Not to be forgotten or excluded from the awesomeness that the New York Yankees and other teams displayed last night when they played “Sweet Caroline” at stadiums across the country to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Milwaukee Brewers also offered their respect and tribute in their own special, equally beautiful manner.

The Brewers decided to (fittingly) play the theme song to Cheers to honor the titular bar of one of the greatest TV series of all-time, as it was obviously set in Boston. I don’t know why this one chokes me up more, but it does. Either way, good on all of you blessed baseball towns for providing the figurative pollen and literal humanity last night and today.

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Here’s the contest:

The MLB Fan Cave 2013 contest has been narrowed down to 50 finalists. Watch and vote for your favorite contestant videos below. From now until February 13, you can vote for as many of your favorite videos as you want and spread the word by sharing on social media. Thirty contestants will be invited to Spring Training to audition to be the 2013 Fan Cave Dwellers.

I don’t want to tell you who to vote for, but there’s really only one choice: Pete Gourlie, a Milwaukee Brewers fan who has a dog (pictured), wears a Brewers jersey under his mattress shop workshirt and wistfully remembers the 1990s as the time when he got into concessions and tailgating and all his clothes stopped fitting. It’s absolutely adorable, especially when he puts on his tiny Brewers helmet and brags via infographic about how it comes equipped with a radio.

Here’s the clip. Fall in love, then go vote for him in the thing.

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If you head on over to free agent Nyjer Morgan’s Twitter account, you’ll notice that he’s currently taking suggestions for a new Twitter handle and asking his 85,000+ followers to come join him on his new Twitter account that doesn’t even exist yet. And while I could probably spend the rest of the afternoon suggesting new Twitter handles for him – including @Mr239Average, @MilwaukeesWorst and @WorthlessInOctober, among others – I should probably point out that the reason he needs a new Twitter account is because he was “hacked”.

Of course, by hacked I mean that he had an easy password, entrusted it with his girlfriend and then apparently cheated on her (or at least really pissed her off). That’s why if you’re one of the 85K that he’s begging to Jerry Maguire with him, you may have noticed a little craziness on his Twitter feed last night. You know, because he got “hacked”.

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Watching analysis and listening to announcers debate the accuracy of Aramis Ramirez striking out swinging without swinging (you read that correctly) is so boring you’ll feel like you sat through a powerpoint presentation by the end, but it’s something that needs to be seen.

Here’s what happens: Aramis Ramirez ducks a ball in on the hands, it clips his bat on the way across and the catcher reaches up to snag it. The umpire, going on sound, calls him out. Ramirez claims it hit his hand. It didn’t, and in a world where refs and umpires almost never seem to get it right, a guy made a quick call and nailed it. Ramirez struck out swinging without moving his bat.

It’s a perfect example of how the complexities of pro baseball make it the finest sport ever organized by man. It’s also a perfect example of how baseball is f**king NyQuil in sports-form.

[h/t Big League Stew]

Sure, the big baseball news right now is all about how Milwaukee Brewers slugger and 2011 National League MVP Ryan Braun beat the system and had his 50-game suspension overturned yesterday. Everyone was all like, “Hooray, bro! He did it! He proved that MLB players can use banned substances and not get in trouble because the FedEx guy will forget to deliver the urine on time, thus rendering the findings obsolete because of the MLB’s drug-testing policies!” Or something like that. I honestly stopped paying attention to this story the moment it was announced that a Brewers player was suspended, because my natural response was, “LOL, Bud Selig won’t suspend Brewers.”

But my silly, sarcastic conspiracy theories aside, I’m happy that Braun isn’t suspended, because he seems like a good guy. The only way he could seem any cooler would be if he had a sweet mustache like my main man Lance Berkman up there. Berkman showed up to St. Louis Cardinals – the reigning World Series champions – facilities in Jupiter, Florida sporting a new and quite porn-o-rific flavor savor. St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Derrick Goold Tweeted that he looks like Sgt. Slaughter, but I think he’s working towards something a little more manly.

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Good news for fans of the Milwaukee Brewers and their whole “we’re a small market team playin’ so hard!” thing — baseball prospectus TMZ Sportz is reporting that slugger Ryan Braun’s positive test for banned substances wasn’t caused by steroids, it was caused by “medication he’s taking for a private medical issue”.

We’re told the reigning National League MVP is adamant he has not taken drugs or steroids of any kind.

One source simply told us … “The medication contained banned substances resulting in the positive test.” We’re also told prior to taking the dirty test, Braun had always tested negative for banned substances.

The nature of Braun’s medical ailment is unclear.

You’ve got to love TMZ’s helpful editorial addition of, “before he tested positive for steroids, he tested negative for steroids”. Thanks, guys. Before O.J. Simpson murdered those people he had never been a murder suspect.

There are a lot of other things to consider while wading through TMZ’s knee-deep bullshit as well, like why the doctor who prescribed the medicine to a pro baseball player wouldn’t know or consider that the steroids medicine he’s prescribing wouldn’t cause someone to test positive for steroids, or why if he did know it he wouldn’t have written Braun an exemption. Furthermore, Major League Baseball’s collevtive bargaining agreement (the same one that says you can have exemptions for situations like this) doesn’t allow you to go back and get exemptions for tests you’ve already failed.

I hope the follow-up to this story is that Braun’s private medical issue was “not hitting enough home runs”.