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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey,
good morning.
It's 7.06 on a Monday morning.
It's August 18th, 2025.
Nice to have you along here live from Lake Wissota.
Let's see.
We've got Selena Heller standing by from Up North News.
We've got meteorologist Brittany Merleau here as well.
Parker Olsen is producing this shindig down in Madison Studio A2.
Kristen Lyrely is somewhere between here and Peru.
And we'll eventually hear from her again, but had a great time off.
But let's go to Brittany on the weather because it has been not inconsistent.
I mean, you just don't know there's these very
localized pockets of heavy rain in places.
And I'm a little nervous about Southeast Wisconsin again today.
But even in like the overnight hours, I saw like, you know, up here on like, so do we got maybe a half inch of rain?
But then there were some places not that far away that got four inches of rain or more.
It is truly a case today where once again, you really need to pay attention to that local forecast.
And even even that can only tell you so much.
Exactly.
Yes, we've got a big low pressure system that is dripping in a warm front for a good half of the state and then a cold front behind that and it's just bringing rounds of rain today.
So it's already moved in.
It started last night, obviously.
like Pat was saying, some place is getting some heavy rainfall.
Others not so much.
So those rivers are starting to rise in certain areas.
The Trempelow River is expected to hit a minor flood stage at Arcadia this afternoon.
So a flood warning is out there.
There's a flood watch further south at Dodge.
And then we're also looking at those southeastern Wisconsin rivers.
The Fox River still in an action level at Waukesha and New Munster.
And the Rock River and Bark River are still high.
Plus Lake Michigan, those waves very big today.
There's a
Beach hazard statement out there for three to six foot waves.
So stay away from that, rip currents and such, but you won't want to be at the beach today.
It's just dark and dreary.
cloudy overcast.
We're not looking at many sunspots at all.
I think the only sunshine across the state this morning is in Shawno right now.
Everybody else is looking at some rain rolling through and you know some places are going to get heavy.
We are looking at this afternoon and into the evening some storms starting to spark again and that's where a lot heavier rainfall is going to be within those.
So a good half an inch wide spread if you get underneath that.
up to an inch is likely, but then some places are looking at two to three inches pretty quickly underneath these storms.
So it really depends on where they start to spark, where they sit, how big they get and how fast they're moving.
So we are looking at some places looking at potentially localized flash flooding.
I mean, if you get another two to three inches on top of what we've already gotten, I was looking at places over the weekend, Madison, Milwaukee area, Milwaukee got spared only.
less than a quarter of an inch so far.
But Madison area, you're approaching near an inch already.
Wow.
And by the way, not just us, Hurricane Aaron out in the Atlantic is not going to make landfall.
But I mean, all along the east coast, they're going to be affected by the surf.
I would I would imagine air travel would be something as well, because this thing went from zero to 60 or in this case, zero to cat five in record time.
That is that is concerning.
Yes, it is.
I'm glad it's staying further away and it doesn't isn't targeting the mainland just yet.
But I mean, I think the Outer Banks, North Carolina, stuff like that, it's going to be pretty, pretty wild over there.
And the really interesting thing is the low pressure that's over us today.
All this, the system is going to join that hurricane, Erin, probably on Thursday out there.
Okay.
So yeah, keep that in mind if you're traveling out east later.
Good morning from Tigerton, writes Rob on YouTube.
It's cloudy and 60 degrees, quarter inch of rain overnight.
Saturday, Tigerton picked up two inches of rain, worked on my mowers, had a mowing job yesterday.
Tigerton had a major fire Saturday night, Rob says.
When an apartment complex burned down, three families lived there, they got out safely, but lost their belongings.
It was a historic building built in the 1800s.
It was the old Tigerton Hotel for many years, then the Crossroads Bar and Grill.
closed before COVID hit in early 2020.
They had great softball teams back in the day.
It was a Tigerson landmark.
I took pictures and it got on the Green Bay TV stations.
I shared them on some of the civic media websites.
They used
540,000 gallons of water and 10 fire departments in that Tigerton area to help with putting out the fire.
And there is some light fog there this morning.
So again, we're glad that everybody got out safely.
And we are very thankful to firefighters and first responders who have to do that kind of a work, have to give up their weekend to save lives.
put things out like this.
So
I know I
appreciate the update from your Rob on there.
By the way, you know, we appreciate Rob's notes all the time.
