers star outfielder Josh Hamilton. This one was odd as it did not come from the usual attempt at a foul or home run ball, but from a ball tossed by a player. The throw must have been off the mark and the fan over-reached and in so doing fell 20 feet and suffered fatal injuries. In typical man fashion of not learning lessons, on the same day as the memorial service for the previous story, a fan at MLB's Home Run Derby, a fan trying to catch a ball stepped up onto a metal table about 18 inches wide and reached for the ball only to have his momentum carry him off the table and on his way to 20 feet below - the same distanc...

I am not a big baseball fan, only following the home team as a sports homer in general, but this story caught my eye. With their 33rd round pick - 33 rounds?, again not a baseball follower but 33 ??? - drafted a player that will never play baseball - you see, he is paralyzed. Johnathan Taylor, team mate of Zach Cone who the Rangers drafted in the 2nd-round, was paralyzed in an outfield collision. He likely will never walk again - though he is in therapy - and definitely will not play ball again. The Rangers gave him the honor of going to the team his friend Cone went to - and many of us hope that he will get a job with them maybe in the office or coaching somehow, if the Rangers made this move I can see them being so big as to take that next step. Good pick, Rangers, and Great Play.