Talkin' Baseball 5 questions The Homestand should've answered

I’m not sure what I expected to get out of watching The Homestand—Milwaukee on ESPN Tuesday night. It looked like it was going to be puff piece, and it certainly smelled like a puff piece at the outset. So why was I disappointed when it ended up walking and talking like a puff piece, too? Maybe I hoped that it would at least be an interesting puff piece; in lieu of showing the clubhouse bickering and grousing that inevitably accompanies a campaign as monumentally disappointing at the ’10 Brewers season, we would at least be treated to some clips of Todd Coffey taking down yet another sloppy plate of Astro Zing wings at BW3’s, right?

No such luck. But The Homestand—Milwaukee wasn’t a complete waste of time. There were a handful of vitally important morsels of information dropped amid its slow-mo-heavy 42 minutes. In case you missed it, let me sum it up for you:

1. Doug Melvin’s mustache’s looks even cleaner and shinier in HD.
2. John Axford is “debating handlebars” when it comes to his mustache. He also fantasizes about dying it blonde and taking over for Bernie Brewer, which is not a terrible idea.
3. Casey McGehee and Prince Fielder really love their kids.
4. Carlos Gomez and Rickie Weeks spend a lot of time debating who is faster, and yet lack the motivation to just race and get it over with.
5. Jim Edmonds appears to live downtown, enjoy free cleats, and hate riding the bench.
6. Doug Davis justifies his spot on the payroll by regaling teammates with his remote-control airplane-flying skills.
7. Rick Peterson employs clumsily performed prop comedy in his pre-game meetings with pitchers, which actually explains a lot about how this season has unfolded.

As much I as like to stay apprised of the latest Brewers mustache news, I left The Homestand wanting a whole lot more. If I had been given control of the show, I would have started the project with the intention of answering five questions I’m dying to have answered.

1. Do the players hate Ken Macha?
Perhaps the most telling part of The Homestand was what it didn’t show; namely, manager Ken Macha, who wasn’t interviewed and appeared only briefly in a few scattered clips, including the “Rick Peterson monkeying around with a bullhorn” scene. It’s likely, given “Cacha’s” scintillating personality, that the makers of The Homestand did interview him and simply didn’t have any worthwhile material to use. But I’d like to think that his absence from the show reflects either 1) his status as a non-entity in the clubhouse or 2) his imminent firing. If it’s No. 2—maybe Melvin slipped the documentary crew an off-the-record tip—keeping Macha out of The Homestand will make the show seem less dated upon subsequent re-airings on MLB Network. But that’s all baseless theorizing on my part: It would have been nice to see how the players react (or don't react) to Macha’s inspiring leadership when the game cameras are off.

2. If the players do hate Macha—and, c’mon, they must—who has the most pull among players: Dale Sveum or Willie Randolph?
While you hardly ever hear a Brewers player talk up Macha, there always seems to be kind words for Sveum and Randolph, both of whom are big-brother figures known for gently talking players like Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks out of crippling psychological hang-ups. I’d love to see how that mojo works, and whether either coach is secretly planning a managerial coup among his player-disciples.

3. Does anyone believe this team has a shot at the post-season?
There was a lot of cliché-riddled talk in The Homestand about how the baseball season is a long slog where each individual game, win or lose, is relatively insignificant. Okay, fine, but the Brewers have lost a shit-ton of games this year. At what point in the season does spiritual and emotional entropy creep in? Maybe not by early June, when The Homestand was filmed, but I’m guessing it’s only a matter of weeks before the “Oh, fuck it, let’s just enjoy this paid vacation to Pittsburgh” instinct takes over.

4. Has Prince Fielder checked out?
It’s practically a given at this point that Fielder will not be in a Brewers uniform much longer. (So don’t worry about him getting plunked by pitchers.) This makes me sad for a variety of reasons, and seeing him look surprisingly loose and happy during batting practice in The Homestand makes the prospect of seeing him go all the more depressing. Is this feeling reciprocal at all for Fielder? My guess is, well, sort of. But realistically, you have to assume that having Scott Boras promise to put two weeks worth of grosses for Inception in your pocket washes away melancholy like Tide on spaghetti stains.

5. Exactly how awesome is Ryan Bran’s off-the-field life?
The other glaring practical no-show in The Homestand was Braun, possibly because the team’s biggest star is angling for his own reality series some day. Out of anyone on the Brewers, Braun presumably has the coolest life—provided your definition of a “cool life” involves a never-ending parade of beautiful women, free bottles of champagne, and bros from back in the day that would be happy to take one of those girlies off your hands. Given Braun’s love of Los Angeles and Miami, I haven’t a clue how he amuses himself in Milwaukee. I’m guessing he doesn’t ball it up at the Friday fish-fry, but I'd be thrilled to be proven wrong.