Anybody's welcome to jump in on here on YouTube or on Facebook, up North News, Facebook, up North News, YouTube, Civic Media, Facebook, Civic Media, YouTube, pop on up with your comments.
Let us know about how your day went as well.
Brittany, you described your weekend as relaxing.
Yeah, it was.
How about yours?
Well, mostly the same.
You know, Saturday was rainy for the first two thirds of the day.
And we got a lot done here, including something that we've we've put off for a while in our advancing age.
And so if you ever notice that Pat starts booking guests about retirement planning, it's because I realized
If you have, shall we say, a checkered employment history, you know, there are some people who have worked at the same job for forever and it's very easy for them to track like one 401k
or
one pension plan.
By the time I got done building the spreadsheet
of all the
places that I've worked in all the little pockets of you know 401ks or pensions or other things that are out there I'm like I'm gonna need a professional to help out with this or
or I booked them as guests on the radio show and I asked them hypothetical questions.
let's
had seven
careers and has this much.
How would you start to, you know, line up the disbursement of those funds and at what age would you start taking Social Security?
Just generically, hypothetically speaking, of course.
So
it was a productive weekend.
It was very productive.
Don't get me wrong, but
Being a pack rat, you know, it works both ways.
There are things that I never would have found if it hadn't been for just stacks and stacks of statements that I saved over the years and never really looked at them until it was time to look at them and then they were there.
But also...
So much paper there that does not need to be there and it just it keeps you from finding the things that you've got to find and by the way I don't know who who said we're going paperless
We are
not paperless in this world
yet
not by any stretch.
No
So yeah, it was a if a relaxing weekend means sitting right here where you see me now and Just going through all kinds of financial statements and things it was but there was also some some sweet corn freshly picked
you
know, from the
local farm that
we had
along with some steak over the weekend.
There was the dueling pianos show that I talked about on Friday night up at Schutze's Tavern outside of Chippewa Falls.
There was a little bit of a quick boat ride later on Saturday when the rain ended and we got such sunny skies and that was really nice.
Saturday.
You were on a jet boat when the storms came through.
of it.
Taking video of their penguin doom.
least if anything happens to me, you know, it'll be documented like, okay.
You got that going for you.
Oh, what a horrible thing
to
flood.
the porta potties.
That's that actually that lines up with something Sherry said on Friday.
I talked about the thunderstorm that approached but then missed us where we were at this dueling pianos thing under a big top.
And I mentioned last hour how she's like, let's not sit by the center pole of the 10th just in case you know the thunderstorm comes through.
but at some point she had to take a break and she came back and she's like, I have never been that nervous in a porta potty thinking of
all the
ways to go, a lightning strike to a porta potty.
Just
go.
Yeah, no thanks.
No, no thanks.
Do
your thing and get out of there as quickly as possible.
So
I'm glad
we missed that.
And Brittany, thank you for the update.
We'll talk to you next hour as well.
That was good.
All right.
Don't forget you can sign up for our newsletters up north news wi.com.
And in today's newsletter, let's see, there's a couple of different things in here.
We've got a story that includes a salute to Wisconsin timber rattlers play by play announcer Chris Marring, who for more than 20 years has shown up to the mic without missing a game.
in more than 20 years, more than 3,000 broadcasts.
That's more than 27,000 innings for the Brewers High Class A team.
So, I mean, Parker, you hit a few Madison Mallards games.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, this is 20 years worth of perfect attendance
You know, when you mentioned play by play guys, you know, Josh Maurer, one of the radio play by play guys for the Brewers.
I believe.
Yeah.
I heard him the other day while actually while we were on the boat ride later on Saturday.
And it reminded me, I was going to mention this to you that you and Josh Maurer, I mean,
your voices aren't exactly alike don't get me wrong but it was in kind of that same vein and I thought you know maybe Parker wants to do play by play I would love to hey I'm doing games so
do it sure I'm if you're listening Luke
Well, look if Chris Marion's been doing this for over 20 years, I don't know how much longer he's gonna be there So, you know there might be an opening there.
You never know Also in the newsletter today 10 homes from across Wisconsin that have been featured on HDTV programs and Then finally a bird usually found on the Gulf Coast and in Central and Southern America Made a surprise appearance last week in Columbia County, Wisconsin
in the Mud Lake Wildlife Area.
Details there on the subtropical wood stork and why it might have been this far out of its usual range.
Again, that's all in today's newsletter.
