With the best record in the majors and the biggest improvement over a year ago, the Milwaukee Brewers look pretty good as the major leagues head into the second half of the season.

However, before the Brewers get too cocky and look too far ahead, they might want to look back at last year and see what happened to the team that had the best record after each team had played 81 games, half of its schedule.

That team was the surprising Pittsburgh Pirates, who emerged from a record 20 consecutive losing seasons and shocked the National League and everyone else by compiling a 51-30 record halfway through the season.

The Pirates didn’t play badly in the second half, but their 43-38 record wasn’t good enough to prevent St. Louis from winning …

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Shame on Bud Selig. With friends like him, who needs enemies?

With Selig’s alleged retirement less than seven months away, talk is growing about his legacy. His legacy is very important to the historically-minded commissioner.

You want legacy? I’ll give you legacy. No matter how well baseball has flourished during Selig’s 22-year tenure, no matter that Major League Baseball revenue has risen to the $9 billion neighborhood, for me Selig’s legacy will be the way he has shafted Lew Wolff.

Forget that Selig and Wolff were fraternity brothers at the University of Wisconsin 60 years ago. Ten years ago Selig lured Wolff …

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A long-time friend and even longer-time baseball fan called me the day after the United States and Portugal tied in their World Cup soccer match and asked if he had missed something. What’s going on, he wondered.

I laughed, instantly knowing what he meant. I am asking the same questions, I told him, and I don’t know that I have any answers.

Soccer was consuming American sports fans, and it was happening right in the middle of the baseball season. Major League Baseball had attained Commissioner Bud Selig’s goal of parity; more teams than ever were bunched near the top of the division and wild-card races.

Yet a game foreign to the homeland of America’s pastime was captivating fans in unprecedented numbers. How could this be happening?

I don’t have an answer to that question. I can guess and I can speculate, but you’ll excuse me if …

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