I was all fired up to write a “ohmygodthisissodumb” post, but by gum, I couldn’t decide which was dumber: the firing of Ned Yost (in the middle of a pennant race!) or the alleged controversy surrounding the Astros and Cubs playing a game at Miller Park as Ike ravaged Houston. So I’ll turn it over to you, UmpBumpers:

Oh shit.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that at least one sanitary sewer at Miller Park is misconnected to a storm sewer, allowing untreated human waste to flow directly into the Menomonee River and downstream to Lake Michigan.

From the MJS:

Green dye flowing out of a storm sewer on the Menomonee River confirmed at least one misconnection between a sanitary sewer from Miller Park and storm sewer lines draining from stadium parking lots less than three weeks before 40,000 fans arrive for opening day.

The improper connection allows human fecal bacteria from bathrooms on the northeast corner of the stadium to flow into the river.

One or more of the sanitary sewer pipes coming from that corner of the stadium likely was connected inadvertently to a storm sewer during Miller Park’s construction, said Peter Topczewski, the sewerage district’s water quality protection manager.

No wonder Bud Selig is so full of crap — his drinking water is loaded with it!

But seriously, one’s first reaction to a story like this is, “gross”. But actually there is a long history of polluted rivers and fecal matter in sports.

Everybody’s third favorite baseball movie, Major League, begins with the Randy Newman song, “Burn On, Big River,” a song about the Cuyahoga River, which caught on fire in 1969 and prompted Time Magazine to call it the river that “oozes rather than flows.”

Veteran Stadium was home to the Phillies and Eagles until it was imploded in 2004. The stadium was roundly criticized — everything from the turf to the accoustics sucked — but maybe its biggest flaw was a shortage of bathrooms. On Sundays, lines to the bathroom would get so long that people started pissing in the sinks. I even heard a story about a group of guys who started wearing Depends to the games, so they wouldn’t have to miss any of the action.

Those are just a couple of examples that I can think of off the top of my head. But you see, there’s pleny of precedent for floating crap in sports.

Fifty years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, another color barrier has finally fallen.

Yes, it’s true! For the first time ever, a sausage of color will race in the sausage race at Miller Park on Saturday, when Mexican Chorizo takes his place alongside veterans American hotdog, Italian sausage, Polish sausage, and German bratwurst.

Nicknamed “El Picante” and wearing number 5, Chorizo proudly shows his pride in his ethnic heritage by refusing to wear an ordinary baseball cap in favor of an oversized Mexican sombrero.

But a good question is, why did it take so long? Latino sausages have long since proven that they compete on the highest levels of flavor and between-inning sprinting, and yet they did not make the major leagues until 2006?

An even better question is, why is Chorizo only being called up for one game, only to be “sent back to the minors for more seasoning” in the words of Brewers GM Doug Melvin, and not making another appearance until 2007?

Clearly the evil forces of entrenched racism yet endure.