Sign up for it over at upnorthnewswi.com.
And yes, there is definitely Parker, you say it, and it happens.
Luke Mathers jumping right on the text line there to say.
I'm always listening.
With
he's finally tuned that way.
So it'll
Oh, I mean, that's I mean, that's not even announcing that that show business right there, which is which would be a lot of fun.
Don't get me wrong.
And we when we when I mentioned HGTV and some of the Wisconsin homes that were on there.
I think I've said before that we
put HDTV on on the weekends.
And it's just it's just kind of the background wallpaper, you know, we don't like watch it intently.
But I'm not going to watch like, you know, golf or some of the other, you know, movies and things that are on there.
So the HDTV is on.
I would just like to make this pitch to HDTV.
Could you retire the phrase open concept?
Everybody said, Oh, I want an open concept kitchen.
I want an open concept living space.
You know,
That's what everything is now.
Everything's up.
We don't have the very defined four walls, you know, in every room anymore.
I mean, it's now that's like saying, oh, I would like a roof.
Okay, it's news if you
don't want a roof on there.
And the same goes, it would be news if you didn't want an open concept.
So HGTV, you can you can let that go at any point.
We're going to talk to Selena more about Wisconsin Dells and some of the shows that she was part of not part of but was watching.
That's all coming up.
A local update is next for some of you.
I'm Pat Crite low from Up North News.
This is the Civic Media radio network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
A double header baseball today by the Milwaukee Brewers looking to start a new winning streak
After setting a franchise record, 14 wins in a row on Saturday before an extra inning loss yesterday to wrap up their series in Cincinnati.
Now it's off to Wrigley Field, five games in four days.
against the Cubs, starting with a double header today because of a makeup game from a rainout earlier this season.
So the makeup game, pregame coverage begins at 12.45 this afternoon.
And then the second game of the double header is going to be played tonight.
So that pregame will start at 6.30 this evening on several civic media stations all across the network here.
Coming up in 30 minutes, we'll be talking to Jimmy Koska a bit more about sports and the Brewers win streak and
Then Jane McNair will join us just a little before nine and before you catch her show here following this one on the Civic Media Radio Network.
And in, well, just a little over 10 minutes, we'll be talking to Matt Rothschild and Maurice Estrano about the idea of allowing for citizen initiatives, letting ordinary folks collect signatures and get new laws and or constitutional amendments.
up on the ballot.
So stick around for that.
But Selena Heller from Up North News joins us now.
And we're going to talk a bit about Wisconsin Dells you're passing through there as part of your annual trip.
And I was talking in the last hour about variety shows.
You don't really see them on TV anymore.
But there's still plenty of places to catch a good show.
The Wisconsin Dells certainly being one of them.
And so you wanted to share just a little bit of the Wisconsin Dells live show experience with us today.
So one of the things is the legacy dinner theater and they have concert series throughout the year so different shows and then right now they have going on the sneaky Pete Wild West dinner show and it's really fun.
You can boo the villains the bad guys and cheer on the heroes like the sheriff and on Saturday night We went and it was like it's a multi-million dollar 700 seat state-of-the-art
and it was sold out on Saturday night.
And Sneaky Pete goes through August 31st, and it's an original show.
It's really just fun.
And so this, this is Tim, one of the co-writers of the show itself.
It's just, it incorporates all of the things that make the Dells the Dells kind of thing.
It's in a really funny way.
It's a funny tale of how the Dells became the Dells.
And here's Tim.
We want to do something not only for the Dales that honors the Dales and of course our story is...
100% not true.
matter of fact in our little thing song we say the story we will tell is how the Dales became the Dales not really but it's a fun way we think that it would have been a great way for it to have been named but no we have fun and we honor for instance Tommy Bartlett who is a huge figure here in and the Dales and a lot of people
deal a lot of people that come to the show new Tommy and So we feel we've named all of our characters after him So it's that's a lot of fun and plus we do little takeouts on the names of the different resorts here that some of those were supposed to be the early names of the Dales So yeah, we
have fun So again, that's that's Tim from sneaky Pete's Wild West show and you want to share a little the the music from the show?
song
By
the way,
that's Del's
yet, unless you think it closely resembles a country song that's out there.
And one more attraction you want to tell folks about.
interactive art museum.
So now the museum is 80 to 90 percent odd and unusual art.
