Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, the inestimable writer Katharine Eliska Kimbriel has tagged me in a blog-hop called “Four Questions for the Writer.”

Then, so did another of my writer-friends, Dina von Lowenkraft — she of DRAGON FIRE fame — which is why I’m letting you all know that I will be doing this particular blog-hop.

Just not today.

Nope. Instead, I’m going to whet your appetite a little bit and give you a link to Ms. Kimbriel’s current blog post (so you’ll know what the four questions are), and when Ms. von Lowenkraft gets her questions up (which should be soon; I didn’t see it yet, but that may be more about me and my inadequate Web searching abilities than anything else), I’ll be glad to get a link to that as well.

I plan to answer these questions on Sunday . . . by then, I may have some idea of just which writers I’ll be tagging in return, so there should be plenty of blog-hopping fun to go around.

As for everything else, I’m glad the Milwaukee Brewers continue to win baseball games. They’re playing well as a team, and are bouncing back from tough losses (like Tuesday night’s twelve-inning contest, which the Brewers ended up losing, 2-1). Wednesday night’s starter Kyle Lohse looked extremely impressive in seven innings worth of work, giving up only one earned run and striking out five (he did, however, walk an uncharacteristically high four batters, but the walks didn’t hurt him).

And really, every starter with the exception of Matt Garza (who’s going on Friday night against his old team, the Chicago Cubs) has looked very good. The team ERA for Milwaukee’s pitching staff is a sparkling 2.52, and that’s despite the terrible inning Wei Chung-Wang pitched in Pittsburgh (where he gave up six runs in an inning’s worth of work).

It’s mostly because of the Brewers’ outstanding pitching staff that they currently maintain the best record in Major League Baseball at 16-6.

Finally, it’s time for a quick report on what Racine native Vinny Rottino is doing these days. As I discussed a few months ago, Rottino is currently playing in South Korea with the Nexen Heroes, and he’s actually made some baseball history over there.

See, it seems that they’d never had an all-American battery over there (for non-baseball fans, a “battery” is a catcher-pitcher combination). Until April 11, 2014, that is, when Rottino caught Andy Van Hekken — Rottino and Van Hekken were the first all-American battery in the 32-year history of the Korean Baseball Organization.

Here’s how Yonhapnews.com described it (from their English language website):

The 34-year-old, who has caught 305 games in the minors and three in the majors, didn’t look too out of place behind the plate, as the Heroes defeated the Tigers 5-2. Van Hekken tossed seven shutout innings with six hits and four strikeouts to improve to 2-1 with a 1.96 ERA.

Rottino did give up a couple of steals and threw the ball into the left field when trying to nab Kim Sun-bin stealing third.

Kim sprinted home, but Rottino caught left fielder Moon U-ram’s throw and tagged out the runner at home.

Batting ninth, Rottino went 2-for-3 at the plate, and You Jae-sin pinch-ran for him in the seventh.

All I can say is “congratulations” for a job well done — even if I’m a few weeks late off the draw. (Well, better late than never, right?)