If you're a Milwaukee Brewers fan on Twitter and you're not following Tom Haudricourt (@Haudricourt), you're doing it wrong. The veteran Milwaukee Journal Sentinel baseball beat writer won't just serve up interesting stats and analysis throughout a game. (Example from Sunday: "That was an 0-2 curveball from Wainwright that Gomez hit out. No longer can you just assume Gomez cannot hit a breaking ball.") He'll sprinkle in some horseracing picks as well. ("Kind of liking Revolutionary at 10-1. Calvin Borel knows his way to the finish line.")
Haudricourt also has a new book out this spring, 100 Things Brewers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, and it's an ideal gift for Mother's and/or Father's Day.
"I had two major objectives in writing this book," says Haudricourt, taking a rare break from his all-consuming beat. "Be informative and entertaining. There are new generations of Brewers fans and readers who might not know a whole lot about what happened in the '70s, '80s and maybe even the '90s. So this is a book you don't have to read left to right, you can jump around. In that regard, I hope it's fun summertime reading."
Haudricourt welcomes any debate generated by picking out 100 moments in Brewers history and ranking them, and he's also eager to get feedback on what he missed.
"Maybe the next book will be titled And Furthermore...," he says. "We've been talking in the press box about other things that would have made good chapters. There was a time I thought it was going to be tough to come up with 100 things, but since the book came out, I've come up with another dozen things I wish I could have squeezed in there."