We're still planning on getting some more stuff in, but the entire concept was art you could touch and interact with and actually do cool things with or make make sounds or things like that.
kitchen oddities
Okay.
And you know, to be clear, we've made this case before here is that Wisconsin Dells could not be what it is and could not be the cog to the economy that it is without so many people from other nations who come and work there for a season or for a year.
And, you know, when you go to these places, a lot of them, especially like Noah's Ark, when you go there, they all have name tags and the country they're from.
So we saw Romania, Spain, and I explained this to Emery that, you know, listen to them and because you can hear and talk to them because they're all from another country and they stay in the dorms there.
They have so many people coming and they have a program, you know, it's students that are there and working all summer and then they go back to school at the end of the summer.
So yes, they're all
lot of workers coming from all over the world.
Yes, it's a true melting pot.
And that again, that is part of the attraction.
And I think it's something we take for granted, because it's right in our literal backyard.
But I like the fact that, you know, a good Wisconsin girl like you hasn't forgotten about the Dells and makes it an annual trip and epic adventure, you like to say
about upper
And yeah, it all started because the Dells are the Dells, the natural formation that it is.
Thank you, Selina.
Have a great day.
You do.
All right.
When we come back, Matt Rothschild and Marissa Strinnell will talk about citizen initiatives to make changes to the law or the Constitution after the Midwest Farm Report on the Civic Media Radio Network.
735 welcome back to our mornings powered by up North news here on the civic media radio network coming up on mat and air on air
Right off the top at 9 0 5 Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez candidate for governor in the 2026 election We'll be joining Jane McNair and Greg Bach.
Also later Shali Pittman subject media's news director We'll talk about some of the stories that you might have missed from over the weekend and then later today on the Maggie Dawn show from four until six o'clock There will be a discussion on opposing viewpoints progressive Democrats versus centrist Democrats
And is it a case of verses or is it a distinction without that much of a difference?
Well, that'll be part of the discussion involving Megidon and guest co-host Matt Rothschild, who coincidentally is right here right now.
Matt Rothschild joins us along with Maurice Estrano.
And Marisa is from Deputy Director of, I'm sorry, Deputy Director of Political Reform at New America.
Matt Rothschild, of course, hosts the Wisconsin Forward podcast on the Civic Media Radio Network.
And together, they recently co-authored an article that I saw in the Wisconsin State Journal that is titled, Give Wisconsin Voters More Say Through Ballot Initiatives.
Matt and Marisa, good morning to you both.
Good morning.
Thanks for having us.
Hey, Pat.
Good to be on
with you.
Yeah.
Well, Matt, good to be on with you.
You're, you're the one that's on more often than me or any other hosts here.
You're, you're like, uh, we civic media should be your middle name or something.
I'm, I'm paying rent here in the
studio.
That's great.
No, it's wonderful to have you here.
So Matt, since you're the hometown fellow there, let's have you start and then we'll go to Marisa after that about what initiated, what prompted this column about ballot initiatives in Wisconsin.
Well, I got to give credit to Marisa.
She reached out to me.
She's been working on
and her organization's been working on this idea of defending direct democracy to the right of citizens to go to referendum and pass a bill that they want to pass, or overturn a bill that they don't like, or amend the Constitution if they want to.
I also, coincidentally, this is dear to my heart, I wrote a book a few years back called 12 Ways to Save Democracy in Wisconsin, and one of those chapters was Give Us Direct Democracy.
So we decided to team up and write this little op-ed.
Well, then let's turn that over to Marisa as well.
Marisa tells us more about New America.
And again, you know, the impetus for, you know, making this kind of a push for Citizen Initiative.
Sure.
Yeah.
Thanks for teeing me up, Matt and Pat, too.
Really appreciate you having us on to talk about this piece.
So at New America, I work in the political reform program in which we explore, do research and try to socialize a whole
swath of ideas for how to make our democracy work better for more people in a nutshell.
So sometimes that means reforming the way we do elections.
Sometimes that means pioneering and supporting and lifting up new models of civic engagement like citizens assemblies.
And we sort of had this gap between improving representative democracy and improving deliberative democracy in which direct democracy kind of fit.
And what we were thinking was that there are all these efforts underway by state legislatures across the country to roll back initiative and referendum powers to restrict that process.
And defense is happening, which is great.
But what we're not seeing, we have not been seeing in decades and in some ways over a century, is a real effort to expand access to citizen-led ballot measures like the initiative and the referendum.
to new states because currently only half of US states allow their citizens to petition to change laws, to put new ideas on the ballot, or to repeal existing laws, as Matt said before.
