Larry Brown Sports

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher John Axford has joined an elite club. Not all professional athletes will get the opportunity to sign a baby bump before their careers end, but Axford was recently given the privilege courtesy of a Brewers fan named Kristin Corcoran.

As you can see from the above photo that Concoran shared on Twitter on Monday, Axford was a good sport and signed her belly during an autograph session with fans.

“Thanks for the autographs & for reassuring that signing my belly wasn’t the strangest request you’ve had!” Corcoran wrote.

Unlike the stomach former Kentucky star Terrence Jones signed last year, Axford signed the woman’s shirt instead of her actual belly. Had Concoran lifted her shirt up, Axford may not have told her it wasn’t the most bizarre request he’s ever gotten.

H/T Big League Stew

Ben Rouse is no stranger to defying odds. To the average person, attending all 162 Brewers games in one season may sound like an impossible task. To a 25-year-old who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2007 and is currently in remission, the word “impossible” doesn’t exist.

“You only live once, and you might as well do something when you can,” Rouse told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel after completing his tour across North America on Wednesday.

Rouse spent more than 680 hours inside MLB ballparks this season, and he documented his journey with a blog along the way. He was formerly a 20-game partial season-ticket holder with the Brewers, but when he told the team he wanted to attend every game of the season — home and away — they were happy to help. The Brewers upgraded Rouse to a full season ticket package and got him a ticket to every road game. He says he had to spend about $6,500 while following the Brew Crew everywhere they went.

Rouse’s daily blog, Ben Rouse’s Brewers Mission 162, helped raise awareness for the Be The Match Foundation, an organization that helps find donors for those in need of bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplants. After being diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia in 2007, Rouse underwent various treatments including chemotherapy. He received an umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant in 2009 and has been in remission since.

“Why not do it at 25?” Rouse asked. “Who knows what my body will be like in 20 years, 30 years.”

As expected, his 162-game tour was filled with mind-boggling feats and statistics. Rouse ate 100 sausages, threw out two ceremonial first pitches, traveled 43,000 miles and saw 48,000 pitches. Perhaps even more impressive, he missed only 110 pitches. Most importantly, he showed people that doing something you put your mind to is entirely possible, no matter what the circumstances. If Ben Rouse can fight leukemia and attend all 162 games of the Brewers season, all the while raising money for a great cause, what’s our excuse?

H/T Big League Stew

We’ve seen plenty of fan tattoos in our time here at LBS, but none have been as ferocious as this one. One Milwaukee fan has a tattoo of Brewers mascot Bernie Brewer holding a rifle and standing over the bloody corpse of a dead cub, all while grabbing his crotch. Think of it as a hardcore version of one of those bumper stickers of the cartoon figure taking a leak on something else. That’s hardcore.

H/T Hall of Very Good via Hot Clicks
Photo via @JucheMane