Less Frequent Brown Jug

The topic of conference rivalries came up on several occasions at Big Ten media days last week. You may have caught Minnesota coach Tim Brewster utter the following: “We haven’t played Michigan for the past two years,” Brewster said. “To me, I don’t see anything different there. Obviously the Little Brown Jug is a historical game and it’s been really important to Michigan and Minnesota for a long time … I just don’t feel like that game is in the same place as the Wisconsin and Iowa games.” A few thoughts here. Clearly the history of this game and its trophy means a lot to me and it seems to be a given that the Wolverines and Gophers will be on the opposite side of the soon-to-be-announced Big Ten divisions. This will mean that the teams won’t meet on a regular basis and the battle for the jug will be an on-again, off-again affair. I’m ok with this. If the conference moves to a nine game conference slate, Michigan will still face four of the six team in the opposite division anyway. The Jug game won’t be going away and when they do meet it’ll mean that much more. And heck, we’re running out of space on the crock anyway: Related, The Little Brown Jug Lore Series: Part I: What…

Love this photo – mgoblue.com Certainly by now you’ve heard of Michigan’s epic comeback from down 14 runs to Northwestern this weekend on Senior Day. The story made it to SportsCenter and prompted ESPN to ask, ‘Are you Serious?’ WTKA’s Ira Weintraub called the game on the radio and was kind enough to forward over a clip of his call the Dufek’s bomb. Per Ira, “Not a great call, but not bad for a guy who has now called 8 baseball games in the last 10 years!!” Not to bad indeed, and note Weintraub using the Harwell technique of letting the crowd and band paint the scene after the blast: [display_podcast] . For more, check out frequent mgoblog diarist FormerlyAnonymous who gave his account of the game. (HT: Ace @ TWB) And speaking of WKTA 1050AM, Rich Maloney’s call into Sam and Ira this morning is worth a listen. Maloney effectively acknowledged the was over at 13-0, telling his players that no team of his has ever quit during a game, and it wouldn’t be happening today. That said, he did tell the guys that the wind was blowing out and their pitching was a bit depleted. Who knew? Unfortunately I don’t see the podcast up there yet; it is comes up I’ll toss up a link.