So when we started scoping the landscape to see what activity was already happening within states to amend their constitutions to establish a new process to
to allow citizens this power, we realized there was very little happening and much of that is because it doesn't feel possible.
So what we did was we developed a methodology to evaluate a state's readiness to bring on a new process like this within the current very polarized, very nationalized, very difficult political landscape for reform.
And we looked at different indicators, social, political, socioeconomic, civic indicators of a state's readiness for reform.
And what we found was, and actually it's sort of aligned with my initial expectations when setting out to do this project, that Wisconsin was the most promising candidate to come online, to be the first state to come online for many decades as the newest
state within an initiative process.
And that was exciting.
And I connected with Matt through a mutual colleague.
And I said, is this something that you might be interested in starting to talk about a little bit more?
Like, what do you know about what's happening on the ground?
And it just felt like there was a lot of synergy there.
So we decided to say, you know, let's write something and see if we can kick up some interest and see if that can
sort of nudge the issue a little bit forward.
Again, there is some interest already, but we are just interested in seeing how far we can take it.
So Matt, in Wisconsin, what might that look like and help folks understand
Maybe what it is they could do if the rules were changed.
I mean, when I think at first blush, I can think of people not knowing, are they looking to change a law, a statute on the books, or are they looking to amend the Constitution?
I mean, it's one thing to say we're going to have initiative and referendum, but where are the guidelines?
What's going to help citizens to not only want to do this, but also use it efficiently?
Well, thanks for asking, Pat.
Let me give you an example.
Everyone listening I'm sure remembers 2011 and Scott Walker and Act 10 in the rollback of union rights here in Wisconsin.
Well a similar thing was tried in Ohio a couple months after Walker did it here and the people of Ohio rose up and said no we don't want to take away the rights of public sector unions in Ohio and at that time and they still do have the power of referendum and so they signed a petition they got plenty of people to
passed the threshold that you needed for petition signatures to get the referendum on the books and said, we're going to roll back this thing that Kaseich, the governor of Ohio, the Republican passed through the legislature there and essentially the people got a veto.
So there was no successful assault on labor rights in Ohio.
Ohio and Michigan have the right of referendum, binding referendum that the people can.
put on the ballot.
In Michigan a couple years ago, a single individual started an initiative process to get on the ballot in Michigan the idea to ban gerrymandering, and that got overwhelming support too, so they banned gerrymandering by referendum.
It would be sweet if we could do that here too.
Marisa, in terms of unintended consequences, and I'm not saying this is a reason not to do this, but are we then saying if we start to open up this door to these kinds of citizen led initiatives that a
an electorate that is already weary of statewide campaigns for governor and us senate and now statewide campaigns you know for supreme court justices have become so politicized
are
we kind of opening the door to another wave of these but this time with particular ballot issues and how do we can we do anything to make sure that those don't
just become the next round of multi-million dollar, you know, political battles that leave voters unsure of what exactly they're voting on.
That's such a good point.
Nobody is arguing that this is a perfect vehicle for achieving policy change.
The initiative is what I like to call kind of a pressure release valve.
It's more of an in-case of emergency when the legislature really isn't delivering on what the majority of the public wants.
rather than a substitute for representative democracy.
It's not perfect.
It has become an extremely professionalized and expensive way to change policy.
It does bring in a lot of money and a lot of unwelcome money into states.
There's no secret about that.
Most notoriously, we see that happen in California, which of course has a different.
political culture and has a zillion media markets within that drive up costs.
But the bottom line is it is expensive and there's almost no way to avoid when you're dealing with salient issues like abortion protections, for example.
There's almost no way to avoid the money.
However,
There are some ways to address the money question, one of which is to design a process such that citizens do not feel that they always need to take the amendment route, the constitutional amendment route.
There are different types of initiative.
One is you're changing a state statute.
That usually has lower threshold.
Lower signatures, it costs less money to run those campaigns.
Then there's the constitutional amendment route.
is more expensive.
Citizens have been taking that option more and more and more unnecessarily in recent years because they fear legislative interference in the post passage and implementation process.
It feels more secure.
So by when you are thinking about bringing a process to a new state, you get to think about how to make the model work better.
And we haven't had an opportunity like that in many, many, many moons.
But if a new state like Wisconsin were to adopt its own process, it would have the opportunity to learn from what other states have done wrong, such as how to make it a little bit cheaper to run a campaign, how to make sure that the fiscal reviews that are performed are done by independent bodies.
In terms of confusing ballot language, you should not need a...
postgraduate degree in order to decipher the language of a ballot measure.
Right now you do in many cases.
And there are mechanisms that you can put in place to ensure that that language is easily is intelligible, is legible to a general electorate and also to ensure that there are voter guides.
that go out, you know, alongside your ballot or beforehand so that people have other ways to learn about the ballot measure and the stakes associated with that measure.
And Matt, Matt, I feel like we are maybe simplistically killing two birds with one stone.
But if I had the power to do this, I think the first thing I'd be pushing for would be some way to limit the the amount or influence of money in Wisconsin politics.
Yeah, we got to solve that problem too.
But this power of binding
referendum is important.
Look, we're not getting what we want in Wisconsin.
The vast majority of people in Wisconsin want Medicaid expansion.
They want legalized marijuana.
They want more spending on public education.
And we're just getting stymied time and time again by the log jam here in the capital.
So let's, let's give the people a little more power.
And so before we wrap up here, Marisa and Marisa strato from New America, can you tell us a bit about the group and how people can learn more about New America?
Sure.
We are a Washington DC based think tank.
And if you are interested in learning more about our democracy work generally or about this project specifically, you just go to newamerica.org slash political reform.
We have a new report that lays out our methodology.
We have a list of lessons and takeaways from the history of ballot initiative adoption, which happened mostly during the.
progressive era, the early 20th century, and other tools.
You can also email me.
I'm easy to find on the website.
And I'd be happy to talk to anybody in Wisconsin who's interested in learning more and taking this issue forward.
All right.
And again, newamerica.org would be the address there.
And Maurice Estrano is the deputy director of political reform.
And Matt Rothschild, of course, is everywhere, including on the Maggie Dawn Show later today, which again, I hope you continue this conversation and this topic.
It's a very important one and gives citizens one more tool to feel like they're in charge of their democracy and not outside forces.
Matt, thank you so much.
We'll hear you this afternoon with Maggie.
And Marisa, thank you so much for your time today.
Thanks a lot, Pat.
Thank you.
All right, good to have you both.
Have a wonderful day.
And when we come back, some of you will have a local update.
We'll be visiting here with Jimmy Koska from Civic Media talking about the Brewers and that franchise record 14 game winning streak before it got snapped yesterday.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
We're going to play two today with the Cubs to kick off five games in four days at Wrigley Field.
Brewers and Cubs game one, making up an earlier rain out.
12.45 pre-game begins on several Civic Media stations and then again tonight, the regularly scheduled game, pre-game begins at 6.30 and it's on the Brewers that we bring up Civic Media Sports Director Jimmy Koska to kind of revel in a weekend.
Yeah, it's sad to have had the streak come to an end at 14 games.
But to tie it on Friday and to set a new record on Saturday, those games were just magical.
They were fun.
And I mean, even in the loss yesterday, tying it or going ahead the ninth inning, only to lose it later.
Just great games, Jimmy.
This is a fun season.
So there's two things.
One, it's the way they did it.
I mean, look at the way that these games ended over the weekend.
I mean,
That's it's just incredible when you when you're following a team and you have a ride like this It's certainly memorable, you know I remember watching money ball a few weeks ago Just it was on and I didn't change the channel and they had that the big winning streak in the middle of the season right after they Had a slow start to the year.
Well, there's shades of that with the Brewers They had that slow start with the torpedo bats and the Yankees and all that in the beginning of the year now they find themselves clearly
ahead of everybody at all fiddling baseball.
The other thing is that all of these these close games as of late and and some of these finishes, this is playoff like atmosphere.
There's things at stake.
There's tension.
There's there's drama.
I mean, these are all great things to help you prepare for what you hope will be a deep postseason run here coming up in about six weeks.
For folks that might have missed it, let's let's just go ahead and relive the magic here because on Friday, the Brewers were down eight to one in the second inning.
And I thought, well, that's that's it.
I mean, since they put up seven in the second inning, Jacob Mizorowski just could not get it done on Friday night.
He was done after what, an inning and a third, I think, something like that.
And so the Brewers down to 8-1.
But then they come back with five in the third and two more in the fourth.
The next thing you know, the game is tied.
And then they go on to win that game 10-8 after being down 8-1 on Friday.
And then a Saturday's game in Cincinnati.
Again, they were down until they scored three runs in the top of the 11th.
That was Andrew Monasterio's home run, if I'm not mistaken, right?
Yep.
And what's fun about the Brewers is that it's not
It's not like when CeCe's a bat, he had carried the Brewers into the playoffs back, you know, what, 12 years ago or whatever.
It's been a little bit of everybody.
Somebody different has stepped to the plate each night to deliver big for them, whether it's been a pitcher going to distance, whether it's been a batter having to clutch at bats, or even the games where they just pound opponents.
you know, everybody's getting multiple hits in a game.
It's been a team effort to get to that point.
And that's what's really exciting about this is because it's not the Brewers relying on just a handful of guys to get them over the finish line.
This is top to bottom, you know, a team that is getting the job done and doing it at an extremely, extremely good level.
And by the way, Monosterio's three-run homer in the 11th inning on Saturday.
Good thing he got that because the Reds came out and got two more of their own in the bottom of the 11th and very nearly pulled off the win there.
And then, of course, they did yesterday beating the Brewers.
But again, it took extra innings.
The Brewers got two runs in the top of the ninth, only to give up one in the bottom of the ninth and then one in the bottom of the 10th to lose to the Reds three to two.
And in that case, Jimmy
yesterday you could just feel the team saying look if we got to let this one go we can't be stretching the bullpen any thinner when you got five games coming up against the Cubs.
Yeah, this is a brutal stretch right now.
And a lot of it has to do with having to play these five games in four days against the Cubs.
You hope they get it all done today, too, because there's a lot of rain today here along the state line, Wisconsin and Illinois.
The good news is, though, the rest of the week, it looks great.
So they'll get these five games in in the next four days.
If there's any delays, they'll just have to rearrange one of these other games.
But there are bigger things at stake.
And for the Brewers, this series against the Cubs, this last time they played the Cubs, I think.
They have an eight game lead right now in the division.
Don't really see them dropping all five, but they can certainly do themselves some favors.
If they take three of five, not only do they pull at least a game away from the Cubs in the division, but they would also own that crucial tiebreaker.
Should they, for some reason, end up tied at the end of the year, that's big, especially for a division race.
Right now, the viewers at Cubs have the best run differentials in the national league and in all baseball, I think.
So there's a lot at stake.
next five days, it'll feel like the playoffs here in Chicago.
And by the way, the three games, and these were three big and exciting games, but I mean, don't run out of gas, kids.
This last Thursday was their last day off before a stretch of, I think it's 18 games in 17 days.
before they get a day off the day after Labor Day.
So there's a lot of baseball you had ahead for these guys.
And you mentioned the Cubs and Craig Council.
And I saw a story yesterday that Craig Council said something like, oh, I've never even been to a George Web.
And of course,
Naturally, the internet being what it is, people found the social media posts that Craig Council put up for you years back, talking about George Webb and the hamburgers and everything else.
It was borderline disingenuous to hear Craig Council talking.
I know he's feeling a lot of pressure being the Cubs manager, watching the Brewers doing what they're doing right now.
And so for Council to kind of take this almost dismissive tone of Milwaukee, it puts even more.
energy into these next four days of these five games.
Yeah, and it's unfortunate because I think that for anybody in that situation where you're being offered the largest contract to manage a baseball team in history, you'd probably do it.
But it's a little weird in a way, too.
But all things said, I think
I think there would be much more interest in what happens on the field rather than off of it.
And obviously, this is some massive series for both teams.
Yeah.
And the Packers won their preseason game in Indianapolis.
Yeah, it's preseason.
And then high school football kicks off this week.
We're going to talk about that on Wednesday morning, I assume.
Yes, the first games will be Thursday.
Some teams will play Thursday.
Most of the rest will play Friday.
It is here.
The fastest nine weeks in all of sports begins this week, so I'm excited.
Here
we go.
Civic Media Sports Director Jimmy Koska.
Jimmy, thank you very much.
Have a great day.
You too.
All right.
Along the way, in our next hour, Brittany Merleau's updated forecast.
We may hear from Dr. Kristen Lierly as well.
Freshly back from Peru.
Remember, you can follow my team from Up North News all day long through our newsletters, social media, our website, UpNorthNewsWI.com.
And of course, right here, Mornings, powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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